Just moved to the UK. Zen / Aquiss / ... for work-at-home?

Hello,

I just moved to the UK (Cambridge) from Denmark. I'm setting up a home office where I will be doing quite a lot of work. I analyse genomic data, so I'm generally downloading between 0.1 and 0.5 TB / month.

I'm quite unfamiliar with the ISPs here, so I'd appreciate some guidance on what ISP to choose as I'm quite dependant on my connection and its QoS for work.

Some facts:

- I'm served by the Cherry Hinton exchanage EACRH
- I'm not a company so in principle I should opt for residential providers

I'm considering Aquiss and Zen. Both are roughly similar in terms of price. Zen has LLU in my exchange, but Aquiss (Entanet) doesn't. Does this make a difference?

I've seen some data indicating both are pretty stable. I hope latency is also good, as that's important for VoIP.

I've discarded IDNet and AAISP due to the high monthly fee I'd have with my data usage, but they look very nice.

I'm on the fence with Plusnet and TalkTalk. Much cheaper, maybe OK. I'd love to get access to TalkTalk Business, but it seems I can't.

I'm not considering BT, Sky or Virgin, but perhaps I should?

Thanks

Welcome to the UK and to the Cherry Hinton area. I know that area pretty well as I used to work for a firm on The Paddocks, which is best though of as behind Budgens on the A1134 / Cherry Hinton Road roundabout. These days, I live over in Bedfordshire, to the west of Cambridge.


Virgin Media run their own network, which does not use Openreach owned infrastructure. Every other residential ISP using fixed infrastructure will depend to a greater or lesser extent on Openreach infrastructure.

A key consideration is therefore what is likely to be available over Openreach infrastructure at your property, also what the predicted speeds are for ADSL and, if available, FTTC. To find this out, go to the BT Wholesale DSL checker and search by phone number if you have an active phone line at the property that is recognised, otherwise search by address. Do not search merely by postcode, as that search does not provide accurate information for FTTC and FTTP.


I regard Zen as a very solid choice for home office use. I've had Internet service from them for eleven years and currently have Zen residential voice and FTTC service.

Zen will give you a static IP address and may still offer a /29 allocation (block of 8 static IP addresses, with one being your local gateway address) at no extra cost. These days any address block allocation requires a special request to Sales rather than being an online sign up option. Unless you have a need for multiple static IPv4 addresses, I'd probably stick with a single address.

Zen's own backhaul network is solid in my experience. You can access my live latency monitoring by clicking the 'thinkbroadband quality monitor' link in my signature. From a location around 45 miles from London, I currently have 9.5ms round trip time to London based servers over my Zen FTTC connection with very little observable jitter.


The only major drawback is that Zen do not currently offer native IPv6 on consumer broadband, though you can get a free IPv6 tunnel from SixXS or Hurricane Electric. I have no doubt that native IPv6 will come, though Zen continue to claim customer demand for IPv6 is still weak and appear, not unreasonably, to be concentrating on developing their network.

I would go with Zen, I've had Zen fibre for the last 14 months and it is extremely reliable .

Hi, and welcome to the forums and country.

You can have business products without being a company. It's more a product service quality description than a customer-type requirement. Until of course you get to the "corporate" type of connection which are exorbitantly priced for most of us.

In particular you do have access to TalkTalk Business. Whether direct or only through resellers such as xilo/uno and vivaciti I'm not sure. The resold TT Business network seems to be excellent, but as far as I know does not have any FTTx products - see later in this post re those.

As you do sound like a sole trader business rather than an employee of a company, you may need or find it useful to be registered for Vat here even if below the threshold for compulsory registration. Were you in Denmark?

If the link David gave you says you can get a decent speed FTTC then that would be advisable. If FTTP I think only BT and Plusnet offer it. Plusnet don't advertise it but do have it available. In all cases FTTP is subject to Openreach feasibility assessment. Please could you copy and paste what the link David gave says. Just the estimates table and the line above it. Make sure you edit out the phone number or address!

