We recently reported that UK ISP Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) had nearly completed a major upgrade of their network (here), which would enable them to launch faster Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband packages (Openreach’s platform). The good news is these are now live, a little earlier than expected.
Previously, the fastest FTTP broadband package you could get from AAISP was their 160Mbps (30Mbps upload) tier, but the recent upgrades have meant that they’re now able to offer access all the way up to Openreach’s top 1000Mbps tier (this network currently covers 6.4 million UK premises). The ISP hasn’t yet made a formal announcement about this, but it’s definitely live on their order system (originally, we expected it in April).
New customers of this service will receive a base usage allowance of 500GB (GigaBytes), which can be boosted to 5000GB (5TB) if you pay an additional £10 per month. The package includes a 12-month minimum contract term, a static IP (IPv4/v6) address and attracts an installation charge of £100, as well as a router postage fee of £4.99.
The ISP also bundles in a Technicolor DGA0122 router, although we think they missed an opportunity here to ship a more modern WiFi 6 capable device alongside the faster packages.
Andrews and Arnold’s Home FTTP Packages
115Mbps (20Mbps upload) – £37 per month
At this point, some readers often bemoan the fact that AAISP don’t offer “unlimited” data usage on their packages, which makes them somewhat of an oddity in the market. But this is largely because they’ve always been more of a business ISP that are laser focused on service quality, as well as customer support that actually knows IT and ensuring that their network is never short on capacity.
Suffice to say, the above is a big part of the reason why they’re one of the highest rated ISPs in the market, albeit also one of the smallest. You don’t have to like how they do things to still be able to appreciate that they offer a different, but perfectly valid, choice with various positives. Lest we forget that a usage limit of 5000GB, when optionally taken, is way more than even many heavy broadband users would actually consume in a month.
I’d assume the average A&A user won’t be using their equipment for Openreach FTTP anyway, the lack of modern WiFi standards is probably okay to a lot. I’d not take this stance with one of the larger domestic providers of course.
I appreciate you have addressed the bandwidth limit, however, I can’t help but feel like a lot of people would happily throw money at A&A for a bit more than 5TB.
Anyway, glad to see them finally on the higher tiers.
I don’t know if the same speed packages are being offered on their SoHo range but, if they are, then you’d get 8TB for £16 more.
> I don’t know if the same speed packages are being offered on their SoHo range but, if they
I’ve never seen the attraction of A&A personally even with the better customer service, the pricing is way to high for the average home customer.
“At this point, some readers often bemoan the fact that AAISP don’t offer “unlimited” data usage on their packages, which makes them somewhat of an oddity in the market. But this is largely because they’ve always been more of a business ISP that are laser focused on service quality, as well as customer support that actually knows IT and ensuring that their network is never short on capacity.”
—————————————————————————————— Sorry Mark but we’re in 2022 not 1995. Even most high end business only ISPs – such as FluidOne – offer unlimited data these days. Of course F1 charge a pretty penny for their services (though you do get 24/7/365 phone support) but that doesn’t change the fact they’ve accepted that having data limits is soooo 20th century. IMHO AAISP will eventually die off if they fail to keep up with other ISPs and move with the times. I wonder who will pay for RevK’s round-the-world cruises then?
Honestly, I’d rather pay for RevK’s cruise than LGI or BT delivering ‘shareholder value’
Prices are high, but you’re paying a sustainable price, no half price offers with screw you if you don’t want to agree a new 24 month contract with annual price escalation clauses.
> Even most high end business only ISPs – such as FluidOne – offer unlimited data these days.
But are things really unlimited? Isn’t it the case that when you actually look at the small print, you start seeing phrases like; “fair use” and “throttling”?
FluidOne don’t mention any FUP or throttling in their t&c’s. They’re not cheap (they make AAISP look like a bargain basement provider) but like with most things in life, you get what you pay for. There’s nothing stopping AAISP charging £250/m (for example) for a 1000/115 Mbps unlimited data service because a) that price would keep the freeloaders away and b) it would allow AAISP to purchase sufficient bandwidth. But they’re not even willing to do that. Only revK can explain why…
> you get what you pay for. There’s nothing stopping AAISP charging £250/m (for > example) for a 1000/115 Mbps unlimited data service because a) that price would
At that price, surely you’d be getting into their ethernet territory.
