Another "which ISP?" post

Hi,

All being well, I will be moving to a new house come July around half a km from this exchange >> http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/SSCHU <<

As you can see, there's almost nothing fancy on this exchange other than a sad old ADSL Max on 20CN. I am currently with BE at my current place getting around 6Mbit, which is just about enough, so it's nice to see that most checkers say I will get up to 7.5Mbit at the new place.

Now, I've had experiences with a number of ISP providers, including PlusNet and Virgin and BE are by far the best as far as customer service is concerned. Virgin kept falling over every couple of weeks and while my parents have had PlusNet for nearly 10 years, I find that they do too much traffic shaping for my liking (they get around 12Mbit down with 1Mbit upload).

I work from home a lot so must have a reliable connection for VPNs and VOIPs. I watch IPTV, YouTube and the usual iPlayer content along with occasional Usenet and P2P downloads.

Being on 20CN limits my options quite a bit, but the following are my requirements from an ISP:

1) Generous usage caps - 50-60Gb should be enough with preferably unlimited during off-peak
2) Must have 832kbps upload
2) No traffic shaping at any time of the day
3) Lowest latency possible - I notice PN's latency is almost double what I get with BE
4) Customer service who know what they are doing (i.e. not monkeys like they have at Virgin)
5) Prefer static IP but not essential
6) Up to around £25-£30 per month

I do not want to go with Sky or TalkTalk since they don't offer LLU on my exchange anyway and I don't want to go along with the masses.

My geeky friend is with BT on their "unlimited" package and seems relatively happy with them - but that's going with the masses

What "smaller" ISPs are decent? I've looked at adsl24, Xilo and such like but do any stand out? NewNet has an awful website with no prices on there - none that I can find, so that's putting me off them already....

Cheers!
Alex

With no LLU avoid at all costs in no particular order

Virgin Media
Sky
TalkTalk

Orange will probably want to charge you more for being outside their lo-cost area and similar for Plusnet.

BT is a reasonable large provider choice but they don't do 832Kbps upload and is getting harder to find the option with the others like IDNet, Zen, looked at the Entanet resellers?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Orange will probably want to charge you more for being outside their lo-cost area

Confirmed, as Churchill Exchange was never Orange LLU.

ask in the 3rd party forum. What about some of the entanet resellers, e.g. vivaciti.net

Thanks for the replies so far. But what is Entanet and how is it better than BTw resellers?

Entanet is a major business wholesale supplier that also has a SOHO operation. It doesn't sell the SOHO side direct to the public, using instead a large number of resellers. That SOHO operation is BT Wholesale based, but with a backhaul network picking up at all twenty WBC nodes and all ten IPSC nodes.

A pretty good reputation, as have most of its resellers around here. Those resellers also tend to have LLU products from O2 Wholesale, C & W and TalkTalk, which often compare favourably with the native products of O2 and TT. (C & W don't retail).

Thanks for the informative reply. Is there is a list of Enta resellers preferably good ones? Vivacity is one of them but any other good ones?

I notice Eclipse and Zen from the early days are still around. Are they as good as they were back then on non-LLU network?

Entanet resellers (alphabetically) off the top of my head - Aquiss; Freeola; vivaciti. Aquiss and vivaciti are active here, Freeola rarely. UKFSN I don't recommend.

Been having a chat with Aquiss support and looks like I'll be going for a business 45 package deal.

What kind of router can I use for this? I have an old Solwise 110 from PlusNet from 2003(!) which still working but it doesn't have wireless - though I do have a DD-WRT switch I can put in front of it.

Are there any nice decently priced routers available? I know NetGear 834 has quite favourable reviews but, again, it's getting on a bit. Basically, I want something reliable, which Solwise was but it's very old - maybe something I can put DD-WRT software on?

Not my field really.