Giganet (open reach fttp) -> Home Telecom? Worried…

I’m currently with Giganet via open reach (500/70).

It appears all customers are being transferred to ‘Home Telecom’ who look to be a low cost outfit, so I’m concerned about their service especially wrt latency and jitter. I’ve been happy with Giganet…

I have plenty of choice, but one gotcha is that cityfibre are deploying in the area. Our road (and house) is in plan. We have new ducting. Parts of the city (Brighton and Hove) are up and running, whether it’s a matter of months or a year is hard to say.

originally I went with giganet due to; the 1 month contract, and ability to migrate over to cityfibre at any time (faster speeds, symmetric).

What other providers would you recommend that typically allow such migrations over to cityfibre within a contract period, or have a short contract.?

Essential to support own router (opnsense) and IPv6.

Zen is an obvious choice, though more expensive. Not sure if they allow migrations. but they were good before with fttc.

Vodafone seem to do ok as long as no CS needed. But do they allow migrations? And who else?

Finally any experience with ‘Home Telecom’ ?

After some research on my criteria, I suspect the best matches are IDNET, NO-ONE, Aquiss, Zen.

Aquiss has the best terms currently (12m). Great reviews. perhaps slightly worried they don't run the network, but I guess it's just a diff dept given they are now owned by CF

Zen I've used before - they were decent. Benefit of providing a router (which I'd only use as an AP since routing would be via opnsense, but my eero 6E would need to go back). Some concerns over reports of congestion, but inevitable with a large provider.

IDNET & No-ONE I know little about. initial research seems to show they are decent

Too many ISPs don't have ipv6... whilst ee/sky do, there is little chance they'll support cityfibre (esp. ee!) plus big cos.

I've been with IDNet for my FTTC connection for many years now. They are very helpful and knowledgeable, the service has been exemplary and they have supported dual stack IPv6/4 for nearly two decades. You will have noticed that they aren't the cheapest provider but if you want a good service you have to pay for it.

In reply to a post by planetf1:

Aquiss has the best terms currently (12m). Great reviews. perhaps slightly worried they don't run the network, but I guess it's just a diff dept given they are now owned by CF

Who told you Aquiss was owned by CF? have I missed some recent news?

Aquiss, Entanet, Cityfibre: all the same group.

When I lookup my Aquiss IP address, it tells me it belongs to Cityfibre and is announced from a Cityfibre AS.

https://bgp.he.net/AS8468

Aquiss are a reseller and they sell and brand a product from Entanet Wholesale. CityFibre bought Entanet some years ago but it is still run as a separate business it seems, running over Openreach.

Just to clarify: Aquiss are their own company, they just buy a product from someone else to rebrand and sell on. Its the company who they buy the product from (their wholesaler) that was bought by CityFibre.

Edited by E300 (Thu 29-Feb-24 09:45:41)

If you're looking at CityFibre, I am currently with NoOne, and on a 12-month contract (£1/month dearer than 18month contract but I'll take that hit).

I was a bit unsure of them to begin with, but the setup and support have been brilliant. I haven't tried calling them for support (used their online ticketing system), but the support ticket system provided a response within 24hrs. And then when I needed further support over the phone, they called me (it was initial slow speeds on 900/900). They resolved within around 4-days (a bit of back-and-forth for diagnosis).

Since then, the only outages have been CityFibre maintenance, and one Major RADIUS (authentication) outage at NoOne, which was resolved within 1hour.

My contract is up in July 2024, so I'll be checking out other providers, but I'd be happy to stay with NoOne if the price doesn't go up much. They're still signing customers up at the £40/month I currently pay, so, currently its looking good on that front!

NoOne are providing Static IPv4, however I'm not sure about IPv6 as I dont run it. They DO allow using you're own router (if it supports VLAN 911), and the only stipulation, is that you test with their provided router should you have an issue (which for me is fine).