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 15-Jun-15 10:35:36)

I'm with Aquiss and I'm pretty satisfied overall. I have Native IPv6 and the customer support is excellent. I get the impression that you deal direct with the owner of the company which is a nice change.

Speeds are solid even at peak times, however I am probably going to leave them again after I've seen out the year contract period because the latency I typically get is disappointing using the same hardware as previous supplier (PlusNet). It's possibly not quite worth the monthly price and I'm going to look at Zen very seriously when the time comes.

Thanks for the detailed replies. Here's the info from the BT broadband availability checker:

FTTC Range A (Clean) 80 69.4 20 20 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 80 60.7 20 12.2 -- Available
WBC ADSL 2+ Up to 17 -- 10 to 19.5 Available
WBC ADSL 2+ Annex M Up to 17 Up to 1.5 10 to 19.5 Available
ADSL Max Up to 7.5 -- 6.5 to 8 Available
WBC Fixed Rate 2 -- -- Available
Fixed Rate 2 -- -- Available
Other Offerings
FTTP on Demand 330 30 -- Available
Fibre Multicast -- -- -- Available
Copper Multicast -- -- -- Available

I am having some issues getting availability information directly from ISPs. My development is brand new so the postcode is unfortunately not yet in most databases.

Would you recommend going for FTTP if it can be installed? FTTC speed is good enough for me (although in some cases I'd rather have a bit more). Reduced latency and no bottlenecks during peak hours is what I'm mostly after.

I'm assuming that is from the Address Checker? Or is it phone or postcode? As has been said, this matters in the level of reliability of the result you have posted.

There is a big difference between (native) FTTP and FTTPoD (FTTP on Demand). The former is normally not available when FTTC is, and vice versa. The latter is only available when FTTC is and costs a fortune to install.

Go for FTTC, which is available from nearly all ISPs. FTTP is not available, and just for interest price details of FTTPoD follow:-

For the installation of FTTPoD Openreach will charge the ISP a fixed amount plus a variable amount. Example prices below are ex Vat, which of course doesn't affect the ISP but by the time it gets to a non-VAT registered user makes a big difference. What you do get is a guaranteed connection speed of 330/30Mbps. That doesn't guarantee the throughput of course.

Fixed charge - £750
Minimum variable charge (at 0-199 metres from the aggregation point) £350
Ditto at 800-999 metres £3,150
Ditto at 1500-1999 metres £6,125

Annual rental in all cases - £1,180 Minimum contract period 36 months.

Judging by your FTTC estimate the variable element for your premises would be £200, £600 or £1000. Plus ISP markup and Vat. Price list.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I'm assuming that is from the Address Checker? Or is it phone or postcode? As has been said, this matters in the level of reliability of the result you have posted.

Thanks. Unfortunately I don't have a phone yet. Nobody in the building has actually. Our postcode is not in the databases yet either. But when I enter my whole address and postcode I get a very close match from a block that is 50 m away. I guess it's a good rough approximation, although I understand that availability will only be confirmed when I install a phone line.

Would you recommend going for Zen or similar providers vs trying to get something cheaper from Plusnet / TalkTalk?

Zen may be worth a look... specially if there is LLU at your exchange!

That's a hard recommendation to make.

TalkTalk Retail I would not go for, particulary because of its support reputation. On the other hand my neighbour across the road (low usage) has always found the support fine.

Virgin Media is a different technology altogether. Nothing whatsoever to do with the Openreach landline system. They have a cable system to local nodes and extension cabinets, then twin coax feeds underground from the extension cabinets to premises. I don't think they supply what sounds like a block of flats/apartments, particularly new build. Don't take my word for that.

Twelve months ago I would have plumped immediately for Plusnet, who I have been with on FTTC for over three years. However, since then they seem to be having problems that I think are associated with a huge growth in customer numbers and new kit to cater for that.

