Uno vs Cloudscape & the usual suspects on Market A

I posted earlier in the fibre forum, really just to understand better what certain ISPs are doing to deliver what they promise. A few people have posted suggestions and alternative deals. I'd already looked at some of them and I probably already have all the info I need now.

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions already on the other thread, in case it helps anyone else this is a brief summary of my short list for fibre migration. The original aim was to try and get something for <£40/month if possible without resorting to the bargain basement suppliers and stay as close to £40/month if not.

This is probably all a bit specific to my circumstances and most people would no doubt be able to sign up with BT, Sky or Plusnet without issue and get a good compromise of reliable speed and service vs price per month.

12 month contracts:

Uno - nothing against these guys except unlimited is beyond budget at £52/month inc line & my typical calls. 100GB is £43/month, 200GB £46.50/month. While I could probably go back to scheduling downloads as needed for myself I need to be sure that someone who may rely on internet during the daytime is never restricted (this is a quality of life issue, not a business critical issue.)

Cloudscape - a bit of unknown quantity as they are a small ISP. There are a few positive comments on ISPreview, of course they could be fake but I'm not able to find any rants on any other forum so maybe there is nothing to worry about? The main doubt seems to be whether they might suffer from network congestion at peak times. They can do uncapped fibre for £25/month while BT phone line rental can be with any provider you like. Cloudscape's is £12.50/month which looks OK if you're not making many calls.

18 month contracts:

Vodafone - may be OK for speed/congestion but 18 month contract and customer service has a bad rep. Very inconsistent on whether you can use your own router/modem.
Origin - mixed reputation, but may be using Plusnet on some exchanges (traffic management may be an issue?) Plusnet weren't good for the last 1-2 years we had ADSL with them. Own router/modem is not a problem.
EE- their rep is quite bad, I suspect it may be fine for some people given the price, but if there is a bad line or congestion they aren't going to be much help.

Not considering:

BT - with BT now, out of contract but the retention deals offered aren't good. BT more interested in keeping the monthly high while upgrading us to 76/20, which will be insignificant going from 52Mbps to the low 60s.
Plusnet - was a previous customer, but the deals for market A exchanges are not competitive even though we would now qualify as a new customer.
Sky - cancelled Sky recently, no deals & limited to their router/modem.
SSE - possibly the cheapest, but feedback re restrictive traffic management and service is pretty bad.
Zen - was on the short list, but £46/month seemed a bit too high vs some of the others (would more likely choose Uno 500GB at this price)
Pulse8 - they are now able to do fibre to BTW exchange, however with no TTB on market A exchange the cost is £38 + separate line rental + calls.

Edited by deleted (Thu 20-Oct-16 15:41:53)

Sky fibre currently £10 per month, line rental £17.40
http://www.sky.com/shop/broadband-talk/fibre-optic/
I use my own modem and router with Sky Fibre Pro.

It's a good deal, but for new customers which we're not. We did the retentions deals dance with Sky before so we now won't look at them again until next year at the earliest.

I thought you are with BT. Are you also with Sky?

We had Sky TV until recently and apparently that excludes us from any kind of good deal or cashback offers. Also, because we had a refurb Sky+ box for £50 some 8 years ago we also can't have any deal on any newer kit. I probably will look at them again in future but only if the price is right.

Line & fibre is with BT currently..

Uno are un-metered between 8:00pm - 8:00am and ALL weekends.
You could also consider Pulse8 - Line and FTTC £44. Calls 1ppm, no connection fee, no contract tie-in and per second billing.

Edited by professor973 (Thu 20-Oct-16 16:50:28)

I covered Pulse8 on the last line of the first post. For home lines it's:

£38 inc. line + calls, if you are on a TalkTalk enabled exchange. For everyone on non-TalkTalk exchanges it's £38 + BT line rental + calls, which if you take Pulse8 line rental will be £51 + calls.

The advert I pointed you at is quite clear who it's available to - "New Sky broadband, talk and line rental customers."

Yep, they've been advertising like that for a long time. When you log in as a current customer and click through to the 'personal' deals it ain't the same. We phoned them about it to see if we could get a better deal by taking combined TV + fibre and it wasn't anywhere near competitive. Since then we bought a couple of Freesat recorders so Sky is off the table for us for the foreseeable.

In reply to a post by Berk:

Yep, they've been advertising like that for a long time. When you log in as a current customer

I didn't think you are a current customer, but whatever.

Why not go with Origin?