Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: niemand on April 27, 2019, 01:43:16 PM
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Folks,
Zen seem a no brainer for value and the criteria I have in the subject line. Any alternatives welcomed.
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I recommend AA if you’re asking for alternatives. I used Zen at the same time as AA. Have vaguely heard good things about Uno and Idnet but don’t know anything about them.
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I assume you want consumer (home) broadband?
I heard good things about IDNET, but their FTTP 330/50 is £120(!) per month, over double the cost of their 160/30 (£51.60). Plus activation charge of what I believe to be £60.
Zen may be the best value for money. Have not used them myself, but heard they are one of the better mainstream ISPs. Under the impression their FTTP 330/50 is £76 per month, plus £55 activation.
There's also Spectrum Internet (https://spectruminternet.com/fibre-home-broadband/full-fibre/) which offers 330/50 for £49 per month for the first 6 months then £65.99 for the remaining 6 months of the contract, plus no activation fee. Unfortunately, not sure about their IPv6 support or whether IPv4 will be static - may be worth enquiring. Also been reading that their coverage is limited (apparently Wales and South West England), and I am not sure much of their reputation.
I would recommend A&A, but their prices can seem a bit eyewatering for most consumers considering quotas. It costs £100 to activate FTTP, plus the price for 2TB quota is £55 per month and is only 80/20. No 330/50 option available but they will sell you 160/30, which I imagine will be an extra £10 per month (like the cost difference between G.fast 160/30 and 160/50) - so £65/m for 160/30 with 2TB allowance, unless I am missing something.
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I recommend AA if you’re asking for alternatives. I used Zen at the same time as AA. Have vaguely heard good things about Uno and Idnet but don’t know anything about them.
AA don't meet the criteria. No 330 option.
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IDNet pricing is absurd. To be honest FTTP at 330 and above is expensive, with the 500 and 1G variants being insane, however those aren't an issue as I'll be in an Openreach area with 330 and below available only.
Thank you.
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I'd agree. IDNET for FTTP is definitely on the higher side.
There's always Cerberus (https://www.cerberusnetworks.co.uk/connectivity-broadband/fttp-and-gfast), and they have "300/50" (which I presume is 330/50 Openreach) for £54 per month for the first 3 months, then £75 per month thereafter, activation costing £48 on 12 month contract (24 month contract has £48/m introductory offer for 3 months, with free activation). Again, I have had no experience with them and I am not sure about IPv6.
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Cerberus definitely do IPv6 as many have their FTTPoD lines with IPv6 on TBB.
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Zen seem a winner.
Have to decide who to use over copper for a couple of months as I have told VM Business where to shove their broadband. Muppets.
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Copper as in VDSL or ADSL?
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VDSL. I suppose I could just change the package on what is currently the backup, though.
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Solution found.
Ultrafast 2 Fibre Enhanced from BT Business will hit the spot. 4G Assure will also be invaluable both to get online quickly and as a ready-made backup.
https://business.bt.com/products/broadband-and-internet/deals/
https://business.bt.com/products/broadband-and-internet/4g-assure/
If prices drop and they make 500Mb and 1Gb available in the interim all good.
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Re: BT Biz, just be aware their cheapest prices are on a 24 months min term and support isn't that good, despite having UK call centres.
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24 months is pretty standard for a business service so that's not a problem.
The level of support is mitigated in a few ways. Being a network guy with contacts in and around BT helps. The Assure is also a bonus.
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good idea from BT, kind of doing what aaisp has been doing, but now BT own their own mobile network its easy for them to do.
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Could do it myself but if the ISP are happy to no need to worry about it. Do quite enough networking in the day job without having to mess around with it for home / home office too.
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4G Assure currently provides resilience as the router switches to a mobile connection in the even of a problem.
Later this year, BT will be releasing a version which bonds the fixed/mobile networks together - not just for resilience but also to boost speeds. I believe this product will also come to residential customers.
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As my house build has been delayed again I'll have more than enough time to look at that.
