Soldato
Indeed. While their service is good, I don't feel it justifies the extra cost, I'm on 900mb which is £55 a month. Moving to Voda would be nigh on £200 a year saving, and I doubt I would see any difference in service.
Indeed. While their service is good, I don't feel it justifies the extra cost, I'm on 900mb which is £55 a month. Moving to Voda would be nigh on £200 a year saving, and I doubt I would see any difference in service.
Just pray you don’t have to ring them, and if you use your own router that they give you the correct details. Oh and hope you have a decent connection as they are not without issues.
Is it? I mean, obviously it'd be great if everything was free or cheap as chips. Back in the real world though, it's always a balancing act between quality, service and price. Personally I'd rather pay an extra tenner or whatever to get a superior service.
I read that average retention for Aquiss is 7 years, so that's not the case if true.
Do you work for them? Don't go being silly about it being free, no one but you mentioned free.
The real world is based on value for money for me and I'd say 99% of people.
Service I can understand(though I have read a fair bit of issues in here, I've been with BT, Sky and Plusnet never had any downtime), quality well it's an openreach resell so same as all the others I bet.
So by the fact it's pretty much a standard quality product and service seems to be fine, £10 extra a month seems a lot.
If the service was perfect you wouldn't need it and your £10 hasn't actually got you anything extra has it.
The thing about "it's an Openreach resell so same as all the others" is not true. Openreach provide the connection from your house to a cablelink at the headend exchange, that's all they have control over. How your ISP chooses to get the data back from that headend is entirely up to them - some will use BT Wholesale for everything and the service will be comparable to BT/EE/Plusnet, some will do a bit more themselves and maybe use TalkTalk Wholesale to get the data back to their own network, others like Sky will do a lot more themselves and will lease dark fibre between headend exchanges which in some situations means that 2-3 are daisy-chained to each other to keep the costs as low as possible, so a single cable failure can take out entire regions.
Once inside the ISP network you are then at the mercy of lots of different factors. Can your ISP run a network properly, or do they do what Vodafone do and route people on the South coast via Edinburgh for no apparent reason and leave their support team powerless to fix anything because they aren't trained to know what you're even talking about and their CRM says your connection is fine? What about someone like Hey! Broadband who seem to buy garbage-tier IP addresses leaving everybody on the network with geolocation issues and unable to access UK-locked content? What about that time Vodafone ran their entire network so hot for about six months that everybody had 3-4% packet loss constantly?
£10 is about half the cost of me having to commute into the office for one day in the event of an internet problem, I don't value saving £10 more than I value being able to email someone in support about a suspected network problem and getting a competent member of staff at the other end. If you offered me the chance to earn £10 by phoning Vodafone's support team I would turn that offer down.
If you want cheaper then there are loads of ISPs in the market to suit lots of different price and quality points.
Once inside the ISP network you are then at the mercy of lots of different factors. Can your ISP run a network properly, or do they do what Vodafone do and route people on the South coast via Edinburgh for no apparent reason and leave their support team powerless to fix anything because they aren't trained to know what you're even talking about and their CRM says your connection is fine? What about someone like Hey! Broadband who seem to buy garbage-tier IP addresses leaving everybody on the network with geolocation issues and unable to access UK-locked content? What about that time Vodafone ran their entire network so hot for about six months that everybody had 3-4% packet loss constantly?
£10 is about half the cost of me having to commute into the office for one day in the event of an internet problem, I don't value saving £10 more than I value being able to email someone in support about a suspected network problem and getting a competent member of staff at the other end. If you offered me the chance to earn £10 by phoning Vodafone's support team I would turn that offer down.
If you want cheaper then there are loads of ISPs in the market to suit lots of different price and quality points.
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£120 a year is nothing for something you use every single day if it's backed by having decent support should you need it.
Hyperbole, much?
No!
