At long last the email has come - I can now order OR FTTP. It's the only email I've ever had from the OR notification service, but it's the one I've been waiting for for over 6 years now.

So this is me signing off from this thread. I'm in my 80s and I've had more than my fill of the altnet wild west. Now I just want a peaceful life and a reliable service. I'm out of contract and I'll be switching to an OR based ISP and service just as soon as I can sort something out and they can install it. My needs are modest, I don't care that I'll be swapping 150/150 XGS-PON for a less capable asymmetric GPON service that will probably cost more. If the new provider's CS will actually talk sense and will fix problems efficiently should anything go wrong, it will be worth it.

Good news!

Good luck, and make sure you pick the right provider with a good CS reputation.

If you can get cuckoo i'm sure you can get brillband they use same altpointsfibre, It's available for me and price much better than cuckoo. £43 sounds too expensive for 900mbps. Just keep in mind you can't get normal ip with them They use CGNAT (Carrier-Grade NAT) only shared ip. You'll be stuck with shared ip forever. Not even dynamic or static.

Edited by MotoFanatic (Wed 10-Jun-26 22:58:49)

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

I don't care that I'll be swapping 150/150 XGS-PON for a less capable asymmetric GPON service that will probably cost more. If the new provider's CS will actually talk sense and will fix problems efficiently should anything go wrong, it will be worth it.

Check out Aquiss. IMO the sweet spot is £45 for 300/50 (you only save £3 by halving speed to 150/30). Great customer service, dedicated static IP4 and an IPv6 /56 subnet, very reliable network.

It's a 12 month initial contract and no automatic price rises within contract or at end of contract - just roll on month by month. Currently they are offering first 6 months for half price. They have been known to drop it to 3 months or remove the offer completely; if they do, I'd expect them to reinstate it for Black Friday.

Caveats:

* You have to provide your own router
* There is a £45 cease charge if you disconnect (without migrating to another provider) or move house - regardless of whether they can serve you at the new property or not.

A newer but apparently well regarded option is Olilo. They have two types of service, "Consumer" and "Prosumer" running on two different networks, which is rather confusing. "Consumer" is significantly cheaper than Aquiss, although there are £1/year price rises, and it's £2 extra for static IP. "Prosumer" gives you 900/100 speed for about the same price as 300/50 on Aquiss - but you said you don't care about the speed anyway.

Again, you provide your own router. There's no initial 6 month discount, but there's also no cease charge (unless you take the 1-month contract option and terminate within the first 12 months).

@candlerb
Thanks for the advice, it's appreciated. Olilo are currently top of my list; I've been talking to them. Haven't looked at Aquiss yet, but I will. Reliability is my top priority, certainly, but I do care a bit about speed - I do move some chunky files around fairly regularly. But I don't stream very much, and only HD when I do, there's only 2 of us in the house and we're not gamers, so almost any available full fibre speed will do at a push. I have CGNAT at present and don't need a static IPv4 (though running a BQM would be nice). Unless I have problems getting my ATA box to work through a different CGNAT. But might be the push I need finally to ditch the old landline number we've had for nearly 40 years. I would like to, but as I've remarked elsewhere, the problem is persuading friends of a similar age to ourselves to stop using it.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

But might be the push I need finally to ditch the old landline number we've had for nearly 40 years. I would like to, but as I've remarked elsewhere, the problem is persuading friends of a similar age to ourselves to stop using it.

No matter which way you go, no need to ditch the old number. Just transfer it to a VoIP provider then put one of the apps like acrobits on your mobile and receive the calls dialled to your old landline number on your mobile. Caveat is that if you have a bundled landline and internet service from your provider, transferring the landline will cease the whole contract and may hit you with early termination charges.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

I have CGNAT at present and don't need a static IPv4 (though running a BQM would be nice).

You can run BQM on ipv6, if you can find the IP address of your router. I run both. They tend to differ in minor detail, but the bigger picture is always very much the same.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

You can run BQM on ipv6, if you can find the IP address of your router. I run both. They tend to differ in minor detail, but the bigger picture is always very much the same.

That's interesting. I do already run a v6 BQM (when APFN can get their act together and come up with a working v6 stack), but I've not been able to run a v4 BQM for some time. I've wondered how they would compare.

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

No matter which way you go, no need to ditch the old number. Just transfer it to a VoIP provider...

Thanks again for the tip, but that's long since sorted. The "landline" number is actually VoIP to an independent provider (Voipfone), so not tied to my broadband supplier. I did that by ceasing the old FTTC line by migrating the number to Voipfone after Swish Fibre FTTP was installed 5 years ago. The only potential issue is that some folks apparently have trouble getting VoIP to work through CGNAT; it seems to depend on the CGNAT implementation. Voipfone works fine for me at present through CGNAT. If I have issues after I switch, any new supplier I go to will at least have the option of static V4 addresses, which should sort that.