A tale of two ISPs

I switched to Namesco as my ISP nearly 3 years ago, because they offered a fixed 2M package (my line had always done 2M and no more) with 100G download per month. I paid a year in advance.

Mostly, I got what I paid for - 2M download speeds and virtually unlimited data downloads. Occasionally, the Internet went away, but mostly it was fine. At renewal time, the cost of the 2M fixed package had increased, and the data allowance had gone down to 1G per month, purchase extra as required. After a review of my download habits, I decided 10G extra was enough. I renewed for a year, paid in advance to take advantage of a discount, and expected the same level of service as I had the year before. Didn't happen. Mostly, I got Internet at fluctuating speeds.
After another year, I renewed again, but this time with an 8M ADSL+ package that was cheaper than my fixed 2M package (by about £100 per year). That, if anything, was worse. The connection speed was up and down, the Internet took frequent holidays from me, and my ISP always started the diagnostics with "Please reboot your router" and then had me crawling under the desk to put the connection in the master socket (which was where it was from the last time!), then said the line test was fine etc etc.

Eventually I found mention of an ISP who appeared to be a little more pro-active on its customers behalf.

I rang their sales line and had a chat to a guy who listened to what I told him about my sorry tale and then said that they did not guarantee to get my speed back to 2M, but that they would at least get BT to run tests before expecting me to pay - and they agreed with me that a line capable of 2M just doesn't drop to .5M without there being a problem somewhere along the path from the exchange to my house.

Long story short. After just two months with these guys, I have had BT replace my line from the exchange to the pole at the back of my house and I now have an Internet connection that has been stable for 96+ hours at roughly 2.5M.

The name of these guys is "Andrews and Arnold" and you can find them at http://aaisp.net.uk . Read their Broadband page, then their Support page and you will get an idea of where these guys are coming from. Their charging model won't suit everyone, but it sure suits the way I work.

Obviously two months is a very short time, and a long term assessment of these guys will take time.

But 2.5M in two months from .5M? That's huge! Especially after the other shower did nothing for 7 months.