So... you're agreeing with me. I said *ideally* everything would be free, but unfortunately everything is a balancing act between quality, service and price. How each person weighs those is up to them. That's why I said "I personally..." don't mind paying £10 a month more. I'm not 99% of people, I'm me. That doesn't mean their price is '...way too high' as you put it. It just means the price is way too high for you; and that's fine.
Tell me you don't know much about infra/ISPs, without telling me you don't know much. As @Caged already said, there are a lot of factors (strong factors) past the headend at the handoff point from Openreach at the exchange. Backhaul is a serious consideration - ask Zen customers. Nobody said anything about the service being 'perfect', because there's no such thing. So when imperfect things happen (including things out of their control, as with the recent issue due to a faulty/mis-configured Openreach line card), having an ISP with actual knowledgeable people on the end of the line matters. That's worth £10 for me, it isn't for you. That's fine. I'm not paying £10 a month more to receive something further every month. I'm paying it for the same reason I pay my car and home insurance - just in case! Because when SHTF I know I can relax.
As with many things in life, ISPs shouldn't be a race to the bottom of the barrel or ultimately it's the customers who suffer. See: Virgin Media, Vodafone et al.
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Very helpful thanks. Shame others can't be so helpful instead of just taking a dig.
The biggest plus for me with there service is the open cost no price increases you know exactly what it's going to be.
Service wise I'm a bit more willing to take the chance I won't need it. I'm not after the absolute cheapest, I know from feedback from friends and family talk talk it's to be avoided.
Nobody's taking digs at you. If you're going to misread or misunderstand posts, then call that poster 'silly' (note: a dig) and accuse them (me) of shilling, you're going to be corrected. I wasn't rude to you, and simply pointed out where you were mistaken and that our values for choosing an ISP simply differ.
I created a post on Vodafone forums some years ago that got the attention on online publication and can't remember who it was. Long story short, they had major congestion issues at my exchange didn't know when and how they would fix it and kept messing me about until I email the exec team and immediately got out of my contract.
My job requires quality internet with no downtime. I work for a global carrier as an SE so I would rather pay more and get a quality connection and CS. Internet is not something I would cheap out on.
Also why do some think £55 is expensive for 1Gbps? If you are only browsing using social media that's not for you get 150Mbps you will be fine.
My job requires quality internet with no downtime. I work for a global carrier as an SE so I would rather pay more and get a quality connection and CS. Internet is not something I would cheap out on.
Also why do some think £55 is expensive for 1Gbps? If you are only browsing using social media that's not for you get 150Mbps you will be fine.
Tell me you know nothing about how a UK ISP works without telling me...
That’s a bit like saying all PC’s are the same because they all use Intel or AMD CPU’s and I’d hope anyone here appreciates why that is painfully inaccurate. Vodafone don’t investigate routing issues and have a nasty habit of ‘load balancing’ which in practical terms means they route your traffic via Edinburgh whenever they feel like it and DGAF. Good luck getting that changed. If the CS is a joke and the TS is the punchline. If you don’t care and just want to watch cat videos, then probably not an issue for you.
ISP’s have in general have been involved to a race to the bottom on price for decades. They’ve removed additional services like email, news servers, IRC, DNS and outsourced and off-shored CS and TS. If you don’t care about the service, then you can save a few quid, but don’t complain about it. If you value being able to contact your ISP, know who you are dealing with, be treated like a paying customer rather than an inconvenience, skip the scripted BS, deal with people who actually listen and understand why routing you via Edinburgh to get to London from the midlands is dumb and needs fixing, you pay for that service and it absolutely is worth every penny.
That’s a bit like saying all PC’s are the same because they all use Intel or AMD CPU’s and I’d hope anyone here appreciates why that is painfully inaccurate. Vodafone don’t investigate routing issues and have a nasty habit of ‘load balancing’ which in practical terms means they route your traffic via Edinburgh whenever they feel like it and DGAF. Good luck getting that changed. If the CS is a joke and the TS is the punchline. If you don’t care and just want to watch cat videos, then probably not an issue for you.