> keep the freeloaders away and b) it would allow AAISP to purchase sufficient > bandwidth. But they’re not even willing to do that. Only revK can explain why…
I think the point is they don’t want people maxing their lines out 24/7 as that will degrade the service if enough people do it.
And you can’t just say, well they can buy more bandwidth
1) It’s a finite resource 2) There are other limits than just their aggregate links. Like where multiple users share a resource, e.g the PON.
I’m sure I am one of those vaunted BT shareholders, since I have a pension and socks and shares ISAs, so in reality, when I’m paying BT prices, some of it is flowing back to me .
@Andrew I agree. I max my line 24:7 pretty much and should I want to I can do around 100-150TB a month and beyond. I don’t think AA would want anyone doing that on a shared circuit.
Also there is all the benefits you get with a private circuit that AA wouldn’t want to do for anyone on a shared circuit either. (their staff do monitor but it’s their passion and not expected of them unlike a LL)
I could be wrong of course but there you go
Since AAISP mainly targets business users or professionals, they should also offer symmetric fibre packages. Also, the sole reliance on Openreach for the last-mile fibre access network can be a restriction.
I don’t know whether TalkTalk offer FTTP as a wholesale service yet but if they do (or will do) then they could make a CityFibre option available.
‘Since AAISP mainly targets business users or professionals, they should also offer symmetric fibre packages.’
They do. https://www.aa.net.uk/ethernet/
@CarlT: I was talking about symmetric broadband lines, not leased lines. There are still areas in this country where leased lines, for all practical purposes, are not an option, where it would make more sense to move office.
And before you bring it up: Not everyone has the time and/or energy to run a local broadband campaign, though 2/3 of this backwards country still hasn’t got access to available fibre broadband.
> I was talking about symmetric broadband lines, not leased lines
I expect at some point that Openreach will upgrade to a symmetric PON. But currently they are rightly concentrating on getting the fibre in the ground, the expensive, time consuming bit.
Upgrading the bits of equipment at the ends of the fibre will be a much easier task.
You mentioned business users and professionals, GNewton. I imagine business users with a requirement for more than 220 Mbps would want professional grade connections, not cheap and cheerful best effort stuff. Professionals that actually require more than Openreach’s upstream offering would I imagine find professional grade solutions.
Businesses operate with different restraints in different geographical areas and can innovate.
Given A&A have only with this announcement started selling 300Mb down I doubt higher upstream is high on their list of business requirements.
I’m aware that nearly 2/3rds of the UK don’t have access to full fibre. It’s being built out as fast as it reasonably can be. If you have some solution to build faster share it, having kicked off the patent process, and live in luxury on the proceeds.
‘I expect at some point that Openreach will upgrade to a symmetric PON. But currently they are rightly concentrating on getting the fibre in the ground, the expensive, time consuming bit.’
There’s no either or here. Openreach’s asymmetry is a business decision, nothing else. They could sell twice what they are without issues, but don’t want to risk their Ethernet revenues. Once alternative networks have enough coverage and it’s more of a thing they’ll be dragged, kicking and screaming, into finally deploying XGSPON but in the interim we’ll get SPONttPR – Symmetrical PON to the Press Release.
Be interesting to see if they trial 100GPON before getting XGSPON into production.
Data caps in 2022, lmao thats a joke especially for broadband
Yes I agree, I personally want a lot from my ISP such as static IPv4 and IPv6 assignment no filtering no QoS no quotas, technical staff on support and a reasonable prices and loyalty for staying by fix price and I get this all from Zen, so I don’t really understand what AA can really justify the higher prices and quota. And to top it off Zen also supply through BT\TT LLU and CityFibre
> I personally want a lot from my ISP such as
Check (one of my lines has a /29 of IPv4 at no extra cost)
Check (you get a /48, from which you can allocate /60’s and /64’s)
IIRC the only thing they do is prioritise small packets such as ACKs.