This affects two things. One is the telephone and ticket support, though the higher-level support people on these and the in-house Community forums are generally excellent and will always persist on hard to solve problems. Normally with success in the end.

The other is that some customers are experiencing poor throughput at times, though most of us aren't affected. Those affected are of course very vocal and post about it frequently.

I myself am affected a little when on particular gateways. My latency and single-stream speedtests can be affected. See this speed test result. It should be like this one.

Zen overall are probably better, but considerably more expensive. I haven't used them myself, though I did use IDNet FTTC before Plusnet. I've never regretted the move and have saved an awful lot of money. The only worry I have about Zen is that I've see a few reports in the non-Zen forums here, (I don't monitor the Zen one), where on consumer-level lines they seem to give up remarkably easily when Openreach or BT Wholesale say what amounts to "Tough! The line can't do what the customer says and never could". When it clearly did.

Plusnet forum support would chase it harder. Zen business-level support I expect do.

An alternative supplier you may have ruled out because of the apparent cost is AAISP. If you look at their Pick & Mix option, those prices can look eye-watering for heavy use. Until you find

Instead of the normal off peak tariff, between 2am and 6am usage is metered at 1000GB/unit.

by clicking the "How it works" link at the end of the paragraph below the package builder on the Pick & Mix Prices page. If you could fit your downloads into that time span you would be fine., and they don't take "No" for an answer from OR or BTW.

Their problem handling and line monitoring is first class. They claim that they often tell customers they have a problem before the customer realises. Comparisons.

Just an afterthought, how much do you upload?.

An old saying of "you get what you pay for" but i think it applies to broadband more than any other business. You can get a cheap deal paying a few quid a month, but dont expect great things.

Always worth paying a little bit more and get good customer service, and generally the smaller ISPs who are resellers offer that

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Plusnet forum support would chase it harder. Zen business-level support I expect do.

An alternative supplier you may have ruled out because of the apparent cost is AAISP. If you look at their Pick & Mix option, those prices can look eye-watering for heavy use. Until you find

Instead of the normal off peak tariff, between 2am and 6am usage is metered at 1000GB/unit.

by clicking the "How it works" link at the end of the paragraph below the package builder on the Pick & Mix Prices page. If you could fit your downloads into that time span you would be fine., and they don't take "No" for an answer from OR or BTW.

Their problem handling and line monitoring is first class. They claim that they often tell customers they have a problem before the customer realises. Comparisons.

Just an afterthought, how much do you upload?.

Thanks. Last month I uploaded 53 GB, but it's quite variable.

I really like all things AAISP, but I'd be a bit cumbersome for me to schedule big data transfers due to the nature of the work I do.

Perhaps my better options right now are Zen, Aquiss & Plusnet. Zen has LLU in my exchange (how much of an edge is this towards good QoS?), Aquiss is Entanet & IPv6-ready, and Plusnet is approx 12 quid pcm cheaper.

I don't have a super big budget, so maybe I should also look into TalkTalk Business and resellers.

In reply to a post by ClaretMatt:

I'm with Aquiss and I'm pretty satisfied overall. I have Native IPv6 and the customer support is excellent. I get the impression that you deal direct with the owner of the company which is a nice change.

Speeds are solid even at peak times, however I am probably going to leave them again after I've seen out the year contract period because the latency I typically get is disappointing using the same hardware as previous supplier (PlusNet).

Latency? To where? From where? Is this between you and us or during a routing path to a server your trying to reach? Certainly what we don't get is calls or tickets about latency issues.

You know what I'm going to say, unless this is brought to our attention we can't investigate. However, if you believe this is linked to hardware supplied by your previous supplier, then dropping back to the OR supplied VDSL modem directly and comparing would be a natural checklist process.

In reply to a post by aquiss:

In reply to a post by ClaretMatt:

I'm with Aquiss and I'm pretty satisfied overall. I have Native IPv6 and the customer support is excellent. I get the impression that you deal direct with the owner of the company which is a nice change.

