Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: Weaver on October 16, 2016, 10:14:04 AM
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Tips for potential users about your own ISP? Letting others know the bad stuff as well as the good is particularly valuable. So is stuff about other deals / services / packages available not just the one you are on. It would be nice to hear about services aimed at business users if possible, as the forum has more than enough home users and info for business users seems to be much less available on the web generally.
(As redemption for my own sins in constantly banging on like a cracked record about how much I love my current ISP.)
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Zen
Good? Everything?
Bad? Had to think hard, can only come up with two.
1. Slighty more expensive than the rest. I like to think "reassuringly expensive" though.
2. Zen has no presence in my current exchange, they did in my old one. Not sure if relevent?
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Talktalk Business
Good
- Top class, Warrington based 7 day phone support from 8am-8pm.
- Great speeds, no slowdowns at peak times. Get 75/18 mbps day & night on FTTC.
- Being on 'complete' package allows me to use my landline calling plan on my smartphone via the Talk2Go iOS/Android app.
- Very reasonable prices for a business grade service, cheaper that equivalent BT & Plusnet Business packages.
Bad
- TalkTalk brand :lol:
- 24 month contract on vdsl2 packages.
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BT - Infinity 2
Good:
- Consistent Performance
- Use 3rd Party Routers
- BT WiFi can come in handy
Bad:
- Bad Customer Support
- Poor Equipment Supplied
- Expensive
- Poor Order Processing Departments
BT's Broadband has always been a fairly good performer for me but has always been let down by the equipment they supply... Luckily that's not a major issue as we can use 3rd party routers which is often a better choice for most households.
BT WiFI has been handy for me on a couple of occasions but only really when outside of 4G/3G coverage.... The BT WiFi service isn't particularly fast but seems to perform enough to keep you connected with the world when having a Coffee or doing the big shop.
Unfortunately BT has never been well known for great customer support and in my opinion over the last few years this has only got worse, They seem too struggle to help with any issues with everything always seeming to require a call back that never happens, getting replacement equipment is near impossible too, It took me going to social media and slating BT and its latest hub to get taken seriously, joining wasn't exactly a doddle either, took 2 months to get connected which they blamed on Openreach (the office next door lol)
Following an investigation it was found that BT was to blame with the department setup to handle these problems had been telling porky pies and not doing anything at all... I suppose this is what happens when you outsource such an important department to a country 1000's of miles away.
Considering how expensive BT is (specially its Infinity 2 & above packages that rarely have any offers on them), I would expect a lot more, their latest hub has been the absolute end of my cares for BT, I had to order it twice because of yet more lies from their support, then I was charged twice for it, then I had 2 replacements sent....
End result, I went back to their crappy Home Hub 5 (so they didn't moan I was using a 3rd party router) and brought a beasty 4x4 5Ghz access point.
For those of you considering BT, don't bother right now, the new smart hub is barely capable of keep 2.4Ghz devices online, or in my case not without destroying the battery life of portable devices.
However BT's backhaul seems quiet prepared for fast speeds at all times with no issues of congestion ever being seen.... I can't say this about any other provider.
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Is "Infinity 2" FTTC ? Or ADSL2+ ?
Are there any download limits or download-related charges on this service ? Or throttling / traffic management / blocking / censorship ?
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@mlmclaren - What is the story about your wireless access point, btw?
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@mlmclaren - What is the story about your wireless access point, btw?
I've got an Asus AE-87U Access Point..... it kicks ass!!!
It's 5Ghz only which is fine, it supports DFS (channels above 48) it has very good range and speed throughput too, max speed is 1733mbps (4x4 WiFi chipset required) also has a 4/5 port gigabit switch built in.
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BT Infinity 1 unlimited (FTTC) 50 down/10 up.
Reading some posts about BT, it seems to be a bit of a lottery if you get set up correctly and a billing or tech issue is often difficult to sort. Not the case for me this time around so here we go...
I went back to BT in April 2016 after swearing to never deal with them again in 2008 due to serious problems getting set up and ongoing billing/tech issues (the dreaded famed call centre scenario). I decided a premium ISP would be better and moved to Enta at the time, then ADSL24 (who where by far the best of the smaller ISPS), COMS.com and finally Timico (awful)
I endured Timico while waiting for FTTC to finally became available in my area, BT dangled a bargain deal under my nose and I succumbed. So far all is good!
Good-
Price. Line rental in advance worked out at about £16/month if paid in advance. Calls pack £3.50/month Unlimited fibre option 1 (50/10) £10/month. A total of £29.50 on a 12 month contract. Timico equivalent was £50 with a 2 year contract and rubbish speed/service. No contest.
