FTTC now available which provider should I choose

Hi,
The village in which I live has just had FTTC rolled out(NEWYL) so I'm pondering whether I should change over, and if so which provider I ought to select.
My current ADSL2+ service and phone is through Xilo with the phone line on talktalk LLU, and that is/has been exemplary service.
My rough estimates of what it would cost me to get 80/20 FTTC are as follows(ignoring setup costs, and initial offers, and assuming all the offers are available):

Xilo £30 + £17 BT line rental (50gb usage allowance but excellent service)
plusnet £20 + £12 line rental(paying 1 year up front)(unlimited, but recent reports of iffy service and network problems)
BT £25 + £17 line rental(unlimited and £125 Sainsbury voucher but poor customer service and the company that gave us phorm and tried to hinder all other providers when the net was in it's infancy)
Zen £30 + £17 line rental - mixed reports
IDNet £47.40 all in - reportedly good
TalkTalk £18.50 + £16.70 line rental(unlimited but Do TT offer FTTC over BT lines?), but customer service still reportedly poor.
Sky I won't use.

Any advice welcome.
Thanks
Allan

You've pulled various judgments out of the air that appear to be anecdotal. It has to be remembered that the biggest ISPs will be the ones leading to the most online complaints. You have also not set any sort of parameters as to what you are looking for - are you looking for static IP or bundled sports, for example?

Your best bet may well be to make a shortlist and contact those ISPs to discuss your options.

One key thing to remember during your deliberation is minimum contract length.

Until recently I would have unhesitatedly recommended Plusnet. I obviously can't do that at the moment, but personally have not had any problems. See this post I made a few minutes ago, and the one to which it was a reply.

It's all very weird.

I came to Plusnet from IDNet and have to say I wouldn't dream of going back even if I leave Plusnet. (I did look around a few days ago, before I discovered my problems were not caused by Plusnet). But I didn't leave IDNet because of dissatisfaction - simply price!

At 50GB usage you may find AAISP Home::1 worth looking at to compare with the Xilo FTTC offerings. From what I see of complaints about Zen, those are rare suggesting a good broadband service, but generally indicate they don't pull the stops out for consumer-level problems.

I withhold further comments for now - as per my linked post.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

At 50GB usage you may find AAISP Home::1 worth looking at to compare with the Xilo FTTC offerings. From what I see of complaints about Zen, those are rare suggesting a good broadband service, but generally indicate they don't pull the stops out for consumer-level problems.

The danger, of course, is that you can use more when switching to a faster connection. I don't hesitate in switching streaming media to the highest bandwidth setting on FTTC because I'm not interfering with other family member's usage of the connection. Since moving to FTTC, I also think nothing of downloading a 1GB or larger file, and I make extensive use of cloud storage.


I was trying to encapsulate my feelings about Zen, but you've done a great job for me, Bob. On the whole they provide excellent service and have a UK call centre - I have never had any hesitation in recommending them.

However, the pricing of Zen's consumer services does not include sufficient headroom to be able to offer the sort of assiduous pursuit of Openreach that the likes of AAISP will mount for an individual customer. My impression, based in part on my own experiences over the years, is that Zen will try fairly hard, but various people report Zen sometimes reaches a point where they feel unable to offer further help in the face of ongoing performance issues that appear to fall in Openreach's domain.

I completely agree with your additional comments. I was trying not to get too complex in a single post .

Thank you both for the advice, suggestions and information. David W. is correct that I pulled the judgements out of the air, based on what I've read, and I accept that the larger ISPs have more customers and so will attract a higher level of complaints. I'm not interested in bundled sports or such things. I mainly use the internet to stream music, occasionally play games, stream video etc and I'd probably stream more film/tv if I had a faster connection.
Roberto, thanks for the pointer to AAISP, I've had a look and can see that I could get 100gb at 80/20 on their Home 1 package for £40 - but wouldn't I also have to pay a line rental on top of that and I occasionally need to make/receive phone calls?
Length of package isn't a huge factor for me(unless something goes wrong) , apart from AAISP who have 6 month term all of the others seem to be 12 months except Plusnet that was 18 months.
Thanks
Alllan

You would need to pay line rental to someone, yes. I haven't checked what AAISP do if it isn't with them - some ISPs charge more for the broadband in that setup.

