In reply to a post by MercuryRH2:

I’ve has Zen FTTC for a couple of years now. They provide a Fritz! Router although I use me own Draytek hardware. Tech Support is first rate and apart from a bad patch over the summer where their supplier ran into capacity issues in both the London & Manchester hubs - now all resolved - their service has been flawless.

My 80/20 service usually gives 73Mbps/18Mbps day or night with latency around 7ms. I’m 300m from the PCP.

They also guarantee the price you pay won’t increase. I don’t use their phone side, although line rental is through them, as it’s a spare line. I believe on my exchange, the backhaul used is TalkTalk Business. Highly recommend them as an ISP.

Excellent, thank you! The FritzBox was one of the routers I was looking at as it happens.

So I will also consider Zen as well.

Thanks again.

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

The niche ISP's I would look at are Uno, Pulse8, Aquiss, IDNet, AAISP.

I believe Pulse8 is a rolling 30 day contract.

Excellent thank you wolvesmad

As soon as the service with BT goes back to Analogue PSTN I can start properly looking

You do know that Plusnet is part of BT, but I do think they offer a better service than BT. Most ISPs ones are naff but they do what they are made to do.
Plusnet supplied a ,zyxel VMG8924-B30A to me, but only because I had problems with the connection, the normal router is a BT homehub but without the rubbish like their smart setup, such a pain in the neck.


Why do you want to get a 3rd party router? if you want to muck around with the settings then yes, but if all you want to do is set it up and that is it then most ISP supplied routers are fine for that. the main problem I see is Wi-fi, many people I know have problems with Wi-fi from ISP supplied routers.
Myself I have never really had much of a problem, apart from 5Ghz, as it is rubbish at getting though a wall. best to stay with the older 2.4Ghz.

I can highly reccomend Cloudscape (https://www.cloudscapeconnect.com/) been with them for a while now, great personal tech support when needed, but 99% of the time my connection "just works".

Apple TV is only on the Ultra fast offering - FTTP, iirc.

I've been with Vodafone FTTC for a couple of years. A few issues early on - local capacity issues, and then the nation wide throttling (firmware on line cards, so they said). But since then it has been great.

https://www.speedtest.net/result/10193174806
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/16018044612... (upload looks a bit poor today)

Edited by mbames (Sun 04-Oct-20 10:42:20)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

You do know that Plusnet is part of BT, but I do think they offer a better service than BT. Most ISPs ones are naff but they do what they are made to do.
Plusnet supplied a ,zyxel VMG8924-B30A to me, but only because I had problems with the connection, the normal router is a BT homehub but without the rubbish like their smart setup, such a pain in the neck.


Why do you want to get a 3rd party router? if you want to muck around with the settings then yes, but if all you want to do is set it up and that is it then most ISP supplied routers are fine for that. the main problem I see is Wi-fi, many people I know have problems with Wi-fi from ISP supplied routers.
Myself I have never really had much of a problem, apart from 5Ghz, as it is rubbish at getting though a wall. best to stay with the older 2.4Ghz.

Yes I am aware that PN are part of the BT Group (and have been for many years), for some that was the start of the demise of PN. My parents use them and have had no issues. I probaby won't use them but they remain a possibility.

Yes I want to fiddle around with the Router settings, and maybe even take advantage of extra features if the Router has them.

In reply to a post by gribz:

I can highly reccomend Cloudscape (https://www.cloudscapeconnect.com/) been with them for a while now, great personal tech support when needed, but 99% of the time my connection "just works".

I shall add them to the list of potential suppliers,

thank you gribz

In reply to a post by mbames:

Apple TV is only on the Ultra fast offering - FTTP, iirc.

I've been with Vodafone FTTC for a couple of years. A few issues early on - local capacity issues, and then the nation wide throttling (firmware on line cards, so they said). But since then it has been great.

https://www.speedtest.net/result/10193174806
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/16018044612... (upload looks a bit poor today)

According to Vodafone it's available on Superfast 1 Extra (40/10) and Superfast 2 Extra (80/20) both include line rental and unlimited anytime calls.

My only issue is a 2 year contract!

In reply to a post by CJT:

According to Vodafone it's available on Superfast 1 Extra (40/10) and Superfast 2 Extra (80/20) both include line rental and unlimited anytime calls.

My only issue is a 2 year contract!

No problem you can ask PN to match this but on a 12 months contract (make sure u metion 12 months not 24 months!)

I found that Plusnet would only give a 12-month contract although I wanted 24 months because the fewer renewals the better given their dodgy accounts system which has screwed up every renewal so far. I think the reason as stated on another thread is so that they can catch me with the future round of price increases linked to inflation etc instead of waiting another year until the contract expires.