FTTC only Market 1 Best ISP

Currently on Plusnet 80/20 but contract has ended so looking for another deal. I could call Plusnet and try and bargain like I did last time but you never get offered a deal even anywhere near as good as new customers so I'm debating whether to move to a new provider.

Before fibre (thank God those days are over) we were using standard DSL and were probably the farthest house from the exchange getting only 1mb adsl max and 0.5 adsl.

Back in those days we started with tiscali who were great, until they sold to talktalk and our internet became unusable overnight. We then changed to o2 which was better but still had problems, but these problems generally stemmed from the fact that despite having a very slow connection we were subject to all the traffic shaping and port blocking everyone else had with their 20MB connections.

Once I did a traceroute on talktalk to the USA and it jumped to Germany and then France before hitting the destination!

We moved to Xilo because they advertised no throttling or port blocking add the experience was bliss by comparison. Back then they weren't expensive and could also offer line rental.

Then when we got fibre(2014) we went with Plusnet and it went downhill from there again. Plusnets customer service has been awful for us even at the start. Now of course it's worse. The service at first was decent but right now I can't say I've been very pleased. It's not bad but it's also not great either. Don't you just love those adverts on tv? I still haven't received an answer when I asked them where there award winning service was and frankly I'm fed up dealing with them.

So which provider now? I'd love to sign up with Xilo(uno) again but the unlimited plans are expensive and they don't offer line rental included in my area that pushes the price up even more.

Are there any benefits in a market 1 area like there used to be by going with a smaller isp? I was looking a pulse 8.

Are there any larger providers with no throttling or shaping with fast traces?

I have to say it's all very confusing if you don't live in an LLU area, you can read good things about a ISP but later find out that only applies to people who are on LLU connections. Pulse 8 seem to use talk talk business which obviously isn't available in my area so does this mean the service with them is going to be just as poor as any mainstream provider?

Which isp is the best in my situation or should I just save money?

My line details
My exchange

Thanks to anyone if they are able to help!

One quick comment. Since you have an FTTC connection you can forget about the Plumpton exchange and LLU since your fibre will go back to a larger head end exchange which could be Burgess Hill or Haywards Heath. One area where being on a small exchange impacts is the phone/voice side of any bundle as this will be WLR3 and some ISPs don't want to use BT's WLR offerings.

Same boat here really (Market 1). Unfortunately no LLU means whoever you go with it OpenReach are somewhere in the mix. As I kept getting leaflets about Talk Talk I thought I'd give them a try. Went through the sign up process only to fall at the instance. They don't service the exchange. So still stuck with Plusnet. They are OK, although I would say when I have used their Customer Service I have always got a result. But cheap and cheerful does come to mind.

Until I can get away from OR I really can't see much point going elsewhere. Pages load fine, it's the constant up and down with DLM that really gets me. We have had a lot of power cuts of late (weather related) and all DLM seems to want to do is punish me by sending me downwards.

You need a small Uninterruptible Power Supply to keep your modem or modem/router running through power cuts 69bertie. You don�t need one with prolonged uptime on mains failure as if its battery runs flat you will still have avoided several rapid power cycles of the modem.

Unless of course keeping your internet access on as well is critical, in which case you need a business-level one. Maybe allied to an electricity generator.

I always used to use that company�s kit in my and my customers� offices.

Openreach DLM apparently allows up to 10 power cycles per 24 hours.

But your post and this are way off topic and need you to start your own thread in one of the technical forums if you want further advice.

Edit - PS. As MCM points out, LLU is irrelevant at the end user�s exchange. It only matters at the fibre head-end exchange, and where that is isn�t published to the likes of us. You just have to check with each LLU company to see if they can supply FTTC/P at the premises.

Also FTTC is only available through Openreach, and Openreach�s DLM is applied on all such connections including Sky and TalkTalk.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 05-Mar-18 10:23:15)

For FTTC you need to try each of the ISPs in turn and see whether they will supply.
John Lewis (run by Plusnet) don't charge more at Market 1 exchanges.
Vodafone will likely be cheap but you may or may not get get contention on the backhaul. Whether or not this happens is just a matter of luck. I think you can leave the contract in the 1st month without having to pay for the rest. Their router is best avoided especially if you have many wifi devices.

Does your connection speed justify paying for 80/20, or would a lower max speed of 55 or 38 be adequate?

What went downhill, with regard Pnet, your connection or just the Customer Service?

In reply to a post by MCM:

One quick comment. Since you have an FTTC connection you can forget about the Plumpton exchange and LLU since your fibre will go back to a larger head end exchange which could be Burgess Hill or Haywards Heath. One area where being on a small exchange impacts is the phone/voice side of any bundle as this will be WLR3 and some ISPs don't want to use BT's WLR offerings.