OK, yes, the reasons for this have been well discussed. Besides with over 9TB a month (due to roll-over) it’s essentially unlimited.
> technical staff on support
> and a reasonable prices
OK, yes, perhaps one of the more expensive ones…
> and loyalty for staying by fix price
Check (you pay the same monthly fee during and after your minimum term, in fact over the years my monthly fee’s have gone down and I’ve gotten more bandwidth allowance for the same or even less. They also don’t play silly games with special prices for new customers or bribing them to stay with lower fee’s)
I disagree – if you don’t understand why data caps exist you don’t understand the service. It’s about quality of IP and data caps are an essential part of that.
@ Jez Your statement would be perfectly valid 20 years ago but not in 2022. Bandwidth costs have come down massively in recent years.
Bob – you do not understand the service either. I would suggest a long and hard think. It’s for professional users. The data cap is essential to ensure quality of IP. Go to Virgin Media if you are a casual user.
> Your statement would be perfectly valid 20 years ago but not in 2022. Bandwidth costs have come down massively in recent years.
It’s more than just about how much bandwidth an ISP provides.
Even with FTTP you don’t have your own fibre, it’s a shared resource with up to 32 (IIRC) other users on the same PON. With GPON you only have ~2.5/1.25Gbit/sec, that’s not going to go far if you have a fully loaded PON with everyone trying to max out their 1gbit sec downlink 24/7, uplink may even become the bottleneck first depending on packet size.
Bandwidth usage follows a predictable pattern, even for “casual” ISPs. There is a lull in sleeping hours and a peak during waking hours between 8am and 10pm.
The lines are virtually idle after midnight, even on bargain basement ISPs, so long as they have even a fraction of their peak time utilisation as total capacity.
Please spare me this nonsense about caps being an essential part of traffic management. This has been debunked several times, e.g, this dinosaur article: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Bandwidth-Hog-is-a-Myth-117230
Hmmm… I’m a fan of AAISP, but 5TB on 1000Mbps is far too restrictive and the upload is pants.
For perspective, on a “fast” ADSL connection of just 20Mbps, one can download around 1.4TB in a month with 24/7 downloading. At 1000Mbps, one could do that under a day just by accident. Hence, one would have to monitor their own use like a hawk to avoid hitting that cap and in 2022 that’s just not tenable.
Also, the upload is pants, because many of these newer fibre only ISPs do symmetric 1000/1000Mbps for less money.
Yes, customer service quality is really important, but it only goes so far in mitigating the data cap. I hope that AAISP upgrade that cap to something really high so that it effectively doesn’t matter any more, but I’m not hopeful.
Alas therefore, even I would have to find another ISP if I was buying a 1000Mbps service.
How AAISP can survive long term with this restriction I’m not sure. I think they’ll increase that cap to do it, though.
It’s worth noting that I believe that A&As data usage only applies to download traffic – so you’ve got 5TB download, you can have more if you take the SoHo Package.
As for the upload… as it’s based on Openreach products the reality is there *isn’t* a FTTP option from them that is symmetric via GPON technology, so A&A can’t really offer a national product that doesn’t exist.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the greatest fan of A&A and they have some interesting quirks – some are good, some less so, but comparing them to a niche altnet that is able to offer symmetric doesn’t really make sense.
I have a leased line with A&A, which has symmetric speed. Even these packages are tempting, and, once FTTP becomes available here, I’d need to consider carefully if the additional upload speed, and the leased lone fault repair SLA, justifies the higher price.
@Vince, yes I get that they’re limited by Openreach, but in many areas, an altnet can provide that 1000/1000Mbps service for less money and offer good service too, so comparison very much makes sense in those areas. It would be stupid not to pick the altnet in those circumstances, wouldn’t it?
The SOHO service offers just 8TB / month which is nothing at that speed.
Most of those Alt-Nets use CGNAT or have no IPV6, or both.
Not 1 of the Alt-Nats have the ability to offer more than 1 single static IPV4 address. A&A will give you dozens, for free.
The reality is that nobody joins A&A for unlimited, cheap broadband. Therefore they don’t target that market. They target a specific genre of customer and tailor their products accordingly.