AAISP have the highest ratings by customers.

Thanks,
I'll get in touch with them and find out. They seem to offer line rental on a wires only basis(ie no voice service) which is only £10.
regards
Allan

Yes they do, but you said you occasionally need to make or receive (land-line) calls.

BT or TalkTalk. There is no need to subscribe to providers with usage limits and or traffic management these days. Particularly if they are higher price.

BT if you want to use the free sport or free wifi when out and about. TalkTalk if you don't.

Edited by deleted (Fri 10-Apr-15 22:20:25)

That's correct - which I think would make it a lot more expensive than the others.

Thanks,
I hadn't considered the free wifi which would sometimes be useful

BT Infinity 2 - unlimited, free BT sport and wifi.

Not the cheapest I know. And to be honest, when I've had to use the customer service it's been OK.

Don't go for a capped package - as already stated - you'll burn through that as higher quality videos/streaming come down the wire (And uploads).

Edited by deleted (Sat 11-Apr-15 11:35:32)

In reply to a post by Allan1:

Roberto, thanks for the pointer to AAISP, I've had a look and can see that I could get 100gb at 80/20 on their Home 1 package for £40 - but wouldn't I also have to pay a line rental on top of that and I occasionally need to make/receive phone calls?
Length of package isn't a huge factor for me(unless something goes wrong) , apart from AAISP who have 6 month term all of the others seem to be 12 months except Plusnet that was 18 months.
Thanks
Alllan

Have you considered EE FTTC broadband and landline home phone? £11 line rental, Up to 76Mb/sec £29.95 home broadband unlimited with home phone. Total £40.95 per month, 18 month contract.

https://broadband.ee.co.uk/packages

Edited by deleted (Sat 11-Apr-15 23:14:15)

Hi,
Thanks for that. I'd seen the EE adverts but hadn't really looked at what was available as I'd got the impression the prices where for their mobile phone customers.
Allan

In reply to a post by Allan1:

Hi,
Thanks for that. I'd seen the EE adverts but hadn't really looked at what was available as I'd got the impression the prices where for their mobile phone customers.
Allan

If you don't have EE, Orange, or T-Mobile mobile phone you will not get the £5 discount each month so £5 is added to that price £40.95+£5=£45.95 per month for home broadband FTTC 76 Mb/sec unlimited with landline home phone, includes £11 line rental, 18 months contract.

http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-tariffs/sim-only-plans

Xilo have just launched an FTTC package with a 500Gb fair use cap peak use, unlimited off-peak.

With them you're guaranteed peerless support from the tireless Matt & co.

Failing that, the only other real contender is BT, if you're willing to risk the dodgy support should it be necessary.

BT Totally Unlimited £25 package is a bargain at the moment, simply because you can get 95 quid cashback through Quidco and a £125 Sainsburys voucher. You can always dump them after the 12 month minimum contract.

Xilo looks like 40/10 at £68.49 or 80/20 at £72.49. Line rental extra.

Might be high quality support, but I'd take some convincing.

I agree they are a good company and the support appears excellent.

You can get contract free fibre that includes line rental, with calls under 1p with no call connection charge and per second billing.
https://pulse8broadband.co.uk/fibreoptic-broadband

In reply to a post by E7er:

If you don't have EE, Orange, or T-Mobile mobile phone you will not get the £5 discount each month so £5 is added to that price £40.95+£5=£45.95 per month for home broadband FTTC 76 Mb/sec unlimited with landline home phone, includes £11 line rental, 18 months contract.

