Looking for a new home...

Hello all, my first post on here for awhile (since the name change anyway!)

I am in the market for a new ISP, now the last time I hunted down a new ISP I was recommended UKFSN back, ooh, July-ish 2006.. a lot has changed since then. I moved house in April and unfortunately was unable to get hold of UKFSN to go with them again and I am curently with Aquiss internet..

Now don't get me wrong, support has been great with Aquiss but as with most other people these days money is tight. I am on a rolling monthly contract - 'Family 30' which is ADSL2+, 30gb Peak, unlimited offpeak package for £24.46...

With UKFSN I left just before their pricing changed in the middle of april, so I would have been on a 1month contract, £18.95 with a monthly usage of 30gb. (peak)

Both of these run through Entanet, of which I have never had a major issue with (other than they surcharged me £75 for an inactive line, but that was promptly dealt with)..

Since being with Aquiss, my line has had some major issues (ADSL2+/21CN) and I suspect its to do with that, every so often it resyncs my line (upload speed oddly enough) to 1024kb+ and I have days on end with problems, until it resets back to around 768kb upload - at this time download appears to stay at around 8126kb...

Ultimately I am paying for a 24mb service and only getting a flaky 8mb service, now I have asked Aquiss about locking my line into 8mb/0.7mb but they say they cant as the software that handles the line automatically alters it after several days of a stable line...

Anyway, im ranting (apologies!) ultimately I am looking for ADSLMax upto 8mb, with a cap limit of 30~50gb and around the £20 mark with rolling monthly contracts. I know such things existed 3 years ago on reputable and independant suppliers - but do such things still exist now? or for a decent download amount, £24.46 a reasonable amount?

Help would be appreciated and if anyone from UKFSN is listening, send me a message we might have some catching up to do

(edited slightly, mixed up the terminology of ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+ and 21CN, ugh, too much to keep on top of ^^)

Edited by davexeno (Fri 21-Aug-09 11:43:28)

vivaciti Surfwise 75 is non-Enta, or of course they do the new Enta packages at the lower price you mentioned.

The flakiness is down to BT WBC ADSL2+ as you say. So far as I know Surfwise is not WBC, though everything will be WBC/WBMC/IPSC in time.

But what exchange are you on? There are far better and cheaper solutions at many than any BT-based system.

That sounds like they have put you on an ADSL 2+ profile. There is no reason you cannot be put back onto an ADSL profile and have up to 8Mb instead.

I've pm'd you.

Good Morning,

Well this is an interesting one.

In reply to a post by davexeno:

now I have asked Aquiss about locking my line into 8mb/0.7mb but they say they cant as the software that handles the line automatically alters it after several days of a stable line...

Would you be so kind if you you provide me with a ticket reference where this has been mentioned? I'm purely curious to how your situation has been handled as customers are free to move between ADSL1 and ADSL2+ and all the various tweaks inbetween. I'm hoping there has been some cross-communication issues.

I think it fair to point out all our customers are invited, not forced onto ADSL2+, therefore you will have replied (well again i'm hoping a procedure has been followed) and agreed to being moved to ADSL2+. That same invite also explains in detail how, if you have problems how you can be moved back to ADSL1.

Do remember services are "up to" 24Mbps. There are cases where due to the length of line or other conditions that have been picked up during KBD fault checks that recommendation to stay on ADSL1 is the best course of action, and in a fair percentage of cases speeds will be better on ADSL1 than on ADSL2+

Martin Pitt
Company Founder

I'm on the exchange MYSCA which has little room for manoeuvre unfortunately, according to samknows.. enabled LLU are

AOL (pass)
C&W/Bulldog (unknown to me but probably pass)
Orange (pass)
TalkTalk (pass)

No other providers that I know of are active via LLU here, though Vivaciti looks interesting, thanks

Hello Martin,

I will follow this up with a private message stating the ticket, although looking through it I have probably jumped to some wrong assumptions. Based simply on your website not stating immediately you offer ADSL or ADSL2 but mainly "The brand new up to 24 Meg Broadband family range from Aquiss" (21CN) as quoted.

Now I don't mean to paint Aquiss in a bad light, as I said your customer service and response times (replying to tickets at 2am is impressive) is top notch. As such if I can transfer to an 'Upto 8mb' service (as that'll probably be more stable and the easier option) I may do that.. but you can probably understand that at the same time there are other ISPS who offer the same limit, on an 'upto 8mb' service at £6 cheaper. (At face value anyway, still need to go through the small print).

Edited by davexeno (Fri 21-Aug-09 11:41:48)

C&W/Bulldog is just C&W as far as I know now, since Bulldog were bought by Pipex >> Tiscali and went bad.

Vivaciti, xilo and your own aquiss all sell this and as I understand it it is quite good. Though Demon on it seems to have some problems.

Nevermind, Martin has just been in touch and problem has been resolved. He's not only managed to continue his top notch customer service but ticked all the boxes too

Thank you again Aquiss!

Dave.

(Incase your wondering, I was on the 21CN service via BT.. as Martin is now aware the Exchange supports C&W, they are moving me to LLU which should be more stable and cheaper and cuts out BT altogether which should resolve my issue of pricing, bandwidth and stability all in one go =) )

Edited by davexeno (Fri 21-Aug-09 12:16:48)

Glad you got it sorted, if things do go wrong, I can recommend Xilo, I'm on the Pro 16 H which is a 1 month rolling contract at £17.24 (£14.99+VAT) a month it is unlimited and I have been very impressed in terms of support, reliability & speed - on my long line!