It’s perfectly fine that someone may not want to join A&A because they don’t offer unlimited data usage. A&A don’t want you as a customer if you intend on using that much data. They deliberately have usage caps to deter high bandwidth hogs. So it suits both customer and business not to deal with each other in those circumstances.
I’m no fan of A&A. I don’t need many of the added value offerings that you get with them so personally wouldn’t pay the higher prices. I can see why others do though.
I’m really confused. The allowance rolls over so may be built up. With that in mind I imagine you’re far more likely to run into trouble with an ISP’s AUP than a 5TB a month cap.
SOHO usage same story. If it applied to upload you could perhaps fall foul due to backups but downstream if you’re ingressing that much data hybrid connectivity rather than relying purely on broadband is probably a really good idea.
> At 1000Mbps, one could do that under a day just by accident.
You regularly “accidentally” max out a gigabit line for 24 hours?
Most home users, even power users, would struggle to max out a gigabit line _at all_, let alone for 24 solid hours!
> For perspective, on a “fast” ADSL connection of just 20Mbps, one can download around 1.4TB in a month with 24/7 downloading.
Wow, what are you downloading 24/7! You’d definitely be the type of user they’d want to avoid having.
> At 1000Mbps, one could do that under a day just by accident. Hence, one would have to monitor their own use like a hawk to avoid hitting that cap and in 2022 that’s just not tenable.
If you’re maxing your line out by ‘accident’ then you definitely want to know about it!.
> The SOHO service offers just 8TB / month which is nothing at that speed.
I’m not sure where this ‘faster speed must mean more bandwidth used’ is coming from.
I’m on 80/20, if I went to 160, I really don’t think I’d be doing twice as much download, hell, my line is only maxed out for odd short periods when I’m doing updates or downloads, it just means those updates/downloads may happen quicker…
Yes, I’m sure there is the odd demented individual sitting there maxing their connection out 24/7 doing god knows what, but they must be minuscule in number.
Or if your trying to share a single line between a block of flats all trying to do 4K streaming, but no-one would try doing that, right?! 😉
@Andrew Clayton Angry much? You come across as a really bad apologist. I could engage your arguments, but it would just end up going round in circles.
What is your current usage and your current service? Looking at ours we’re shifting about a TB a month on 1G/110M, most of that streaming.
> Angry much? You come across as a really bad apologist. I could
Not at all. I don’t see anything to apologise for, just fighting the FUD,
I can do 30+ TB a day on 1Gbps. It’s easy when you are hitting 125MB/sec as I do when I download/upload
So you have a point there
“Yes, I’m sure there is the odd demented individual sitting there maxing their connection out 24/7 doing god knows what, but they must be minuscule in number”
Yup I’m one of them. Download and upload a lot but I also understand the impact it can have so I have my own line
It’s my addiction and costs less per day than people spend on other addictions so in my mind I inconvence no one and I get exactly the type of service I expect. Win win
Thankyou for that figure. It’s even more than I thought was possible. This would make it roughly 1PB (petabayte) in a month if run flat out. That’s just gargantuan. And 2Gbps services are now starting to be rolled out…
Given these figures, one can see how 5TB is absolutely nothing, forcing one to watch that allowance meter like a hawk. Especially so if you share your connection with others who start downloading big files, usually games that you don’t know about.
I got 1gbps for the price of 500mbps as it was only £5 difference I’m told per month and it was a double bandwidth deal anyway. I have up to 10gbps if I want it (apparently £50 a month more) and I can request any speed I wish in between. it is nice to know I can upgrade with 20 days notice. I am happy with my speed and I agree if someone wants to download the earth then they should have their own line. I don’t justify to anyone anything in download because I don’t affect anyone and I demand a quick fix and I am not technically minded so a managed service is worth it.
As you said then downside is the cost. Would have been nothing had there not been a problem with the pavement near the office but I pay £309 a month and I consider it well worth it.
I see where people are coming from but I’ve always done this when I can. Back in the plus. Net dialup days I paid £99 a month for 128k home highway which was 1:1. Prices have not gone up that much since the early 2000s when you look at it.
