Which FTTC ISP?

Zico

Zico

Zico

Soldato
Joined
15 Jan 2003
Posts
4,951
Location
South East
My local cab is now live and my predicted speeds are 73mb down / 20mb up.

Line is on Openreach network and our calls are with BT (Anytime + Line Rental saver to September this year).

I'm currently with VFast (wireless ISP) paying £36.99 for 24mb down / 10mb up. This is a guide of what I would be prepared to pay for FTTC.

Household usage is around 100GB a month (very rarely 150GB+) with a mix of online gaming (PC, Xbox Live) and tv/video streaming, working from home plus the usual web surfing. Up to 6 users online at one time.

Have briefly looked at:
BT Infinity
ADSL24
PlusNet
Zen

I have Sky TV but I am going to rule out going with Sky for the following reasons:
1) Don't want to move our landline over to Sky's network (as far as I am aware this is compulsory for new broadband & phone customers).
2) Had Sky Free talk + Unlimited DSL on a second phone line up to ~12months ago - line developed a fault (both voice and DSL dropped) which was not fixed inside of 3 months. Openreach attended 3 times and could not locate a fault. Sky then basically gave up in trying to get the fault fixed (kept telling me that I would have to pay Openreach's charges for further engineer visits).

Any other suggestions are welcomed.
 
Sky. :p

Nothing wrong with moving line rental. Any ISP would start refusing to send another engineer after three failed attempts to find a fault.
 
KIA said:
Sky. :p

Nothing wrong with moving line rental. Any ISP would start refusing to send another engineer after three failed attempts to find a fault.
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No.

Sky take the line from Openreach and I and I don't want that.

I fail to understand how the Openreach engineers failed to find a fault (no dial tone, no broadband, nothing on the line). I had NO internal wiring, the master socket was the only point inside the property straight from the external drop wire, no other devices connected (phone, digi box etc.).

I place more blame on Sky as my contract was with them and not Openreach. They failed to assist me and failed to follow up with Openreach to fix my line. They were however quiet happy to take the money and issue no refund for 3 months (nil) service!!!
 
BT will do the job, as they will for most.
All this "Apocalyptic" talk of traffic shaping doesn't effect me in the least because I never use P2P (no need to go into why I don't use it - suffice to say I don't watch or download illegal material and all major downloads come down just as fast of HTTP).

If of course your in the P2P crowd then BT may not be your best choice.
 
stoofa said:
BT will do the job, as they will for most.
All this "Apocalyptic" talk of traffic shaping doesn't effect me in the least because I never use P2P (no need to go into why I don't use it - suffice to say I don't watch or download illegal material and all major downloads come down just as fast of HTTP).

If of course your in the P2P crowd then BT may not be your best choice.
Click to expand...

I'm not a P2P user (use to do a little back in the day). I also use several measures to make sure nobody else in the house uses P2P so no worries on that front.

I do the odd bit of newsgroups (grab the odd US TV show years before we get it here) but that is setup overnight.

To be honest I was with BT Broadband for 1mb DSL (we have a long line to the exchange but ~300yd's to FTTC cab) and they were fine for everything then.
 
I will recommend Zen, if you have had issues with technical support and you want some piece of mind regarding fault finding and resolving, look no further. Only problem is that the Active package is for 100GB per month which is in your price range, next package up is £45.60.
 
KIA said:
Only line rental.
Click to expand...

Which means that I would have to deal with Sky only to sort out any problems and, as already mentioned, my previous experiences of them have been ****ing ****!!

I've been with BT Retail and Sky and had issues with both. Openreach engineers are the same for either company but BT Retail didn't treat me as bad as Sky did.
 
Another +1 for BT, they're great for FTTC, our house averages fairly high usage of 300GB which i've seen hit 500GB sometimes per month with no consequences. Dump the HH3 and drop in a RT56U or the like and be the proud owner of beast broadband :D
 
Gammawolf said:
Another +1 for BT, they're great for FTTC, our house averages fairly high usage of 300GB which i've seen hit 500GB sometimes per month with no consequences. Dump the HH3 and drop in a RT56U or the like and be the proud owner of beast broadband :D
Click to expand...

I've got an Asus RT-N16 (running Tomato) at the moment but I will most likely be using that for a different project soon. I will likely upgrade to the RT-N56 or 66 with Tomato/third party firmware.

morfmedia said:
Beast broadband, subject to throttling etc etc......
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Hmm, thanks for your deep and concise input in this thread. Mind the door on the way out please :rolleyes:.
 
Guy said:
I will recommend Zen, if you have had issues with technical support and you want some piece of mind regarding fault finding and resolving, look no further. Only problem is that the Active package is for 100GB per month which is in your price range, next package up is £45.60.
Click to expand...
Zen's service in general is excellent. Failing that, one of the ISPs which offers a fixed peak-time / unlimited any time is good.
 
What about plusnet with the £5 pro addon. This removes the throttling, therefore giving you 120GB daytime, unlimited overnight for the odd scheduled download.
 
How long ago were you with BT? I left BT in 2007 due to them wrecking my connection and going from a stable 8mb line to a 4max due to being port shifted to a broken line card. I was a lover of BT and getting a nice vision box package i was so happy but sadly it came to an end when they refused to fix my line issues and sort out a very old drop cable that was split & had been cut and badly joined.

I left BT but will always remember the good days of english cs in 2004/05 when I had a great line. I went to adsl24 & they were great & had to be the best isp although expensive, next stop o2.

O2 has great cs & english speaking which was a bonus but sadly a house move forced me to get sky. I have no issues with sky and so far their cs has been as good as o2 and I wished I lived in a fibre area but my friends have it & so far they love it.... GRRRRR I thin its down to luck really with any isp.

If you did go with sky, open reach come fit a new box on the wall for your fibre and essentially your using openreach equipment. BT now is just like any other isp with equipment in the exchange and despite fond memories its basically another llu isp.
 
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