Speeds are solid even at peak times, however I am probably going to leave them again after I've seen out the year contract period because the latency I typically get is disappointing using the same hardware as previous supplier (PlusNet).

Latency? To where? From where? Is this between you and us or during a routing path to a server your trying to reach? Certainly what we don't get is calls or tickets about latency issues.

You know what I'm going to say, unless this is brought to our attention we can't investigate. However, if you believe this is linked to hardware supplied by your previous supplier, then dropping back to the OR supplied VDSL modem directly and comparing would be a natural checklist process.

Hi Martin,

I'm not saying the latency is "bad" or faulty, it's just not quite as good across the board as I experienced with Plusnet by around 25 -30%. I don't have a like for like trace route to compare it to. But here's a tracert to Google if you think there could be a fault up the chain:

Tracing route to www.google.co.uk [2a00:1450:400c:c01::5e]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 2001:4d48:ad53:f200::
2 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms gi0-0.lns11.inx.dsl.enta.net [2001:4d48:feed:57:
:b]
3 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms gi1-1.inx.dist.dsl.enta.net [2001:4d48:feed:57::
a]
4 12 ms 13 ms 12 ms te2-2.interxion.dsl.enta.net [2001:4d48:feed:4b:
:a]
5 12 ms 13 ms 12 ms te2-3.interxion.core.enta.net [2001:4d48:feed:22
::a]
6 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 2001:4d48:ace::44
7 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 2001:4d48:ace::43
8 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 2001:4860:1:1:0:2114:0:5
9 18 ms 18 ms 17 ms 2001:4860:1:1:0:2114:0:4
10 19 ms 19 ms 19 ms 2001:4860::1:0:87aa
11 18 ms 19 ms 18 ms 2001:4860::8:0:51a0
12 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms 2001:4860::8:0:507b
13 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms 2001:4860::2:0:7a79
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms wj-in-x5e.1e100.net [2a00:1450:400c:c01::5e]

Trace complete.

And an IPv4:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Matt>tracert 8.8.8.8

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms router.asus.com [192.168.1.1]
2 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms lns11.inx.dsl.enta.net [188.39.1.2]
3 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms te3-1.inx.dist.dsl.enta.net [188.39.1.1]
4 13 ms 11 ms 11 ms te2-2.interxion.dsl.enta.net [78.33.141.89]
5 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms te2-3.interxion.core.enta.net [87.127.236.209]
6 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms te0-1-1-1.interxion3.core.enta.net [188.39.127.1
64]
7 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms te0-0-0-3.telehouse-north.core.enta.net [188.39.
127.171]
8 12 ms 12 ms 11 ms 72.14.221.186
9 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms 216.239.47.95
10 18 ms 12 ms 12 ms 209.85.249.241
11 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

Ignore that "stability" graph completely, it is meaningless.

Look at Ofcom�s SamKnows reports on peak-time speeds, latency and jitter if you want. The big FTTC providers have very good performance really, the vast majority of users have no or little performance drop at peak times. No reason to avoid BT, Sky, TalkTalk consumer products on these grounds IMO. My BT broadband performs every bit as well peak and off-peak as when I was with AAISP.

Plusnet have a serious peak-time issue at the moment which is taking a very long time to resolve, so you probably want to avoid them on performance grounds alone (I would never recommend them personally anyway, they are a very poor ISP with horrific systems and support and it was a relief to move all the lines I manage away from them this year). They also permanently apply a complex QoS prioritisation of traffic to your line, which may affect your use for better or for worse.

By its nature, congestion can manifest any time, especially in backhaul. Some backhauls prioritize business connections over residential, so there is advantageous protection in theory if congestion arises. This aside, you are considering decent-quality providers and only someone with a crystal ball can tell you definitively one will perform better than another in this regard.

The majority of providers listed above will serve you well.
For me If I had access to the Zen LLU backhaul there would be no choice, it would be Zen.

