Which IPS to choose?

So I am moving into a shared house (we will be 2 people living there).

It has an FTTC connection that has 50 / 18 Mpbs (DL/UL). (fastest option available).

However, I am thinking a bit about which ISP we should pick. We do not mind paying a few pounds extra each month to get a more reliable ISP. As we are quite reliant on the internet connection for our work.

I think currently it is with NOW TV. However, we were thinking about getting BT as we are thinking their service and performance are better as they essentially are the ones who own the whole setup (as far as I understand).

Also I would like to make sure it is an ISP that allows for a 3rd party router, as I might get a router that can handle bufferbloat (for example the IQrouter V3), as I do online gaming. So do all ISPs allow this?

So any recommendations on which ISP to pick?

In reply to a post by lo22:

However, we were thinking about getting BT as we are thinking their service and performance are better as they essentially are the ones who own the whole setup (as far as I understand).

You would think that, it's logical - but it's not true - check out the ISP ratings here & on other sites that do such research.

What is most important to you? is it speed/latency at any cost? is it support should you have an issue? is it just cost or is it something else?

Quality over price for sure. So good speed/latency and support!

For good support look at the smaller boutique ISPs - e.g. Cerberus, Aquiss. Although actually I found Plusnet to be pretty decent when I needed them.

There's only one potential advantage I can think of for BT, and that is if you're on the right package, they will loan you a 4G modem if your line goes down and they can't fix it immediately.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

For good support look at the smaller boutique ISPs - e.g. Cerberus, Aquiss...

Absolutely agree - I had a great phone conversation with Martin at Aquiss the other day where we discussed the pros and cons of various broadband and voice options that are available on my line/address. His very knowledgeable opinions and suggestions were certainly thorough and definitely unhurried.

I've heard good things about Aquiss.

At the beginning I did have a good service from Cerberus Networks but that changed towards the end. I had a number of issues when it came to terminating my FTTP service with them which ultimately cost me another two months of service pretty much (plus cease fee). Before that on gigabit FTTP I was seeing some apparent congestion issues to certain other networks at peak times as back then they only had 2 x 1G connections at LINX, somewhere in the last couple of months it appears to have changed to 1 x 10G and 1 x 1G now so I guess that's resolved. My reason for terminating was primarily due to a local altnet rolling out their own service to my premises, it's just a shame that the termination process was not great. I wasn't in a minimum contract term either for quite some time.

I'd also recommend Andrews & Arnold to OP. In the past when I've used their services they've been reliable and support has been helpful. It perhaps comes at a slight premium though.

When I was on FTTC with BT and then with Sky my line was not that good and the DLM System had dropped the speed to 28 mbps which was always within the Openreach Target Range as it dropped because the Openreach Target Range dropped as the speed dropped.

so I went to Zen who sorted out the line issues and with Zen on FTTC I had a very reliable 55 mbps with an SNR of 3.

Therefore, for an FTTC line Zen were second to none.

That said, after I moved to FTTP two years ago I was not at all happy with their fastest FTTP product but now, for the most part, their FTTP is now OK.

Back to your FTTC line; If I was looking for an FTTC provider Zen would be high up on the list.

Regards,
Fido

Edited by Fido (Tue 11-Oct-22 14:57:39)

Cheers!! And thanks a lot for the suggestions, please keep them coming if there are more of them out there.

One question, do all ISPs allow for third party routers? As I mentioned I might myself a router to handle bufferbloat if my gaming experience suffers due to this.

In reply to a post by lo22:

One question, do all ISPs allow for third party routers?

No, but most do, including almost all Openreach-based providers. It's mainly the altnets who provide locked-down fibre routers.

Some of the smaller ISPs (again including Cerberus, Aquiss) don't supply a router as standard anyway, so the default situation is to provide your own.

The only thing to beware of is if you use your telephone number. Providers often lock down their telephony connection to their own router, in particular BT. So if you have BT with digital voice, you *must* use their router, or else lose access to the voice service.