Advice for alternative ISP to Coms

Hi Folks currently with Coms

Have 2 lines for Dual Wan for ADSL Max and speed has over recent weeks fallen from a rock steady 7 MBPs on each line to an erratic 1- 5 on each line.

They have admitted traffic shaping for P2P and Usenet but have said this is only 1800-2400 but in reality speed is poor throughout the day not just with Usenet.

Netflix streaming is terrible in the evenings as well.

On reading through some of the threads it would seem that i have to migrate my phone lines to BT first if want to consider Xilo for example, which will drag out the whole migration process.

For the record I am probably 6-12 months off having my exchange enabled to FTTC/P

I am after recommendations for an ISP that ideally provides

1 A Rolling Monthly contract

2 No restrictions on Usenet

3 Truly Unlimited downloads - for night time use at least.

Thanks in advance

Plusnet do offer a no contract option but it isn't cheap
They do meet all the other criteria

Unlimited

With a contract: If you live in a low cost area it costs £12.49 a month, if you live outside one of these areas it costs £19.99 a month
With no contract: If you live in a low cost area it costs £14.99 a month, if you live outside one of these areas it costs £22.49 a month

I was previously with ADSL24 (since July 2008, no issues) but since the take-over by COMS my effective download speed has decreased significantly. There is about 4km of copper between my house and the exchange, so I'm only connecting (usually) at just below 4Mbps. So I'm not exactly putting a great strain on their infrastructure. Often (particularly, but not always, in the evenings) the throughput is very, very poor. So I want to change ISPs. BUT I have my phone line with them too. My exchange is Woolhampton (THWN) which is unbundled by TalkTalk.

A friend recommended Xilo, but they can't (or won't) do a working line take-over. This is what they said: "We originally were unable to migrate bundled services from Talk Talk. They then resolved the issue and these worked manually, however, all recent orders have been rejected to the point that we cannot offer a migration at the moment. Really sorry but you'll have to either cease the line and get a new one elsewhere, or look at moving to a provider that can do a working line take over."

As I write this, the COMS customer account web site is unavailable. Just in case the address had changed, I followed the link from their home page, with the same result: not found. Another nail in the coffin.

Now, why is it so difficult to migrate my broadband and phone package from one ISP using TalkTalk equipment to another ISP using the same equipment? I don't want any interruption to my phone service, nor do I want to incur unnecessary charges. What advice can you give?

Thanks,

Andy

Have you altered your Target SNR since being switched over to coms? Seems everyones target snr got defaulted to 12db (its what happens on ttb apparently with a new supplier) so you have to ring up to change it to whatever it was on before

That would explain the sync speed issue you have

I also was with ADSL24 for years and had no complaints about them. Since migrating to Coms in January it has been one thing after another. I have a very long, noisy line and if subject to DLM only get a download speed of 0.6-1.1Mbps. PaulComs put me on a fixed 3db snr as I was on with ADSL24 which allows to to download at 2-2.5MBps which is fine. He also removed me from the throttling as with my line speed can't possibly impact their network.

Since Paul has left, however, things have changed. I am now throttled to 5kbps every evening after 6pm and all weekends from 11am to midnight. Even when I can download at my full speed I see a huge variation in the download speed compared to the steady speed I used to get with ADSL24. The final straw for me was cessation of email hosting. If I have to go through the hassle of changing all my email contacts there is no reason to stay with Coms.

My migration date to Xilo is tomorrow. I will have a monthly contract and no throttling. There is an unlimited download option for similar price to what I was paying but I have opted for the cheaper 100Gb a month (peak periods), unlimited off peak as that is plenty for me. The only slight downside is that Xilo can only give me a fixed 6dn snr so I will get a slightly lower maximum speed but expect it to be more consistent. My contacts with Xilo during my initial investigations and during sign up have been a breath of fresh air compared to Coms.
I cannot see why anyone would stay with them unless they are tied in contractually.

In reply to a post by TriumphMan:

A friend recommended Xilo, but they can't (or won't) do a working line take-over. This is what they said: "We originally were unable to migrate bundled services from Talk Talk. They then resolved the issue and these worked manually, however, all recent orders have been rejected to the point that we cannot offer a migration at the moment. Really sorry but you'll have to either cease the line and get a new one elsewhere, or look at moving to a provider that can do a working line take over."

Hmm, that's interesting. I'm with Coms on a TalkTalk LLU broadband/phone package and Xilo have accepted my order for their similar TT LLU package and confirmed the migration date.

If they can't actually pull it off I'm going to be severely unhappy.

Little update for anyone who's interested.

Today was migration day and my suspicion it wouldn't go smoothly was right on the money. In summary:

- A phone engineer turned up at my door, something I hadn't been warned about and has never been necessary any of the numerous times I've done a DSL>DSL migration before.
- I apparently now have a new phone number. No warning from Xilo that this was required. I've had the same number for a very long time and you'd be correct if you assume I'll be deeply unhappy if I can't get it back.
- Down sync speed has dropped by 6MBit.

I've got a ticket open with Xilo to see if they can sort this mess out. If not my time with them may be measured in days rather than months or years...

I believe this has been resolved, in a sense and we discussed this via ticket raised.

The order was placed as a migration for you as requested. As these are manually done with TTB due to issues on some orders but instead they placed as a new line - despite clear written instruction for a migration.

A commit date was provided as it would be normally which we advised by email as would happen with correct orders. We were only aware the engineer had attended on contact from yourself to which we then went to investigate what had happened.

It turns out the engineer that went out used the pair for the other line without any authority to do so for a new line when he should have actually installed a second socket based on the order he had - thus leaving the original line active. We attempted to get this reversed but it was not accepted because the other line was not ours despite it being altered by the engineer that was linked to our (incorrect) order.

We offered to get that incorrect new line cancelled and then the migration rebooked as normal meaning you'd need to stay on the old service until that time but we also offered a free VoIP service for a year and free porting of the old number whilst keeping the "new" line - in the end you decided to stay as is due to some issues with the old provider and your work was able to also do the VoIP port for free so would be doing that.

The speed issue was due to profiling set high on TTB circuits by default which was altered with a profile change.

We already have raised the complaint about the engineer not completing the job correctly as well as one to TTB for incorrectly ordering what should have been a migration.

We're very sorry this happened but if you do have any outstanding issues, do let us know on the ticket that is currently with yourself.

Matt

I should have remembered to post an update here for anyone considering a Coms>Xilo move, but sometimes I have the memory of a goldfish.

Matt has summed it up well; the migration was a disaster due to the BT engineer being an idiot, but has been mostly sorted out now (VoIP not working yet, but should be in a few days). The new connection is *vastly* better than before, working precisely as expected. No more packet loss, crazy dial-up speed throttling, timed out web sites or randomly broken TCP connections.

I want to say a public thank you to Matt for his help with this, which has been a textbook example of how an ISP should do customer support. The contrast with Coms, where support seems to mean failing to fix anything while constantly asking what model of router you are using, couldn't be more stark.

Seeing as this seems to be resolved, got a quick question for you Uno

If going from a TTB SMPF to your Pro TTB SMPF offering, i understand this doesnt require an engineer as its just pressing a few buttons on a computer so to speak to change?

If so, does the migration usually happen overnight or can it happen anytime during the day of migration?