Not any more! They ceased a discount for EE mobile custs some time last year, probably when EE TV came out. Now an EE mobile only makes you eligible for EE TV.

So the original price of £29.95 you quoted for EE 76 Meg Fibre BB applies to everyone,

EE does provide an excellent actual BB service (BT-based like many others) but is let down by the worst, atrocious CS which can often feed back into the technical BB service, like unnecessary banded profiles, delays in activation, unbeknownst phone no. changes, ...

However I was pleasantly surprised by EE CS today, Since the Grand National 10,000s of users, incl. myself, were beset by their EE email not working. After a lengthy wait on the phone I got on to an agent who sorted it out for me within minutes. It was a email server configuration fault that locked out loads of users.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Mon 13-Apr-15 02:11:52)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

At 50GB usage you may find AAISP Home::1 worth looking at to compare with the Xilo FTTC offerings. From what I see of complaints about Zen, those are rare suggesting a good broadband service, but generally indicate they don't pull the stops out for consumer-level problems.

Home is 100Gb
http://aaisp.net.uk/broadband.html
Been with AAISP for years, yes expensive but worth every penny. Just connect and forget about it .... On their 80/20 - (maxing it at 76 & a solid 18.48) as it is only 50p/day extra over the 40/10, upload great for online backups, dropbox, etc. Good luck with your decision.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by E7er:

If you don't have EE, Orange, or T-Mobile mobile phone you will not get the £5 discount each month so £5 is added to that price £40.95+£5=£45.95 per month for home broadband FTTC 76 Mb/sec unlimited with landline home phone, includes £11 line rental, 18 months contract.

Not any more! They ceased a discount for EE mobile custs some time last year, probably when EE TV came out. Now an EE mobile only makes you eligible for EE TV.

So the original price of £29.95 you quoted for EE 76 Meg Fibre BB applies to everyone.

Well I never, so that! I am an existing EE, Orange or T-Mobile customer, mobile phone check is just to see if you qualify for the FREE EE TV box. No discount another perk taken away then.

https://broadband.ee.co.uk/packages

Edited by deleted (Mon 13-Apr-15 15:05:17)

We can do you basic line rental for £11.40 per month even if you don't use us for your FTTC service.

In reply to a post by David_W:

Your best bet may well be to make a shortlist and contact those ISPs to discuss your options.

One key thing to remember during your deliberation is minimum contract length.

Couldn't agree more. I am ditching plusnet this week (buying myself out of my contract) and moving to Sky Fibre Pro Unlimited (still wanted UK based support). Partly on price (I got line rental at £11.40 and fibre at £17.50) but I was tired of the issues with gateways and so on with plusnet.

One other option to consider is TalkTalk Business, £48 for 80/20 and line rental.

Then of course there is vivaciti who have posted about line rental and also do FTTC, and Aquiss with some interesting unlimited download packages including IPv6 as standard.

Thanks Koppo and Roberto,
I'm currently on a talk and surf package from Xilo which has been a truly excellent deal and have found their customer service excellent. It's just that there are so many offers around for FTTC that it seems silly not to take a look at what's available before I decide.

Thanks airds,
Just trying to work out options for a normal phone service at the same time.
regards
Allan

Thanks,
That's another option to consider.

Thanks,
I don't believe that talktalk fibre is available at the exchange yet only BT - at least that's what their checker tells me.
regards
Allan

Thanks again,
Vivaciti, Roberto. That looks like a reasonable deal on line rental. Aquiss line rental is £13.00 so cheaper than BT but more than Vivaciti .

Thanks to all for the advice and suggestions.
I decided to take line rental and FTTC from Xilo as they were able to offer me line rental at 9.99 ex vat, only slightly more expensive than Vivaciti. Several other providers are cheaper but I guess I'd rather deal with one from whom I have had good service rather than step into the unknown.
cheers
Allan

It could well turn out to be a wise choice,