Ah so this is why Uno don't offer line rental for me any more. Makes sense. Thanks

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

For FTTC you need to try each of the ISPs in turn and see whether they will supply.
John Lewis (run by Plusnet) don't charge more at Market 1 exchanges.
Vodafone will likely be cheap but you may or may not get get contention on the backhaul. Whether or not this happens is just a matter of luck. I think you can leave the contract in the 1st month without having to pay for the rest. Their router is best avoided especially if you have many wifi devices.

Does your connection speed justify paying for 80/20, or would a lower max speed of 55 or 38 be adequate?

Thanks, my connection is actually pretty good speed wise but I could probably reduce it to 55 or 38 and not really be effected by it much. I used to download lots but not so much anymore.

A question, what do you mean you may or may not get connection on the backhaul?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

You need a small Uninterruptible Power Supply to keep your modem or modem/router running through power cuts 69bertie. You don�t need one with prolonged uptime on mains failure as if its battery runs flat you will still have avoided several rapid power cycles of the modem.

Unless of course keeping your internet access on as well is critical, in which case you need a business-level one. Maybe allied to an electricity generator.

I always used to use that company�s kit in my and my customers� offices.

Openreach DLM apparently allows up to 10 power cycles per 24 hours.

But your post and this are way off topic and need you to start your own thread in one of the technical forums if you want further advice.

Edit - PS. As MCM points out, LLU is irrelevant at the end user�s exchange. It only matters at the fibre head-end exchange, and where that is isn�t published to the likes of us. You just have to check with each LLU company to see if they can supply FTTC/P at the premises.

Also FTTC is only available through Openreach, and Openreach�s DLM is applied on all such connections including Sky and TalkTalk.

But this is what I mean, all the reviews you read out there on IPSreview etc are from the majority of uses that are served by LLU. How does someone who is stuck with Openreach know which ISP is going to give them the best service? How do they know if X is even going to be better than Y?

In reply to a post by 69bertie:

Same boat here really (Market 1). Unfortunately no LLU means whoever you go with it OpenReach are somewhere in the mix. As I kept getting leaflets about Talk Talk I thought I'd give them a try. Went through the sign up process only to fall at the instance. They don't service the exchange. So still stuck with Plusnet. They are OK, although I would say when I have used their Customer Service I have always got a result. But cheap and cheerful does come to mind.

Until I can get away from OR I really can't see much point going elsewhere. Pages load fine, it's the constant up and down with DLM that really gets me. We have had a lot of power cuts of late (weather related) and all DLM seems to want to do is punish me by sending me downwards.

This is what I thought, although there do seem to be some companies that will supply fibre to market one and could possibly be better such as John Lewis and Vodafone..how to know they are going to be better for sure or not is another thing!

In reply to a post by broadband66:

What went downhill, with regard Pnet, your connection or just the Customer Service?

Connection and the customer service. I use VOIP a lot and the quality of calls is attrocious. I get better quality calls using 4g in my area. The traffic shaping they do seems to make service much, much worse during peak hours and the route connections make when accessing websites or servers always seems to be the slowest. Then you have the numerous service outages, although of course that may be down to a local problem.

Does anyone know if there is any benefit all in going with a different providor as market 1 or are they all going to just be the same? I presume the service until it reaches the local town exchange will be poor, but how much of a difference does having a better provider make after that point?

It was night and day to me back with ADSL and Uno/Xilo so can I expect similar today or do all the providors that supply to market 1 use the same paths etc that BT do?

Edited by deleted (Mon 05-Mar-18 15:26:35)

In reply to a post by Dodgexander:

A question, what do you mean you may or may not get connection on the backhaul?

I did write contention!

i.e. the connection from the exchange back to Vodafone is overloaded resulting in a poor service. Downloads slow and ping times up.

In reply to a post by Dodgexander:

Does anyone know if there is any benefit all in going with a different providor as market 1 or are they all going to just be the same? I presume the service until it reaches the local town exchange will be poor, but how much of a difference does having a better provider make after that point.

Your cabinet may not be connected to your local exchange but rather to a bigger exchange nearby. The quality of service that you get will depend on the quality of your chosen ISP's backhaul arrangements. The likes of BT and Plusnet are likely to be OK. You can get an idea of what service a particular ISP might provide from some of the ISP performance comparisons published on this website.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But your post and this are way off topic

What the? You hold a seminar for what was a one sentence, end of. The rest of my post was relevant to the OP. Go figure!