Speed- When I signed up, option 1 was the 30/10 speed. The day after by price bundle ended they increased option 1 to 50/10. Quick call (!) to CS and I was upgraded for free. Went live when they said it would happen a couple of days later and the process was painless. I get full speed virtually all the time, sometimes DL drops to around 35-40 for a short while.
Free wifi- have made use of this when out and about as the data signal in most areas of Wales where I live is poor.
Customer service- As much as I hate to admit it CS has been spot on. The service went live when they said it would, I got the speed upgrade exactly when they said it would, I got courtesy calls exactly when they said and the actual product has been as described.
Bad-
Nothing so far other than the standard FTTC connection fee which was about £49 I think
Indifferent-
Evey time I run a speed test or log into the router, I do so with baited breath expecting to find a problem and anticipate that feeling of dread related to having to deal with tech support. 6 months in, I can breath a sigh of relief each time and put it down to that experience 8 years ago. I haven't had need to contact TS so can't comment.
All in all, more than happy. I went to BT thinking that if it performs half as well as they promised it would still be 3 times fast than by ADSL2 service. I had an unfounded aprehension of what the set up process would be like.
I had been paying £20 to Timico just for ADSL2 and got a slow connection and the kind of poor customer service I would have expected from a big player. The reverse has been true and I wish I had moved away from Timico to BT ages ago.
Still feel like I have to keep my fingers crossed though just in case a problem occurs but I had to cross my toes as well at Timico and at least I save a fair few quid in the process with BT!
(https://forum.kitz.co.uk/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.speedtest.net%2Fresult%2F5735566381.png&hash=85a3b38f6c474beb0fda1d8a2d6191dc50321627) (http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5735566381)
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Vodafone:
Good:
- Cheap - £38 for 76meg, landline, and free calls to landline/mobile 24/7.
- Don't charge extra for extras like Caller ID
- Backhaul capacity seems good. It's the former Cable & Wireless network, so no noticeable peak-time congestion in my experience.
- Knowledgeable Level 2 support staff, when you finally get hold of them.
Bad:
- Terrible back-end systems. Had problems signing up, getting a router delivered, billing reliably, logging in to my account.
- Constantly-busy support lines and Live Chat
- Will fight tooth-and-nail to prevent you using your own modem/router. Luck of the draw and a week's calls and chats eventually got me the PPPoE password.
- Their router did not like my line. A week of using it led to 2-3 drops per day and got my line banded down to 35meg.
- Pre-sales staff will tell you using your own router is fine. Post-sales, they deny that it's possible. Just be persistent!
Now that I'm using the Openreach modem I had with Infinity, I'm seeing excellent performance. After an OR visit to reset DLM, I've had a week's worth of consistent 50meg sync speed and throughput to match.
If VF could fix their backend systems and unclench about allowing 3rd party modem/routers, then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. At the moment, only sign up if you're willing to push through some terrible systems and annoying policies!
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sky fibre unlimited pro
pros
static ipv4 - although this is no longer available on signups
low latency at my city
no visible contention 24/7
native ipv6
no pppoe
outages are very infrequent compared to other FTTC isp's I have used
guaranteed minimum speed which includes throughput as well as sync speed
caller id is inclusive
cons
ipv6 is not static which is pretty lame as there is no ip space shortage - senior engineer on sky tried to justify it by saying BT's deployment will be same practice
pricing on the high side
copyright filtering (in future will probably grow to political filtering and more, as we seeing with proposed age restrictions on porn and gambling sites)
they dont support 3rd party modems, but they no longer require the user to get dhcp auth details, a blank dhcp request is now accepted, indicating they will unofficially allow it.
neutral
support - this is here because I havent really needed to use it much at all due to lack of problems on the service.
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Zen - ADSL2+ Unlimited
Good:
- Great customer support, know what they are doing rather than fobbing you off
- Very low latencies, even over BT Wholesale network
- No traffic shaping and very little congestion
- Static IPv4 as standard
- Very, very reliable
In the middle:
- Customer support at times can have long waiting times, especially if there has been a lot of thunderstorms or flooding
- Limits ADSL2+ lines to 17Mbps, although I believe that is a BT Wholesale thing
- Having some difficulties setting up IPv6, although this appears to be my router as opposed to Zen
Bad:
- Significantly more expensive than the big ISPs, although not as expensive as A&A
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I don't think ADSL2+ is actually limited to 17Mb, that's just how it has to be marketed, taking the lowest speed of the top 10% of fastest lines. Or to put it another way, at least 10% of their customers need to be getting the advertised "up to" speed.