When you have a problem, not IF, I know what ISP I would prefer dealing with!
Technology breaks, it is how easily and stress free that fix is implemented that makes all the difference.

I'm honestly struggling to find too much wrong with those traces.

Using the IPv4 one as that's going to be easier for comparing, 11ms from you, through BT and onto the LNS. Then 1ms roundtrip across the final hops. That's impressive.

Would be interesting to see a comparison via PlusNet for someone on Fibre (purely for my own interest).

Plusnet FTTC IPv4 on Stepping Hill exchange.

C:\Users\Bob>tracert 8.8.8.8

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 10 ms 99 ms 99 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 15 ms 16 ms 12 ms lo0-central10.pcl-ag06.plus.net [195.166.128.187]
3 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms link-b-central10.pcl-gw02.plus.net [212.159.2.182]
4 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms xe-10-3-0.pcl-cr02.plus.net [212.159.0.214]
5 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms ae1.ptw-cr02.plus.net [195.166.129.2]
6 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 72.14.223.32
7 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 216.239.48.55
8 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 209.85.255.137
9 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

I'm with Zen (old forum username) and they serve me well over BTW. I wish I had Zen LLU at my exchange. But for FTTC they rock I am told.

Just wanted to say I think A&A might come out with better usage limits or even unlimited - we are waiting to see. They are one of the best at what they do. Zen are good as well but A&A is online 24/7 and their control panel is epic.

Pulse8 and A&A both use the TalkTalk Bustiness network for their LLU

Edited by deleted (Tue 16-Jun-15 18:12:18)

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

An old saying of "you get what you pay for" but i think it applies to broadband more than any other business. You can get a cheap deal paying a few quid a month, but dont expect great things.

Always worth paying a little bit more and get good customer service, and generally the smaller ISPs who are resellers offer that

Pulse8 not working out for you?

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

I would go with Zen, I've had Zen fibre for the last 14 months and it is extremely reliable .

Separate to the OP I wanted to say thanks for the advice, I am going to upgrade as soon as it's here the end of this month. (old forum username I AM with Zen!)

Working out very well so far. Using them as an example. Pulse8 resell Talk Talk Business. Its cheaper through Talk Talk directly. Pay abit more through Pulse8 but got that better support

Edited by bobble_bob (Tue 16-Jun-15 18:36:25)

That's where it all lies. For an ISP to give good support cover their costs and make somerthing being that small is a good thing.

And TTB is the best network as we know for LLU

In reply to a post by AAuser27:

And TTB is the best network as we know for LLU

2nd only to Sky.

In reply to a post by nextstep:

I'm on the fence with Plusnet and TalkTalk. Much cheaper, maybe OK. I'd love to get access to TalkTalk Business, but it seems I can't.

I'm not considering BT, Sky or Virgin, but perhaps I should?

Thanks

The overwhelming vast majority of people are on BT, TalkTalk, and Sky. They get unlimited usage and don't show up much in the unhappiness forum here when you consider their vast customer numbers.

These days, there is no real reason to go with smaller providers who limit or traffic manage circuits, often for higher prices. Or resellers who claim they have access to some big player's mysterious 'business' network.

Edited by deleted (Tue 16-Jun-15 21:45:06)

In reply to a post by partial:

These days, there is no real reason to go with smaller providers who limit or traffic manage circuits, often for higher prices. Or resellers who claim they have access to some big player's mysterious 'business' network.

I agree with you up to a point, the difference is not so much the product but the support. I would definitely suggest the OP selects an ISP with UK based support. Skimping on UK based support is a bad sign in my opinion.

What the OP doesn't know of course is that your nick here is extremely reflective of your views.

Having said that, you are rarely guilty of falsehoods, but your presentation is always highly skewed.

