New Home - Which ISP

Moving into a new property in the next month that has a new Openreach FTTP circuit.

I've looked at Zen, Aquiss, IDnet and some others from the selection on the find a provider page of the main thinkbroadband website.

Previously had Virgin 350/35 and managed to get 380/38 out of it and before that stuck on a FTTC that couldn't go faster than 50/20. I'm not looking to go faster than 350 unless it happens to fit in the budget, being a first time home owner i'm trying to keep my costs down.

I'm not looking to spend more than £50 a month but was wondering which ISP to go with.
I've got my my own Unifi Dream Machine Pro to use as my router.

I am going to be switching from Zen to File Sanctuary when my contract comes to an end. They use ICUK for their core network.

Aquiss is another excellent ISP.

If you are trying to keep costs down have you looked at Vodafone?

Even on Openreach their prices were very good, I think they were offering me 500M for £38 complete with 5G backup at the end of last year.

Just need to check if they are available at the speed you want in your area as they have quite a few where they only offer upto 200M at the moment.

Cloudscape Connect is worthy of a look. You will almost certainly be required to have Digital Voice {VoIP) if you want the option of a regular telephone number. If you choose your ISP wisely , then the supplied router will allow you to chose any hosted service. Voipfone has all the bells and whistles you want with the monthly rental of the number being £3.60 - If you want something rental free, then no problem but your allocated number will be in the 056 range.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Cloudscape Connect is worthy of a look. You will almost certainly be required to have Digital Voice {VoIP) if you want the option of a regular telephone number. If you choose your ISP wisely , then the supplied router will allow you to chose any hosted service. Voipfone has all the bells and whistles you want with the monthly rental of the number being £3.60 - If you want something rental free, then no problem but your allocated number will be in the 056 range.

Is that the case ? Sipgate Basic (i.e rental free) seem to imply you can chose a geographical number ?

https://www.sipgatebasic.co.uk/numbers?_ga=2.8167444...

As far as I can see, they do not offer FTTP packages.

In reply to a post by broadbandjockey:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Cloudscape Connect is worthy of a look. You will almost certainly be required to have Digital Voice {VoIP) if you want the option of a regular telephone number. If you choose your ISP wisely , then the supplied router will allow you to chose any hosted service. Voipfone has all the bells and whistles you want with the monthly rental of the number being £3.60 - If you want something rental free, then no problem but your allocated number will be in the 056 range.

Is that the case ? Sipgate Basic (i.e rental free) seem to imply you can chose a geographical number ?

https://www.sipgatebasic.co.uk/numbers?_ga=2.8167444...

Very true and is often recommended on think broadband as a service to use. I take the view that there is never a free lunch going and prefer to to use a contracted service for peace of mind. Horses for courses, ride which ever you are most comfortable with.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

In reply to a post by broadbandjockey:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Cloudscape Connect is worthy of a look. You will almost certainly be required to have Digital Voice {VoIP) if you want the option of a regular telephone number. If you choose your ISP wisely , then the supplied router will allow you to chose any hosted service. Voipfone has all the bells and whistles you want with the monthly rental of the number being £3.60 - If you want something rental free, then no problem but your allocated number will be in the 056 range.

Is that the case ? Sipgate Basic (i.e rental free) seem to imply you can chose a geographical number ?

https://www.sipgatebasic.co.uk/numbers?_ga=2.8167444...

Very true and is often recommended on think broadband as a service to use. I take the view that there is never a free lunch going and prefer to to use a contracted service for peace of mind. Horses for courses, ride which ever you are most comfortable with.

Yes. I'm considering a Sipgate VoIP non rental if I do end up losing my 'landline' number (I really don't want to be made to use an ISP supplied router as my 'edge' device, so that's the point I'll say goodbye to it) An 056 number would simply totally confuse the few elderly relatives that still ring us on the landline. They'd be fine with effectively a change of 'local' phone number for us.

Aquiss just resell CityFibre/Entanet, they are not an ISP in the true sense, as they don't have their own network.

Aquiss might be great if you don't have any problems (lets face it all services are great if you don't get problems), but I've had 3 months of them trying to diagnose an issue and still waiting for some answer or resolution, presumably because CityFibre/Entanet reseller support is less than great we are no further forward.

For the best support, make sure your ISP is really an ISP and not just a brand and billing company for someone else's product is my advice. The less layers between you and a technician at the ISP the better.

Edited by E300 (Thu 24-Mar-22 18:33:30)

In reply to a post by E300:

Aquiss just resell CityFibre/Entanet, they are not an ISP in the true sense, as they don't have their own network.

Aquiss might be great if you don't have any problems (lets face it all services are great if you don't get problems), but I've had 3 months of them trying to diagnose an issue and still waiting for some answer or resolution, presumably because CityFibre/Entanet reseller support is less than great we are no further forward.

For the best support, make sure your ISP is really an ISP and not just a brand and billing company for someone else's product is my advice. The less layers between you and a technician at the ISP the better.

I thought Entanet were long gone?

In reply to a post by E300:

For the best support, make sure your ISP is really an ISP and not just a brand and billing company for someone else's product is my advice. The less layers between you and a technician at the ISP the better.

I'm not sure about this. Consider Virgin Media, who own and operate their own network... the support, for practical purposes is far worse than many ISPs who use TTB/BTw who then use Openreach.

I'm sure there are many competent engineers at Virgin but if you can't actually talk to one as a residential customer, it doesn't matter how many layers there are.

In reply to a post by ft247:

I'm not sure about this. Consider Virgin Media, who own and operate their own network... the support, for practical purposes is far worse than many ISPs who use TTB/BTw who then use Openreach.

I'm sure there are many competent engineers at Virgin but if you can't actually talk to one as a residential customer, it doesn't matter how many layers there are.

Your are quite right, I should have qualified that somewhat and said only when dealing with smaller ISPs. In many respects when dealing with big companies like Virgin, you are dealing with a reseller just using the same name, in Virgin's case they are selling connectivity from a different Virgin operation that is quite a bit removed from the sales and billing side. Same for BT, when you buy BT Broadband, they are reselling BT Wholesale offerings and BT Broadband is just sales and billing.

If for example you are with Cerberus and have an issue, the network engineers might be sat in the same office. I remember issues with Cerberus and their network engineer was emailing me directly not many minutes later after raising an issue.

Edited by E300 (Fri 25-Mar-22 15:23:53)

Entanet are now Cityfibre.

When I first had FTTP installed, it took Zen a month to resolve an issue with poor throughput. They had to work with Openreach and BT Wholesale to resolve it. It might be better to be with a large ISP in the event of an issue with the core network, but the vast majority of faults are elsewhere.

IDNet have never let me down. Slightly expensive but on the rare occasions when you need support it pays for having people who will take your issue seriously. It's an ISP who have offered dual-stack IPv6 for over a decade now, that's how they run their network.

Thanks, I think I will end up going with IDnet, although I am stuck between Zen & IDnet, I can get faster and less setup costs with Zen (300/47 for £43.99 a month and £19.99 setup) vs 160/30 with IDnet at £42 a month and £60 setup.

Just reading some of the reviews on zen and hearing worse things lately than previous years is starting to make me doubt them.

Edited by brichardson1991 (Mon 11-Apr-22 14:08:45)