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On Sun, 13 Mar 2011, Neil Winchurst wrote:
I have been with fast.co.uk for Broadband for some time now and they have been fine but a bit expensive. Lately I seem to be using the computer more and I am reaching my monthly allowance too easily. My allowance is 5 gb per month. The next choice is rather a jump to 20 gb per month.I would probably find 10 gb per month more than adequate. So I am wondering if it is time to move. I have looked around the internet and seen various ISP's recommended, or some not. So I am asking for suggestions from the group please.At the moment I am paying £20.39 pcm including the increased VAT. I know that I could do better than that financially, but reliability is important too. I would be interested tin any comments etc.
First of all - the commercial interest - I resell Entanet ADSL products... However typically, residential isn't my target market at all - and while I'd be happy to take your business, there are many other Enta resellers who may be better positioned to help you - if you go down that route.
Typical Enta residential prices are:
Family 1: (1GB) £14.56 per month inc. vat
3: (3GB) £16.64
30 (30GB) £19.78
The service is has a monthly cap of the amount mentioned above which is
applied during peak hours (8am through midnight, Mon-Fri) and is
unmetered, but subject to traffic shaping, if required, outside those
times.
So that's what to expect if you go down the Enta route. Some do charge a little more, but provide a little more too.
However if you know the mix of peak time and off-peak time, it might be work looking for an ISP that differentiates between the 2 - just be careful to check the actual times and dates when it applies - e.g. Enta is midnight to 8am for their residential packages, but a more generous 8pm to 8am for the business ones. (Which I use to my advantage to download/upload lots of backups, etc. overnight)
Back to generic broadband, I've said this before and will say it again: You get what you pay for, or the engineers triangle: Pick 2 of three: Good, Fast, Cheap (and variants, etc.)
Speed is governed by 2 things - one is your distance and general line quality, the other is the quality of the ISP you connect to - generally, the BT wholesale networks is good enough these days, although there are the occasional exchange capacity issues. (There is another issue and it depends if you go with an LLU provider - and that's then down to the speed & reliability of their backhaul from each exchange as well as their own network)
The cheapest deal you can get are the providers offering bundles - e.g. Sky, BT, Virgin, Utility Warehouse, etc. (See Neil for the last one!) Personally I'm not a fan of bundling everything up, but it can work out cheaper - but do watch the contracts and terms & conditions - year, or longer contracts, automatic roll-overs (which, thankfully are being deprecated now!) and high penalties for going over the limits.
I'm also not a fan of the bigger ISPs simply because they tend to have poor customer support - outsourced call centres and many levels of menus before you get to a human who can actually deal with your issue. (Or acknowledge that there is an issue)
If you want top quality (according to http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4592-customer-service-awards-2010.html), then you want AAISP (www.aaisp.co.uk) There you'll get almost personal service and they're really good at shaking up BT to get line faults fixed - which is by far the hardest thing to get resolved.
However, (best sit down), a 10GB package from AAISP will cost you approx. £52 a month. Why so high? Because that represents the true cost to provide service, employ staff, pay BT and make absolutely sure that your own network runs fully uncontended with the highest quality equipment. Everyone else runs a contended network to some degree, and gambles with customers data being affordable over the BTW network - robbing from the light users who come no-where near their limit to pay for the heavier users who abuse the system... (You can make it cheaper though - say 1GB through the day per month and 10GB at off-peak times and that's just under £20 a month)
Another thing you might want to ask a prospective ISP is who's network they operate under - e.g. while I run my own servers, DNS, hosting, etc. I do not run any actual Internet connectivity infrastructure - I resell Entanets network for that - they have the back-end that plumbs into the BT wholesale network to connect end-users to the global Internet. Some ISPs run their own back-ends and deal directly with both the BT network and the end-users (e.g. Zen and AAISP), but some resell other big wholesalers - e.g. ADSL24 use the Murphex network which then connects into the BTW network and so on. This may or may not be an issue for you, but I think it's always good to know who is really carrying your data at the end of the day. (So that if e.g. you had a bad network experience with me - and were putting the blame on the Entanet network, then it's probably no-use moving to another Entanet reseller as it's the same physical network at the end of the day!)
But do take these polls with a pinch of salt though - as well as the forums. People rarely post with tales of good service - it's almost always whinges, and the ISPs themselves may phone their customers to get them to vote for them, so that's not always as impartial as it might seem.
This might not help you, but the only thing I'd suggest is to go for a niche provider over a full-on mass advertising one, but it's your money at the end of the day. Pick a price you're willing to pay and see what you can get from the niche ones, then look at the others.
Finally - DO NOT ask your current ISP to cease the line. Don't even tell them you're moving. You'll incur a line cease charge and it might lock you line while the new provider takes it over, so you can lose service for a period of time. Worse, the new ISP will charge you the full installation price (unless they're an ISP that doesn't charge installation, but does lock you into a year+ contract to cover it) Always get a MAC (Migration Access Code) from your current ISP. It will last for 30 days and you have no obligation to use it.
Good luck! Gordon
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