For instance, your main point there about the ratio of complaints to vast numbers of customers conceals the user-profile of those masses. The vast majority of them would not know nor care if their connection was below par, so long as it worked adequately. They certainly do not frequent broadband forums, either praising or complaining/looking for help.

The BT website and most others say they will provide the fastest speed their line is capable of. They believe it. They know they can trust BT. (Unfortunately).

As for your "mysterious business network", that is simply unjustified slurring. TalkTalk Business Broadband has an excellent reputation and I have great doubts you can find very much to counter that.

In reply to a post by ClaretMatt:

Hi Martin,

I'm not saying the latency is "bad" or faulty, it's just not quite as good across the board as I experienced with Plusnet by around 25 -30%. I don't have a like for like trace route to compare it to. But here's a tracert to Google if you think there could be a fault up the chain:

Tracing route to www.google.co.uk [2a00:1450:400c:c01::5e]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 2001:4d48:ad53:f200::
2 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms gi0-0.lns11.inx.dsl.enta.net [2001:4d48:feed:57:
:b]
3 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms gi1-1.inx.dist.dsl.enta.net [2001:4d48:feed:57::
a]
4 12 ms 13 ms 12 ms te2-2.interxion.dsl.enta.net [2001:4d48:feed:4b:
:a]
5 12 ms 13 ms 12 ms te2-3.interxion.core.enta.net [2001:4d48:feed:22
::a]
6 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 2001:4d48:ace::44
7 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 2001:4d48:ace::43
8 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 2001:4860:1:1:0:2114:0:5
9 18 ms 18 ms 17 ms 2001:4860:1:1:0:2114:0:4
10 19 ms 19 ms 19 ms 2001:4860::1:0:87aa
11 18 ms 19 ms 18 ms 2001:4860::8:0:51a0
12 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms 2001:4860::8:0:507b
13 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms 2001:4860::2:0:7a79
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms wj-in-x5e.1e100.net [2a00:1450:400c:c01::5e]

Trace complete.

And an IPv4:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Matt>tracert 8.8.8.8

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms router.asus.com [192.168.1.1]
2 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms lns11.inx.dsl.enta.net [188.39.1.2]
3 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms te3-1.inx.dist.dsl.enta.net [188.39.1.1]
4 13 ms 11 ms 11 ms te2-2.interxion.dsl.enta.net [78.33.141.89]
5 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms te2-3.interxion.core.enta.net [87.127.236.209]
6 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms te0-1-1-1.interxion3.core.enta.net [188.39.127.1
64]
7 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms te0-0-0-3.telehouse-north.core.enta.net [188.39.
127.171]
8 12 ms 12 ms 11 ms 72.14.221.186
9 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms 216.239.47.95
10 18 ms 12 ms 12 ms 209.85.249.241
11 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

There is nothing wrong with those traceroutes. As far as I'm aware, a great deal of Google's IPv6 based infrastructure is in Ireland. That accounts for the extra latency. Not that an extra 8ms is really anything to get worked up over.

Edited by deleted (Wed 17-Jun-15 05:29:02)

Agreed, I forgot about Sky LLU when I was writing that. My bad.

We are talking of providers with multi millions of customers. if the support was bad, the forum would be overwhelmed with complaints. It isn't and the big boys are severely unrepresented in the unhappiness forum.

I don't buy the idea that these many millions of people aren't smart enough to notice poor service or know how to complain about firms on the internet!

Most of those millions probably don't have to use support much, luckily broadband works most of the time. Start reading ISP reviews where people actually have to sort out problems and you'll soon run into complaints about poor CS and foreign call centres.

Plusnet residential support is much better than TalkTalk, and Zen may well be slightly better than Plusnet - they aren't all the same. Here's a recent survey that includes customer service -

The Home Broadband Survey 2015 Awards

Customer Care

78% PlusNet
73% Sky Broadband
71% Virgin Media
66% BT
60% EE
58% TalkTalk

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/04/plusnet...

So there appears to be significant variation even between low cost, mass market ISPs.

