Kitz Forum

Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: broadstairs on October 01, 2018, 10:02:42 AM

Title: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: broadstairs on October 01, 2018, 10:02:42 AM
Currently with TT but fed up with them refusing to look at poor performance on my line and in addition them only having 24 month contracts I feel the need to move.

So I still need a landline phone which precludes AAISP (plus I feel they are a bit expensive). Right now considering Plusnet but would like to know who else I should consider?

Stuart
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: jelv on October 01, 2018, 10:20:27 AM
Why do you think that precludes AAISP?

You just have to have the line rental with someone else. My phone rental is with Pulse8 (https://pulse8broadband.co.uk/line-packages) using BTw and FTTC with AAISP and I know of others who have done the same.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: broadstairs on October 01, 2018, 10:56:28 AM
Why do you think that precludes AAISP?

You just have to have the line rental with someone else. My phone rental is with Pulse8 (https://pulse8broadband.co.uk/line-packages) using BTw and FTTC with AAISP and I know of others who have done the same.

Because the total cost is far too high compared to a vdsl+phone (up to 80meg) from the likes of Plusnet & others.

Stuart
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: roseway on October 01, 2018, 11:29:54 AM
I moved to IDNet in June, and so far I've found their service entirely satisfactory. If you have a problem you do get to talk to a knowledgeable human. They provide native IPv6.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: jelv on October 01, 2018, 11:48:30 AM
@broadstairs

You have to face reality. If you are only prepared to pay bargain basement prices you can't expect to get premium support from people who will fight your corner with BTw and OR.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: tiffy on October 01, 2018, 11:59:24 AM
Opinions on ISP's are very much based on the experience / service one has experienced first hand as well as recorded experiencies of others (stating the obvious I know) all ISP's have good and bad references.

I have been with Plusnet for many years, ADSL initially then migrated to VDSL2, perhaps I have been very lucky, never had any major technical issues, minor issues have been promptly addressed and resolved in a timely manner.
The ADSL2+ to VDSL2 migration was totally painless and completely to schedule.

PN's telephone help line gets a lot of criticism, probably rightly so, however most subscribers use the PN forum where technical and logistical help is readily available and usually prompt & efficient.

My daughter is also with Plusnet on VDSL2 service, she is very non technical as per the majority of users, when she had genuine technical issues on her line I found it very useful to be able to act on her behalf via the forum and the issues were again promptly resolved.

A lot of people will agree with my opinion a lot certainly won't, at the end of the day it's your choice to make the best decision for your requirements, good luck.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: Black Sheep on October 01, 2018, 12:37:53 PM
@broadstairs

You have to face reality. If you are only prepared to pay bargain basement prices you can't expect to get premium support from people who will fight your corner with BTw and OR.

True ..... but you don't have to pay comparatively high prices either, to receive what I would call a decent level of care.

Without naming names, shall we say some of the 'bargain basement' ISP are notoriously poor for after-sales requests .... others not so.
I can say hand on heart that Sky's tech team are some of the most knowledgeable I've had to deal with, and are quite tenacious when dealing with a fault. Plus they're based in the UK.

I'm not arguing the toss here, just making the point that there are other avenues to explore without having to dole out big bucks.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: dee.jay on October 01, 2018, 01:32:15 PM
I'd imagine you have a lot more experience with Sky than me - however I will have to disagree.

When I first took out Sky Fibre Pro back in 2012 - You could indeed speak to some very knowledgeable people.

However, the twice I've had to call since those days, one of which was for a lightning strike that killed a line card in the cabinet - Sky were adamant that I had to pay £60 for a new router before they would even help. I managed to get it for just £5 delivery and I even begrudged paying that - I was without any internet connection for a few days waiting for a damn router to turn up.

In fact, in that instance, even when the BT engineer came - he was adamant it was not BT, it was Sky's equipment at fault. Imagine his surprise when he actually bothered to look at the fault in detail and, despite me relaying all the facts to BT and Sky, he had to go find the problem for himself.

Recently, I upgraded my father's connection to Sky Max - and they were also adamant that, despite him having a 52,000 sync rate, that there's no problem with his line only performing at 40,000. That issue seems to have resolved itself, but, I wouldn't trust most bargain basement ISP's, frankly. I've heard too many cases where folks ring up (And this isn't just Sky) and getting nowhere because they are stuck with scripts and nobody actually being able to "help".

Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: j0hn on October 01, 2018, 01:58:12 PM
@broadstairs

You have to face reality. If you are only prepared to pay bargain basement prices you can't expect to get premium support from people who will fight your corner with BTw and OR.

Nowhere did he say he wanted premium support.

Not everyone can afford AA's prices and I really don't see why they were even mentioned in the thread as he specifically excluded AAISP due to price in his OP.
Saving a few quid here and there by switching quota doesn't make them affordable either.

It's like standing outside Lidl and telling everyone they would get better food from Waitrose. I'm sure they already know that but they either can't afford to or choose not to. There's no need to price shame people.

You don't need to pay AA's prices to get half decent support.
Many ISP's offer different types of guaranteed line speed, like Sky.
The likes of ID-NET and Zen offer good UK based support for a bit more £.

It really depends what the "poor performance" is.
If it's related to your line going interleaved then my recommendation would be ensure you pick an ISP who uses the Speed DLM policy. It allows double the ES of Talktalk
My ECI line couldn't maintain fastpath with Talktalk but could with an ISP on the Speed profile.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: jelv on October 01, 2018, 02:35:38 PM
PN's telephone help line gets a lot of criticism, probably rightly so, however most subscribers use the PN forum where technical and logistical help is readily available and usually prompt & efficient.