You can rule out Aquiss if you are wanting your connection over CityFibre's fibre. Aquiss buy from Entanet/CityFibre but those wholesale products are still only over Openreach as far as I know.

What other providers would you recommend that typically allow such migrations over to cityfibre within a contract period

My guess is no ISP meets that criteria. Cityfibre is a completely separate physical network from OpenReach and therefore if your contract has a commitment to an OpenReach circuit then you likely wouldn't be able to migrate. It is possible that an ISP that supports OpenReach and Cityfibre might be able to do an incontract migration so those are probably the ISPs to look at to see if they do (Zen probably being the most obvious).

Also, Cityfibre in new areas doesn't always have all of their resellers on board early on. It may be they have one reseller they work with to start with as a monopoly or it may be that some resellers won't take on a new area as soon as it becomes available. Would be worth finding out which Cityfibre providers are currently selling in the B&H area.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Aquiss, Entanet, Cityfibre: all the same group.

Really, as I thought Aquiss was owned and run by Martin Pitt who is not CityFibre, are you confusing who owns the company with who owns the backhaul?

Edited by PCJM40 (Thu 29-Feb-24 13:39:45)

In reply to a post by E300:

Just to clarify: Aquiss are their own company, they just buy a product from someone else to rebrand and sell on. Its the company who they buy the product from (their wholesaler) that was bought by CityFibre.

Exactly what I thought

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Aquiss, Entanet, Cityfibre: all the same group.

Really, as I thought Aquiss was owned and run by Martin Pitt who is not CityFibre, are you confusing who owns the company with who owns the backhaul?

Quite possibly I should just have said "all the same network". The BRASes are managed by Cityfibre; at least, if there's a routing issue, it gets escalated up to Cityfibre. The IP addresses are owned by Cityfibre and announced from a Cityfibre AS.

In reply to a post by planetf1:

Aquiss has the best terms currently (12m). Great reviews. perhaps slightly worried they don't run the network, but I guess it's just a diff dept given they are now owned by CF

As I've seen this also posted on ISPreview, I will copy what I have posted there.

Just for clarity, for anyone misreading this, we are NOT owned at all by CityFibre.

We have wholesale commercial and contractual terms with CityFibre (Nee Entanet), but as a business we are 100% independent and privately owned.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Aquiss, Entanet, Cityfibre: all the same group.

Well this is news to me....but it's nice to know I acquired Entanet and CityFibre at some point whilst I was sleeping last night

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Really, as I thought Aquiss was owned and run by Martin Pitt

*double checks*....Yup I still appear to be here

@planetf1 Im also on Giganet FTTP via openreach. But of interest when doing a TBB speed test who does you provider show up as? Mine shows as Talktalk

It does show talktalk, but that must be down to the database it uses to map IP addresses to a name.

Almost every other place correctly show giganet

I don't believe TBB etc will have any insight into the actual network topology, especially below the IP level, which the backhaul between exchange and handover point will presumablty appear as.

So I think TBB is just wrong here --

In reply to a post by planetf1:

It does show talktalk, but that must be down to the database it uses to map IP addresses to a name.

That's interesting.

What's your public IP address? Feel free to change / remove the digits after the last dot, as it's highly unlikely that they're relevant.

Alternatively, what does bgp.tools report your IPv4 subnet as? (it'll be one of the bullet points in the left column -- e.g. 1.2.3.0/4)

62.64.128.0/21

Originated by AS198440
AS Name: ALLPOINTS FIBRE NETWORKS LIMITED


2a05:87c0::/29

Originated by AS198440
AS Name: ALLPOINTS FIBRE NETWORKS LIMITED

Hmm! Both of those blocks belong to AS198440 (FKA Giganet but now showing as AllPoints Fibre Networks). The IPv4 block was registered in October 2022, and the v6 block was registered in December 2014. I can't see any reason why it would show as TalkTalk!

Mine shows up exactly the same but obviously different IP