I forgot to add for context my total cost was £3420 but I got £2800 deducted so the ECC cost to me was £620.. Total bargain
> I’m really confused. The allowance rolls over so may be built up. With that in mind I
_Half_ of your unused allowance rolls over. So the most you could build up is 2 months worth (+ any unused top-ups as they are counted separately).
I’m generally starting the month with >9TB.
Heh, I do love all the hate on AAISP because of their limits.
Honestly, who is out there downloading 5TB a month, every month? Unless you are some kind of hoarding pirate, nobody is doing that much. It’s all well and good complaining about the lack of an unlimited package, but I don’t think people understand that backhaul costs are incurred by all ISPs and are mostly absorbed by the larger ISPs because not all of us are hoarding pirates.
My quota is often 8-9TB because unused quota is rolled over.
Will be more than happy to stump up for Gbit from AAISP when I’m able.
Just because you don’t know how to use 5TB+ doesn’t mean others don’t either.
Pretty much everyone knows how to use that much, Mike. For those that don’t Google Tele2’s speed tester then Google how to either repeatedly download and delete the same file or a tiny Linux shell script to wget the test file into /dev/null and repeat ad infinitum.
Thankfully most people don’t as they have no use case and aren’t sad enough to run a pointless process to consume capacity just because it’s there. Thus keeping costs lower for everyone.
Anyone using bandwidth for the sake of it should be booted by their ISP and refused service by any other on any unlimited package. Anyone downloading a ton of content they’re never going to use as they’re some weird digital hermit should be booted from their ISP and refused unlimited service by any other. They are parasites leeching resources and providing no value to anyone for anything.
If the contract says it’s unlimited, it’s unlimited and I am entitled to use it as such.
Mike: If it says terms and conditions apply in the contract terms and conditions apply. Unlimited only means no usage cap, not that anything goes.
Pretty weak insult calling me Marx by the way. Think relying on other people to subsidise broadband usage rather than paying for what you use is far more socialist than anything I’ve said.
If you’re sad enough that you use capacity for no reason other than that it’s there, though, that’ll likely be lost on you.
Anyone else wondering about why broadband costs may rise so much need look no further than these comments.
Mike, how presumptuous of you. I know exactly how to use 5TB a month, thanks. My line of work involves investing PBs of data a month….
Top notch support staff is very good when you have temperamental DSLs. What do you have all those staff doing all day if it’s a FTTP service where you get the speeds you pay for, no ifs or buts?
I mentioned this the other day, but I’ll repeat it here: what’s the point of service if you have something which effectively never breaks?
Unfortunately Mark I don’t think you’re being impartial with statements like this:
“At this point, some readers often bemoan the fact that AAISP don’t offer “unlimited” data usage on their packages, which makes them somewhat of an oddity in the market. But this is largely because they’ve always been more of a business ISP that are laser focused on service quality, as well as customer support that actually knows IT and ensuring that their network is never short on capacity.”
But there’s no mention of things like the following:
* FTTP is far more reliable which means support is much less required. Support quality is only really important if you need to engage said support.
* Bandwidth is generally cheap and plentiful these days, any reasonable player in the market lives in a world of multiple 100G+ links. There are a lot less bottlenecks than there used to be.
* Market conditions are very different now than they used to be, and that top notch support in exchange for a few limits might be a very good thing in early 2000s with copper everywhere, but not needed in an age of ultra fast reliable fibre.
In the above paragraph you’ve targeted certain readers, you’re almost coming off as an apologist for, or advert for A&A. The points you use to back their position up I’m sure were true in the past, but are far more questionable assertions now.
To remind you of the context of your own article: this is A&A providing a service which others have made readily available for considerable time now. So, is that really a “laser focus on service quality” if services are behind competitors? I would certainly question that.
Meanwhile the article from the other day about Vodafone having limits comes off as slightly critical, and justifiably so. While this article comes across as praising and defending A&A… for having limits on their network.
> Bandwidth is generally cheap and plentiful these days, any reasonable player in the market lives in a world of multiple 100G+ links. There are a lot less bottlenecks than there used to be.