Most subscribers do NOT use the community forums! Membership of the forums is only around 5% of the total number of current users and that 5% includes many who are ex-customers.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: broadstairs on October 01, 2018, 02:57:53 PM
Just to point out my issue with my line is that despite it having very low es it has been capped and had high interleaving for 2 years. Any request to TT is met with "your speed is within expected range" so they hide behind this to avoid calls to BT.

Stuart
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: tiffy on October 01, 2018, 03:20:11 PM
Most subscribers do NOT use the community forums! Membership of the forums is only around 5% of the total number of current users and that 5% includes many who are ex-customers.

Can't verify your figures but absolutely no reason to doubt, just communicating from my experience with PN that the members forum has always been the fastest and most effective way to get support, even more so now since the telephone support / live chat lines are time restricted, PN appear to allocate more staff resources to the forum platform.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: chenks on October 01, 2018, 03:28:06 PM
however most subscribers use the PN forum where technical and logistical help is readily available and usually prompt & efficient.

this, i'm afraid, is utter nonsense.

and of those that do post, it's often left to plusnet customers to help troubleshoot.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: Black Sheep on October 01, 2018, 03:52:06 PM
I'd imagine you have a lot more experience with Sky than me - however I will have to disagree.


No problems at all disagreeing, my friend. You have obviously had a couple of poor customer-care instances, and quite rightly so, you have formed an opinion based upon that.

Like you mention above, I do deal with various providers on a daily basis, and IMHO (and that is all it is, as I'm not affiliated to any ISP whatsoever), I feel Sky's tech-team are one of the best there is.

I will admit, we get to speak directly to the 'Tier 2 techies', whereas you might be directed through their 'Tier 1 support' first ?? If so, I can see where your comments arise ... as a percentage of the Tier 1 support will just be script reading, the same for most ISP's support desk.  :)
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: gt94sss2 on October 01, 2018, 03:54:15 PM
Back to the OP, it all depends what is important in an ISP for you but personally I wouldn't discount BT.

They can be very competitive once you take into account cash back + their reward cards.

Plus I have found the odd issue easily resolved via the BT forum moderators and when my line wasnt performing were quite happy to send out a 'Boost' engineer
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: Ronski on October 01, 2018, 03:56:12 PM
Just to point out my issue with my line is that despite it having very low es it has been capped and had high interleaving for 2 years. Any request to TT is met with "your speed is within expected range" so they hide behind this to avoid calls to BT.

Stuart

I doubt very much that you'd have much luck with PN on that one, although doesn't changing ISP trigger some sort of DLM reset.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: dee.jay on October 01, 2018, 04:10:27 PM
No problems at all disagreeing, my friend. You have obviously had a couple of poor customer-care instances, and quite rightly so, you have formed an opinion based upon that.

Like you mention above, I do deal with various providers on a daily basis, and IMHO (and that is all it is, as I'm not affiliated to any ISP whatsoever), I feel Sky's tech-team are one of the best there is.

I will admit, we get to speak directly to the 'Tier 2 techies', whereas you might be directed through their 'Tier 1 support' first ?? If so, I can see where your comments arise ... as a percentage of the Tier 1 support will just be script reading, the same for most ISP's support desk.  :)

Ah, then our experiences are different. I do wish I could get straight to the Tier 2. I am a Networking Engineer by trade, and am a CCIE, I allegedly know what I am doing :)
The early SFUP days were specialist Fibre Support engineers- those guys were amazing.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: broadstairs on October 01, 2018, 04:35:27 PM
I doubt very much that you'd have much luck with PN on that one, although doesn't changing ISP trigger some sort of DLM reset.

Yes I believe it does. However by going over the head of TT to BT last year I got the cap removed and back on fp but it lasted about 24 hours before DLM slapped it all back on. I am convinced there is a problem on my line but cannot get it taken seriously.

Stuart
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: Ronski on October 01, 2018, 05:47:32 PM
I think you will struggle getting PN to fix that, although as John said on the speed profile with double the allowable ES you may well be OK.

I take it there's no news on VM going live round your way then?
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: Weaver on October 01, 2018, 10:48:41 PM
I fear Black Sheep, as he mentions, might be getting to the good people within Sky, as he points out, but I would not know.

I hear good things about IDNet. But in the end, you have to decide what you want to spend your money on, beer or ISPs.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: Ronski on October 02, 2018, 06:12:02 AM
I hear good things about IDNet. But in the end, you have to decide what you want to spend your money on, beer or ISPs.

LOL, my monthly beer bill certainly wouldn't cover my monthly broadband bill.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: kitz on October 03, 2018, 01:15:05 PM
Just to point out my issue with my line is that despite it having very low es it has been capped and had high interleaving for 2 years. Any request to TT is met with "your speed is within expected range" so they hide behind this to avoid calls to BT.

Stuart

I would think, bearing in mind your other points then either Plusnet or IDNet.   The migration should reset DLM because of the different profile, although you will have to bear in mind that the new default profile will likely mean a short period of time with Interleave.   In view of the fact that you've said several times that you get a lot of localised thunderstorms, then the Speed Profile should benefit you. 

I had to phone Plusnet last week on behalf of another user.  It wasn't great that I had to wait about 20-25mins for them to answer the call, but when I did get through the person was extremely helpful.
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: broadstairs on October 03, 2018, 01:32:06 PM
Do we know which ISPs use speed profile pray least would be amenable to changing to it?

Stuart
Title: Re: Suggestions needed for new ISP for VDSL & phone
Post by: kitz on October 03, 2018, 09:25:05 PM
Do we know which ISPs use speed profile pray least would be amenable to changing to it?

https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/DLM.htm#dlm_stability_level

BT - You many have to request. 
IDnet - I think they do, but haven't had it officially confirmed.