Of course it could also be that Plusnet customers and customers of some other small providers are continually traffic managed and shaped and so are less internet savvy than the millions of BT, Sky and TalkTalk customers with totally unlimited services.

Of course, some ISPs do have to warn their customers to expect a significant slowdown in throughput in the evening.

The actual speeds you will experience will differ and will continually vary throughout the day as levels of congestion on the internet change. You should not expect full speeds all the time, especially during the daily peak period (5pm - 12 midnight) when global internet speeds are at their slowest due to congestion.
...
Once set, your maximum broadband speed should remain largely stable, only varying if one of the above factors changes significantly. The main factors governing the day-to-day download speed you will experience over your line are:

�the time of day. In other words, how busy BT's network and the internet are (6-9pm being the busiest time, when speed can reduce significantly)
...
...

BT Help link.

So if the complain they just get told "That's the way it is". So they don't complain in forums.

You also conveniently forget that most complainers with a genuine problem end up with their problem fixed within a few days. With any ISP.

The bulk of complaints are multiple repeat posts by a small number of people, in multiple forums and on multiple sites about something over which they will never be satisfied. But they don't change ISP.

Let's take TalkTalk. The stuff addressed to Alan, in this post is by the (apparent) boss of Pulse8, who sell products running on the TalkTalk Business network. The priorities that were enquired about can be seen on (for example) this page.

Lets consider at all the ISPs who offer Business products at various levels. Including BT.

One of the major selling points of such products is that they get higher priority through the ISPs' networks and throughout the BT Wholesale network. Similar to that in the linked post. So everyone on consumer products experiences some form of traffic management. The business class products couldn't otherwise have priority.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

An old saying of "you get what you pay for" but i think it applies to broadband more than any other business. You can get a cheap deal paying a few quid a month, but dont expect great things.

Always worth paying a little bit more and get good customer service, and generally the smaller ISPs who are resellers offer that

I generally agree with this - but the cheap option will be better for some people who are either on a tight budget, or happy to take the risk to save a few quid but accept that the product, or customer service, may be poorer & troublesome.

Personally, I moved to Aquiss last year and switched to FTTC from ADSL2 at the same time and I'm very happy with the service and their customer service (not that I've needed it much at all other than the odd query). They're certainly not the cheapest, but experience with previous ISPs and not hearing a bad word about them swayed me to choose them. I did consider PlusNet and BT too - but I decided it wasn't worth the risk (even if small) of having more problems and hassle to save money.

So I just had a chat with the building developer and he says the building has "Sky cabled to each flat".

This might explain why no regular landlines have been installed in the building yet?

Does this mean I have no access to regular POTS phone, and hence I have to stick to Sky cable?

I believe this refers to Sky TV on a shared dish system, nothing to do with phone or broadband.

Correct. Sky don't use cable they use the BTW network for phone and Broadband.

Edit: or their own LLU if it's available

Edited by deleted (Mon 22-Jun-15 20:05:28)

They use Openreach network.

They no longer offer BTW broadband connections, but support the ones they had before stopping taking new customers on that network. If they can't offer LLU then they aren't interested.

They may offer WLR3 without broadband. I'm not sure. But WLR3 is Openreach.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 22-Jun-15 23:46:16)

Makes sense.

No, you shouldn't be limited to Sky cable. Openreach will have installed a DP (distribution point) somewhere in the building and each flat will have a phone (or CAT5) cable already laid between the flat and a point near to the DP.

You need to ask your intended provider to order a new phoneline (£100 installation fee). They will need a full address and post code in order to do this and things will move very slowly until this vital information is in place. It might also be necessary to order ADSL initially and then upgrade to FTTC when all the necessary records are in place (at BT/Openreach). Zen have a good GEA FTTC service to the Cherry Hinton exchange and should be able to arrange all of this for you (including the upgrade to FTTC).

The wait is a bit frustrating but hopefully it won't be more than a few weeks.