ISP’s have in general have been involved to a race to the bottom on price for decades. They’ve removed additional services like email, news servers, IRC, DNS and outsourced and off-shored CS and TS. If you don’t care about the service, then you can save a few quid, but don’t complain about it. If you value being able to contact your ISP, know who you are dealing with, be treated like a paying customer rather than an inconvenience, skip the scripted BS, deal with people who actually listen and understand why routing you via Edinburgh to get to London from the midlands is dumb and needs fixing, you pay for that service and it absolutely is worth every penny.
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Honestly if connection quality is of very little concern to you and you just "consume content" (ugh) then the best value option is likely a 5G service. It's more than capable of all the catch-up TV services you might want to use, and the upload is pretty decent.
Let's put things in perspective here, in 2001 Pipex launched the cheapest ADSL service in the UK. It was £29.95+VAT each month, on top of phone line rental. I have no idea what phone line rental was back then so let's be super generous and say it was £5 a month. £29.95+VAT in 2001 is £35.19. Let's chuck that through the inflation calculator
Why are people hard wired to think that the acceptable upper price for a gigabit FTTP service in 2024 is £35?
Let's put things in perspective here, in 2001 Pipex launched the cheapest ADSL service in the UK. It was £29.95+VAT each month, on top of phone line rental. I have no idea what phone line rental was back then so let's be super generous and say it was £5 a month. £29.95+VAT in 2001 is £35.19. Let's chuck that through the inflation calculator
Why are people hard wired to think that the acceptable upper price for a gigabit FTTP service in 2024 is £35?
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It was more than twice that for BT line rental, likely closer to three times that if paid monthly rather than annually. Cable was £10/m for phone and £3.50/m for basic TV, 512K was £50 (they actually initially pitched it higher). The hilarious part isn’t the line rental cost, it’s the £100+ install charge for the BT line… BT however let you split that over several months.Honestly if connection quality is of very little concern to you and you just "consume content" (ugh) then the best value option is likely a 5G service. It's more than capable of all the catch-up TV services you might want to use, and the upload is pretty decent.
Let's put things in perspective here, in 2001 Pipex launched the cheapest ADSL service in the UK. It was £29.95+VAT each month, on top of phone line rental. I have no idea what phone line rental was back then so let's be super generous and say it was £5 a month. £29.95+VAT in 2001 is £35.19. Let's chuck that through the inflation calculator
Why are people hard wired to think that the acceptable upper price for a gigabit FTTP service in 2024 is £35?
Without telling you what, did someone cut you off?
You're late to the party it's already been covered!
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Don't worry about it, much like most of the conversation in this thread, the comment went slightly over your head. Just try not to make sweeping flawed generalisations and obvious contradictions in your statements and it's all good
One thing I hope doesn't happen is most people attribute Zen's downfall to taking on Cityfibre connections so support took a tumble. Obviously the workload for Aquiss isn't going to double based on the footprint City Fibre have compared to Openreach but still hope it stays good.
Who in the name of <whatever imaginary friend you choose to believe in> is saying that? Zen has been on a downward slope for years, staff are literally being informed by customers about policy changes at this point, that's not a situation that should ever exist.
Soldato
I run the broadband contracts for the home offices and we went from a mix of Zen and Virgin to fully Zen then Vodafone business and now back to Zen. I have 2 lines at my own place with Upp but they are moving to Virgin in August I believe.
Vodafone are cheap and when the service works, it’s excellent. Every bit as good as anyone else and you get the fixed IP address which is great. But when you need to change something or get login details for your own router they’re hopeless. Genuinely 110% hopeless. I’m looking VERY hard at Aquiss because it’s basically a boutique ISP and while you pay more, you appear to get significantly better access to the people running it and that means you can either get what you want, or not if they can’t offer it. There is no ‘computer says no’ approach. And that’s worth an extra few pounds per month.
Honestly it's night and day. When I got my /29 and /56, Martin simply said it was all done and to let him know what I want to set the PTRs to. Imagine a conversation like that with VM or Voda.
