OK! Let's look at this another way:

- you have a High Resistance Fault;
- TT are being hopeless. (The rights and wrongs of that are another matter, though technically I believe it is up to them to get it sorted);
- AAISP with Be is too expensive for you;
- you are looking at LLU to solve the symptom, not the cause.

How much downloading do you do per month?

There are many ISPs who provide similar packages to Zen, and who will get your fault fixed. You will find them almost certainly better than TT in day-to-day use as well.

My first recommendation would be Plusnet, which comes on a monthly contract, and whose reps on here are very good. Telephone support is less so. See also their traffic management though.

I think they would get your line sorted out, and you can then see how things go. It is easy to move from them to Zen, IDNet, vivaciti, Be themselves or wherever, but as a normal user ISP Plusnet has a lot going for it.

Edit - layout tweak.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 23-Aug-11 11:06:05)

Thank you very much indeed for that RobertoS

Looks like I have to free myself from T-T whatever happens, and so the problem is to find an ISP willing and competent to take over a bum line.

<You are looking at LLU to solve the symptom, not the cause>
Not sure I understand that. Do you mean that, as I already have a problem somewhere or other which is better tolerated on LLU than BT Wholesale, I should first get the problem fixed by an LLU provider and then it doesn't matter whether I then migrate from there to another LLU ISP or not ?

How much downloading ?
I am uncertain now, because T-T don't give you any data and I do not collect any.
Before T-T swallowed Nildram I operated fairly comfortably within their 30Gb/mnth ceiling with carry-over. Put another way, I listen to internet radio "all" of the time, surf/email say 4 or 5hrs/day every day, iPlayer TV perhaps a couple of hours/ month (when the line is stable enough !), relatively little other downloading, no gaming). Thus the 60Mb of PlusNet Extra would be fine.

<My first recommendation would be Plusnet>
Getting lost here again, I'm afraid - I must have misunderstood something. SamKnows says that PlusNet do not have an LLU presence on my exchange. Are you suggesting that (although non-LLU) PlusNet would still be best to sort my line out .... and would do better than say Zen (non-LLU) or Be (LLU) ?

I note that Zen is pricey, but not as stratospheric as AAISP. I think say £25/month is the most that I would feel happy paying .... Broadband only that is ... plus line rental from BT.

<See also their traffic management though>
Looks OK to me except the 2Mb/s on iPlayer TV is not satisfactory

Which leaves me wondering whether I can really go to PlusNet (or anyone other than a premium ISP such as AAISP), saying that I have a bum line, please take me on ? Presumably, I should check that _before_ getting a MAC key from T-T (which will doubtless be yet another struggle).

Very grateful for your advice .....

Nearly but not quite .

The sympton is that the line is very unstable. Moving to LLU would make that less of a nuisance but probably wouldn't solve it. The only situation where it would solve it would be if the trouble was on the line card you are connected to at the exchange, which (not being an engineer) I don't think causes HR faults.

Plusnet is not LLU. I'm saying they are a risk-free move and are as likely as anyone except AAISP to get the line fixed, as long as you get onto one of their reps on here.

From there you can stay or move, depending how you find the iPlayer experience with them.

As well as Plusnet, yes Zen is a good option.

If we rule out the LLU for now, as in a way that is a red herring, then AAISP on their BT Wholesale service are quite a bit cheaper than their Be service, and again only a monthly contract. Their line monitoring is brilliant, and is how they are often able to solve problems such as yours.

The constant internet radio may use a fair bit of the daytime allowance on AAISP though

I would request your MAC from TT straight away, then almost toss up between those three. AAISP best for fixing the line, Zen good and cheaper, Plusnet cheap and better than many for fixing it. Only you can decide between them, but whichever you go for you are not tied in.

If you feel you want to discuss the problem first with them, AAISP will happily do that as you can see from their website. I expect Zen would do so also, but I don't know. For Plusnet I would not ring them, I would PM bpullen on these forums and perhaps even point him to this thread, particularly today's posts.

Thank you RobertoS.

I follow your analysis with just the comment that I am _already_ on LLU ADSL2+ with TT.
If I moved away from that to BT W and assuming that the problem is somewhere on the Cu line (rather than card in the DSLAM or whatever), then things would be even worse than at present, until the line was fixed..... which I suppose is the whole point of the exercise anyway !
(At present I can usually get the line to sync and run ADSL2+ by making a longish phone call first !).

Thanks again, I will ponder which ISP to move to, and report any interesting problems with getting a MAC from TT

PS ...sorry I'm a newbie ... what is a PM ?

Private Message. See at the top left of My Home.

My Home is also an excellent "Home Page" for the forums, as you can set up the list of forums you are mainly interested in, and can also add occasional "Favorite threads".

Much easier to handle than the full forum list.

Yes, I'd forgotten you are on TT LLU.

That raises a potential nasty. Do you pay line rental to them as well, so it is probably full LLU?

Migrating from that is less simple than if the phone is with someone else. Does the number work in other ISP's checkers?

No ... I get LLU broadband only from TT (line rental with BT).
I have been told by Be that my LLU card is "untagged" (whatever that means) so I should be able to move easily (subject to TT awkwardness of course)
The phone number works on all checkers that I have tried

Thus moving to PlusNet or Zen or AAISP (21CN) means a move from LLU to ordinary 21CN, hence my comment about possibly making the situation even less pleasant until the line problem is sorted.
I guess it's a situation of "no pain = no gain" !

Thanks again

Yep .

On many 21CN (WBC) exchanges the IP Profiling system has been greatly improved. So if you are lucky things won't be as bad as they were. Noise margin could still be tricky.

You can get TalkTalk to sanction work by BT but you will never get any where with TalkTalk over the phone , you need to register on the TalkTalk members forum .

Even so TalkTalk are a budget ISP and very slow with support issues that require BT to get involved .

I would go with AAISP as they seem to be very good at fixing line faults and not to a budget ISP that by definition will have budget support IMHO .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Plusnet is not LLU. I'm saying they are a risk-free move and are as likely as anyone except AAISP to get the line fixed, as long as you get onto one of their reps on here.

Happy to see this through to resolution if you do decide to move to us.

Kind rgds,