I don't ever use the house line for anything, calls or otherwise. I only have it for the purpose of obtaining fibre so not too worried about call charges etc

More importantly for me is, what is the actual benefit of switching over to a TT-based provider such as Pulse8 or Uno? Better service from TT to the ISP's? faster? lower latency? etc

Right now I'm just not understanding why one should go for a TT based ISP - you mentioned Uno and Pulse are currently ranked number 1 and 2. Where would this ranking be? I don't see the ISP's on the list of ISP to compare on thinkbroadband

In reply to a post by fiddlesticks:

I don't ever use the house line for anything, calls or otherwise. I only have it for the purpose of obtaining fibre so not too worried about call charges etc

More importantly for me is, what is the actual benefit of switching over to a TT-based provider such as Pulse8 or Uno? Better service from TT to the ISP's? faster? lower latency? etc

Right now I'm just not understanding why one should go for a TT based ISP - you mentioned Uno and Pulse are currently ranked number 1 and 2. Where would this ranking be? I don't see the ISP's on the list of ISP to compare on thinkbroadband

In reply to a post by jaydub:

.....there are a number of highly regarded ISPs that use the TTB network including A&A & Uno (currently ranked 1 & 2 on ISPReview).....

The clue is there.

(Google ISPReview if you're still not sure. I'm not posting a direct link to a rival site.)

I've gone for a TTB provider on a balance of service and price TBH. I'll leave others to comment on any technical benefits, although you might get a wider response if you start another thread on the Which ISP forum.

Its not a rebadged BT fibre service for a start.

BT wholesale has its own network and sells 3 different types of service to CP's
2 of these types will have traffic going over the BTw network, the 3rd type hands off to the CP's own handover point, e.g. entanet use non BTw backhaul.
Of the 2 types BTw push over their network there is differences to how the traffic is routed, one type routes over MSIL's that are shared by multiple BTw customers, and the contention level is solely managed by BTw.
The other type the MSIL's are dedicated to the CP and the CP manages the capacity.

So even a BTw based isp can be supplied in various different ways, and we havent even mentioned peering and external transit differences.

Talktalk, vodafone and sky all have their own core networks and in addition their own DSLAM's in exchanges, so they can bypass BTw entirely. They still rely on openreach between the exchange and customer, but nothing BTw.

Talktalk e.g. can be an advantage if local routing is more optimal for the customer such as having a local POP that routes directly to london, it can also be an advantage if BTw have congestion issues affecting the exchange, but talktalk's connectivity does not.

So there is definite advantages about picking specific providers.

In my own case I had regular congestion on plusnet prior to jumping to sky where its been just about zero all the time. In addition my latency to london has dropped from around 15ms to 8ms.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 08-Nov-16 11:56:48)

All done and switched over.

Interesting behaviour observed during the migration process, though. In the early hours (which is when migrations normally happen), the modem re-synced from 40/10 to 55/10, but my connection remained established with Zen. I was expecting to get booted off entirely, and forced over to IDNet (as happened when I migrated from AA -> Zen a couple of years ago now).

But by 8am this morning, it was still connected with Zen so I forced it across to IDNet. Note from when the 55/10 re-sync happened, the speedtest results whilst still connected with Zen were considerably hindered (around 4Mbs/sec during this time). I guess this is now how they coax users across to their new provider, without just abruptly terminating their connection?

I've also noticed that the average latency (blue line on the BQM graphs) is significantly thinner compared to Zen, so another plus point for IDNet there.

So far, so good. And nice to be on 55/10 FTTC.

That makes quite a bit of sense even though I don't understand much of the technical terms you referenced.

I suppose the appropriate follow up question is, how does one determine which ISP they'd be better off on? It could be one variant of a BTOR / BTW supplied service or it could be one variant of a TTB supplied service.

Without trialing each one for several months, is there some sort of way to figure it out beforehand? I imagine the answer is going to be no, but thought I'd ask anyway just because it brings me back then to my original point which is there doesn't really seem to any real reason to go for anything other than the cheapest supplier unless your connection is awful with them.

Judging by your response, It seems like I could go to the effort and cost of signing up with Uno for example and be no better off than having stayed with Zen or possibly even be worse off. Am I reading/understanding that right?

if you have no past experience of an isp and you dont know anyone locally using that isp then its a shot in the dark, although one can try and build a idea by reading forums and seeing customer feedback, some isp's have a lot of publicised issues which gives an idea how frequent problems are on their networks.

Another factor is that BTw bandwidth is more expensive than talktalk, so isp A spending X amount of money on talktalk vs isp B spending the same on BTw, the isp A will get more capacity for their money and is less likely to have congestion. Isp's using their own networks will ultimately have the lowest ongoing costs because they own their infrastructure in many cases.

This will also be why certian isps such as zen and entanet have moved at least part of their networks away from BTw.

@mixt
Your stats are not looking too good so far. seems to be evening slowdowns as well.

Yup, I expected this as it is £10 a month more for "elevated priority" on IDNet's network.

To be fair, I doubt this is going to bother me, but it is interesting to see none the less. It will be enlightening to see how the speed tests pan out over the next year of service, as it will (probably) give an absolute clear demonstration that not all ISPs are equal, and that you do really get what you pay for (I unfortunately can't work with A&A's prices - if I could, I would be back with them - not a single slow down when I was with them during 2013-2014).

Well I can be another data point in a week or so as I've signed up for the 80/20 service.
I'd be more interested in whether the latency is erratic but this seems to look OK on your line..

They make a clear statement about guaranteeing no contention on their network which I assume in theory would just leave slowdowns at the cabinet level as a possibility?

"This means that we can guarantee the maximum throughput that your line can support at all times"

I've also asked them what the elevated priority option delivers, e.g. just at the BT level or also on their own network. I'll report back when I get an answer although given what they say above I expect this is just the BT elevated service option.

In reply to a post by gmoorc:

They make a clear statement about guaranteeing no contention on their network which I assume in theory would just leave slowdowns at the cabinet level as a possibility?

Congestion between FTTC cabinet & exchange is almost unheard of, congestion usually occurs at exchange level or further on.