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i resell connections (mostly leased lines) but to give you idea of costs prices i have put my prices below, i do not sell to home users
FTTP - 40/10 - £28.00 a Month
FTTP - 55/10 - £30.00 a Month
FTTP - 80/20 - £32.50 a Month
FTTP - 160/30 - £38.00 a Month
FTTP - 220/20 - £45.00 a Month
FTTP - 330/50 - £55.00 a Month
G.Fast - 160/30 - £29.50 a Month
G.Fast - 330/50 - £34.50 a Month
FTTC 80/20 - £19.00 a Month
FTTC 40/10 - £17.50 a Month
All the above have a £49.00 Activation fee and a £40.00 Cease Fee.
They are all on 12 month contracts.
PSTN Rental
Business - £9.99 a Month
Residential - £8.25 a Month
PSTN Install - £49.00
just posted to let you know what is a fair price to pay
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For clarity can you confirm those are all ex-VAT prices?
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I'd imagine that is all ex-VAT if they are not sold to consumers.
Pity, I've had bitten the hand off for 330/50 @ £55, but alas, I can't get FTTP anyhow. (yet)
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For clarity can you confirm those are all ex-VAT prices?
sorry, yes prices are ex vat
I'd imagine that is all ex-VAT if they are not sold to consumers.
Pity, I've had bitten the hand off for 330/50 @ £55, but alas, I can't get FTTP anyhow. (yet)
I could sell to consumers just have not really wanted to plunge into the marketing/advertising side of things. With most of London City not even having FTTC leased lines can be quite lucrative!
let me know if i can ever do anything for you!
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Resurrecting this old thread I'm still no closer to a decision on this due to the potential for new entrants, the new tiers coming in March, and signs of regional congestion on BT Wholesale during Amazon footy matches suggesting relatively little overhead there.
I've a few more weeks to work it out. Hopefully the GEA operators will have given more clarity by then.
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do aaisp still only have the 160 service only?
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Yup. They don't have the scale to handle higher, and continue to use hardware that restricts them - seen any 10G Firebricks? Exactly.
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Chances are I think I'll end up using BT and supplement it with a tunnel for static IP.
Hopefully, given the fibre cable is hanging out of the front of the property awaiting splicing, it'll be availability sooner rather than later.
ONT install and splicing should leave it ready for service.
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Boxing day will be interesting, if the BTw network handles that, then maybe they were able to fix quickly and its not quite as bad as it seemed.
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Haha. The current property shows FTTP coming soon: someone must have told them I am moving! :lol:
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So you are still not in your new home? I thought you would "be in" by the end of this year (2019). :o
What is the explanation for the (latest) delay?
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Next month. Long story mercifully about at an end. ???
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Have you seen this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGTkxrIQXKQ
This very much reassures me that going forward, sticking with Zen is the thing to do.
Not only are they aiming to keep plenty of overhead, but it sounds like their future network infrastructure is going to be far more robust than even Openreach themselves. Also peering within the exchanges I'd imagine makes it harder for a court to demand they monitor their customers traffic, as they would have to put monitoring hardware in every single exchange that has any peering to the Internet, which potentially is really not practical.
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Yes, I've seen that and the previous talk from them on building for ultrafast.
All well and good but getting to their network in the first place is the issue.
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Less than 4 months after G.fast went live the Openreach checker gives this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6oE73Aao6NUUFFwNVdnXzlXa1U5azctMmJGNFNaZS1nc0JZ/view
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That's not a public file - is it OK for us to request permission?
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Fixed. Really not worth it now, though :lol:
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Less than 4 months after G.fast went live the Openreach checker gives this:
Mine updated overnight.
I haven't checked what streets near me are being done but I'm not in any Fibre First rollout and it isn't BDUK work.
I don't think they would be bringing FTTP at all if Virgin hadn't just done so.