They still exist though, with GPON you have up to 32 (IIRC, that’s the split Openreach uses) endpoints sharing that ~2.5Gbit/sec download, ~1.25Gbit/sec upload.
If you have even 5 people on a single PON all trying to max out their 1Gbit/sec service, somethings got to give. AAISPs limits would discourage people from doing that for lengthy periods of time. Of course, it’s most unlikely that a PON would contain only AAISP users, so we have to share with perhaps some bandwidth vampires.
Andrew – I’ve had 2 x 1G and 1 x 300 Mbit on GPON, sharing with 31 other premises all connected to FTTP. Even at peak times I could still hit 2.1G 95%+ of the time and the lowest I saw performance go to was about 1.8G.
It’s very hard to saturate a service constantly downstream. There’s only so many Linux ISOs out there.
Ferrocene – the bottleneck on A&A was their BRAS and to a lesser extent that persists. The earlier models had two gigabit ports, the newer one 2 SFP+ and 8 SFP cages. The self-imposed requirement to continuously take telemetry from every connection in terms of usage and LCP latency imposes some overhead which alongside the bespoke build leaves a device that is extremely expensive per Mbps of throughput. It’s hardware produced by A&A for A&A to provide the pretty graphs that their customers are used to.
I entirely agree that FTTP makes the case for customers purchasing from A&A less persuasive. Far less to go wrong, CQM being there 24×7 is essentially pointless and price-performance diverges from smaller FTTP providers hugely.
@Andrew, there’s always going to be bottlenecks somewhere, unless you pay for Ethernet. And even then I can absolutely assure you that Ethernet services are not built so that every customer can use the service at 100% all the time. Any production network would be almost economically impossible to deploy if this was the case. The same with electricity for instance, even if it works 99.9999% of the time and I never encounter any issues using the power I need.
If I have 1000 users on 1Gbps connections, I do not need to have Tbps of capacity everywhere to allow my customers to use their services at max capacity when they want with zero bottlenecks. Correct capacity planning and modelling allows that.
And as you point out, the PON is shared with non A&A subscribers as well.
@Carl, from what I recall of past commentary from Adrian, the bottlenecks comment was more aimed at making sure backhaul wasn’t oversubscribed, or over-congested peering/transit links. Which is commendable when you look at the approach of Virgin Media or Vodafone which haven’t upgraded capacity in good time, either to save costs or massage financial results.
But in this day and age of high capacity links and cached CDN content much deeper in the network, the question is generally much less relevant.
It’s not 1997 and there are a lot of good networks out there. ‘Not bottlenecking’ is not the exclusive A&A selling point it’s still made out to be!
The bottleneck comment was exactly as Carl said. It’s A&A’s own kit that wasn’t capable of offering the higher speeds.
https://www.revk.uk/2022/03/faster-fibre-at-a.html
“The reason is the LNSs, the boxes that handle the links from us to customers. Long ago we upgraded the underlying links to carriers to multiple 10Gb/s pipes. This was an important step. We also upgraded a lot of transit and peering links to 10Gb/s. But the LNSs we use only have 2Gb/s links. We have a lot of them, which is great as it spreads the load, but any one customer will be one LNS.”
“@Andrew, there’s always going to be bottlenecks somewhere, unless you pay for Ethernet. And even then I can absolutely assure you that Ethernet services are not built so that every customer can use the service at 100% all the time”
How so? My line has 3 links onto multiple 100Gbps networks I’m told. That’s exactly what they are designed to do?
But further on Adrian writes
“So, naturally we need the next generation FireBrick LNSs for faster lines. These have 28Gb/s of ports, though in practice they will mainly use the two 10Gb/s ports linked. This may not seem a huge step but it allows us to have these new LNS running at much higher capacity and still have headroom for bursting at 1Gb/s speeds from high speed FTTP customers. We also have these as routers for Ethernet links.”
“… and still have headroom for bursting at 1Gb/s speeds …”
So even with the new LNSs, he wouldn’t want all (or even just some proportion) of his users maxing their connections out constantly.
So at the moment usage limits are still a key part in and to quote “not be the bottleneck”.
