SoGEA options - 1 month contract?

Hi all - I am soon moving into a property that has Openreach FTTC and Virgin Media connections available, however Giganet's FTTP checker says it will be covered soon (they are currently building out FTTP in the local area). BIDB shows planned works on nearby roads as starting January 2023, so I know it'll be at least 4 months before I'm likely to even be able to place an order with them.

As such, I'd like to opt for a 1 month/rolling contract so that I can switch easily when needed. I have no need for a home phone so I'm looking at SoGEA services. This combined with the 1 month contract seems to limit my options to providers that I haven't heard much about, so is anyone able to chime in on their experiences with the following, or know of any other SoGEA providers that I've missed out?

IDNet: SuperFast Basic - £30.00/month, £60.00 Setup fee (inc VAT)
Freeola: Unlimited Fibre Broadband (SoGEA 40|10) - £29.99/month, £65.00 Setup fee (inc VAT)
Cerberus Networks: SOGEA Business - £43.80/month, £97.60 Setup fee (inc VAT)

Price wise, IDNet/Freeola seem to win, but I'd like to know if anyone has experience on reliability - from brief research, both seem to use Zen's backhaul, and I've read a lot about Zen's gateway issues - I'm based in the South so if my connection was routed via Zen's Manchester gateway it would increase my latency a lot (latency is one of the many reason's I haven't considered using Virgin Media)

Thanks in advance

I don't have any experience with them but have you taken a look at Cuckoo? They've just been bought by Giganet so might make things simpler when it comes time to upgrade to FTTP.

In reply to a post by Adrianuk:

I don't have any experience with them but have you taken a look at Cuckoo? They've just been bought by Giganet so might make things simpler when it comes time to upgrade to FTTP.

Good idea, I'd initially discounted Cuckoo since they didn't seem to offer SoGEA, and their page didn't mention line rental, so I assumed I'd be paying extra for that. It turns out that line rental is included, so it starts cheaper than IDNET. I'll be paying slightly more, £1 extra per month for the static IP add on.

Many thanks for the recommendation! Will see how things go with Cuckoo.

In reply to a post by Samdotr:

Price wise, IDNet/Freeola seem to win, but I'd like to know if anyone has experience on reliability - from brief research, both seem to use Zen's backhaul, and I've read a lot about Zen's gateway issues - I'm based in the South so if my connection was routed via Zen's Manchester gateway it would increase my latency a lot (latency is one of the many reason's I haven't considered using Virgin Media)

worst case, disconnect/reconnect and you can end up on a different RAS... it's really a non-issue.

Latency is fine and stable regardless on idnet etc, unlike Virgin.

In reply to a post by therioman:

Latency is fine and stable regardless on idnet etc, unlike Virgin.

Beg to differ. If IDNet have you on Zen backhaul you are disconnected and reconnected from time to time. From the North East of England my latency varies between 10ms and 22ms to the same endpoint depending on which gateway the reconnection hits.

Edited by GonePostal (Fri 23-Sep-22 13:27:57)

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

In reply to a post by therioman:

Latency is fine and stable regardless on idnet etc, unlike Virgin.

Beg to differ. If IDNet have you on Zen backhaul you are disconnected and reconnected from time to time. From the North East of England my latency varies between 10ms and 22ms to the same endpoint depending on which gateway the reconnection hits.

You didn't read my post did you...

I did not say the latency was the same between gateways.

I said it was *stable* - eg does not constantly fluctuate.

In practical terms, for almost every use case, 10ms vs 22ms makes absolutely no real world difference, but what does make a difference is wildly fluctuating latency and jitter - that breaks many use cases.

For your average user browsing the web, doing some zoom calls, watching netflix etc, 10 vs 22 makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to the experience.

In reply to a post by therioman:

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

In reply to a post by therioman:

Latency is fine and stable regardless on idnet etc, unlike Virgin.

Beg to differ. If IDNet have you on Zen backhaul you are disconnected and reconnected from time to time. From the North East of England my latency varies between 10ms and 22ms to the same endpoint depending on which gateway the reconnection hits.

You didn't read my post did you...

I did not say the latency was the same between gateways.

I said it was *stable* - eg does not constantly fluctuate.

In practical terms, for almost every use case, 10ms vs 22ms makes absolutely no real world difference, but what does make a difference is wildly fluctuating latency and jitter - that breaks many use cases.

For your average user browsing the web, doing some zoom calls, watching netflix etc, 10 vs 22 makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to the experience.

On the contrary, I did read your post and was worried that to my mind you were not giving 100% of the picture. Perhaps we have different understanding of the meanings of words.

We are agreed that for most people 10ms vs 22ms makes no practical difference. On the other hand for gamers this could be critical and if it can change at any time without warning (including maybe 60 seconds totally disconnected) I would hesitate to call it stable without adding a caveat.

I've been with IDNet for many years now. Very helpful support although I've personally had very few issues. I recommend them to everyone with the caveat that usually they are more expensive.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 23-Sep-22 16:48:44)

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

We are agreed that for most people 10ms vs 22ms makes no practical difference. On the other hand for gamers this could be critical and if it can change at any time without warning (including maybe 60 seconds totally disconnected) I would hesitate to call it stable without adding a caveat.

That doesn't sound normal or representative of my experiences - and I have a lot of circuits using them - many of which run for many weeks (FTTC) or months (FTTP) at a time with no disruption at all, no PPP loss whatsoever. If you're having issues being entirely disconnected I suggest you get some support.

In reply to a post by therioman:

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

We are agreed that for most people 10ms vs 22ms makes no practical difference. On the other hand for gamers this could be critical and if it can change at any time without warning (including maybe 60 seconds totally disconnected) I would hesitate to call it stable without adding a caveat.

That doesn't sound normal or representative of my experiences - and I have a lot of circuits using them - many of which run for many weeks (FTTC) or months (FTTP) at a time with no disruption at all, no PPP loss whatsoever. If you're having issues being entirely disconnected I suggest you get some support.

if you have a wander round the internet there are a good few IDNet customers who are presumably on Zen back haul who have regular drop-outs and re-connections. You seem to be either lucky or on another backhaul. At one stage I was seeing a drop and re-connect about once every three or four days. Now it is only happening about once a month but IDNet do not want to know and deny that there is any problem. Why do you assume that other people posting here are less capable than you and have not already done the sensible things when there is a problem?