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Makes perfect sense. Just our PCP here, and it seems to be confined to that PCP area, however that makes sense. FTTP is across the road to new build, Virgin Media have taken huge lumps out of really high FTTC take up, G.fast hasn't sold and the area is fully ducted relatively recently. Not to mention CityFibre are on the way.
On many levels it would be a strange commercial choice not to build sooner rather than later. Win back some custom lost to VM and be better prepared to resist CityFibre.
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Interested Carl if BTw held up for today's amazon games. :)
TTB (aaisp) was no issues watching.
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No idea from experience, still on VM. Will make enquiries!
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Interested Carl if BTw held up for today's amazon games. :)
TTB (aaisp) was no issues watching.
I've seen a lot of people complaining that they couldn't watch at all, although its unclear where the problem might be for those customers or what broadband they even have.
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Yep seen some complaints on TBB, and accompanied by heavy packet loss TBB graphs.
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Nothing jumps out at me, the minor packet loss seems too late to be the match and more likely something I was doing:
(https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/thumb/d9ee0a207be8c900b3a225c76702245658d37e82-26-12-2019.png) (https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/d9ee0a207be8c900b3a225c76702245658d37e82-26-12-2019)
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Interested Carl if BTw held up for today's amazon games. :)
TTB (aaisp) was no issues watching.
Load was lower on Boxing Day than the peak early in December. Things seemed to be fine.
BT Wholesale are continuing upgrades in preparation for residential gigabit. Note the amount of areas where FTTPoD has gone from 330 to 1000. Those are BTW getting 10 Gb Cablelinks in place and beefing up backhaul.
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Ok thanks Carl, I guess it was localised to Zen or the issue the user reported was unrelated.
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I wouldn’t say no to 10 Mbps; no - "100 Mbps", or is it 1000 Mbps? :no: :(
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Took out an additional FTTP 330/50 line with BT Business back in Oct and it performs very well - haven't seen any slowdowns at all, even during the peak Amazon footy periods in early Dec and over Xmas:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/b7646132f419197a496fc0ce38149d8f861ac35f
(red bit is where I switched between routers last night)
In fact the BT line performs better - wrt latency - than my £360/m Fluidone FoD line and £108/m* Trunk line. I'm paying £69/m for the BT line & its used purely for recreational use. Whilst the FluidOne 330/30 service is used for Business only. All 3 lines run over BT Wholesale tails.
So whilst paying more & going for a niche ISP might give you better support, there's no guarantee that you will get a better connection than cheaper/mass ISPs.
* currently getting the Trunk Networks FTTP 330/50 service for free ;D
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Quite so, as psychopomp says. If something works then it works and so it will be full speed if not oversold.
About the niche ISP thing; I need a huge amount of support all the time. Also I use all the many many features and other services AA offer. Now I use their failover to 3G, multi-line bonding, 4G data SIM, separate / independent email services, DNS definition, DNS servers to host yiur domain, DNS registration, VoIP and telephony, continuous quality monitoring. Some of those can not be found anywhere else, or nearly so. The combination can it be found anywhere else. I used Zen on another line at the time of starting up with AA; AA won, on features, otherwise Zen was great but it didn’t have the goodies I want or need. Those were my reasons for going the way I did. About two years ago I moved my email and DNS hosting for various domains to AA. I want a small business-friendly ISP because although I use the internet for recreation, I use it to summon help is its a critical service fir me; also my wife runs a business and needs to get work done and a service that never breaks under any circumstances (3G and all dsl lines simultaneously go down - which could happen. [note to self: need to get a decent generator with key start, for my wife’s bad hands])
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I'll be doing monitoring and other things myself so A&A would be excessive. I don't really need most or want most of the features that A&A offer :)
The tech I work in is very much focused on using multiple cheaper services to produce a reliable, performant one so it's all good.
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Indeed. Understood. It was just an insight into my own, very different, motivation.
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This has all been sorted and plans made for bringing it all home and distributing within property.
As long as I don't mess up the switch configuration all will be well at minimal cost with minimal work.