I generally get the same speeds and latency regardless of day of week or time of day (of course they can’t control what happens on the wider Internet).
Its all there is black and white, if it suits then use them and if not then go elsewhere. Just don’t moan if you end up with an ISP like Brawband who are evasive about their 1TB limit that has morphed into a hidden FUP once they were rumbled.
I had to read this twice I literally saw bawbag the first time. Typical woman I know!
If its not unlimited then no thanks. About to order my 1gb fttp from you fibre
Did you read You Fibre’s T&Cs then? https://www.youfibre.com/legal/residential-terms-and-conditions/
“You agree that we may intermittently monitor your use of our Services including data volume and type of traffic … to assist our traffic management. If you use the Service … in a way which interferes with other customers’ use of the Service, we may suspend your use of our Service … or end our contract”
Or their acceptable usage policy? https://www.youfibre.com/legal/acceptable-usage-policy/
“You must not … make excessive use of, or overload, our Network”
What constitutes “excessive” is entirely at their discretion. Whereas with AAISP, you get 5TB that you can use at any time that you like, no questions asked.
I was on an “unlimited” contract with Pipex once.
They booted me off inside 1 month for “excessive use”
I remember Adrian saying people should not be using all their quota which is why they started the rollover
> I remember Adrian saying people should not be using all their quota which is why they started the rollover
There would be no point rolling it over if you couldn’t then use it!
What I imagine they meant was: “a user typically won’t use 5TB in a month. Even so, we’ll roll over excess so that you can get an even higher quota the next month”
> If I have 1000 users on 1Gbps connections, I do not need to have Tbps of > capacity everywhere to allow my customers to use their services at max
> capacity when they want with zero bottlenecks. Correct capacity planning > and modelling allows that.
And that’s perfectly fine.
The issue is that from the comments I’ve seen here and not just this thread, but rather a common theme, is that because a service is *labelled* as *unlimited* then it’s acceptable to max out your connection 24/7.
Those people who come out of the woodwork and make extremely over the top positive comments about certain companies and feel the need to reply to ever negative comments about those companies must have a vested interest in them.
Maybe. There’s something pretty strange about those rocking up on here to complain about a service they’ll never use, too.
I entirely agree the company has its fanboys. I stand by my comments about it losing some of its niche with FTTP. People seem to be getting awfully excited about a product they’re never going to use, though.
If I didn’t have the service I do I would probably be using them for my backup.
All tiers available on 12 month contracts, AAISP still the best for tenants, ofcom seem happy with the contract length situation when I contacted them about it on other isps.
Also unlike other ISPs AAISP prices don’t go up on a annual basis with inflation busting rises.
Zen, Plusnet (and John Lewis Broadband), Shell Energy all offer 12 month contracts – and BT started offering them again last year.
NOW and Cuckoo both offer one-month contracts, though with both providers if you opt for the one-month contract you have to pay a £60 set-up fee – if you choose a 12 month contract then there is no set-up fee.
(So if you just want a service for say 10 or 11 months, it might make sense to go for the 12-month contract and just buy yourself out of the remaining time.)
Cuckoo does offer a 12-month price promise – the promise being no price rise within your first year with them. This includes customers on one-month contracts.
Zen meanwhile offers their “Lifetime Price Guarantee”, though not for one-month contracts. It is possible to keep this lifetime price guarantee when moving addresses, so long as the same product is available at the new address.
By all accounts AAISP is great, but they’re not the only provider to offer 12-month contracts.
I genuinely read ‘Tennants’ first time there. Might grab a beer.
> All tiers available on 12 month contracts, AAISP still the best for tenants, ofcom
Just to be clear, that’s a minimum term, after that it’s rolling monthly, some things are 6 months minimum term and some are 1 month minimum term. I guess it depends on what the upfront costs are they need to recoup.
Yes there is a few packages available, but they are selective.
e.g. can you get BT’s top package on a 12 month deal?
I thought was odd when I noticed only one package was available on two different isp’s for 12 months, until ofcom responded that they only require one package per technology to be for 12 months.
Regarding Zen where are you seeing these 12 months packages?
Cityfibre packages on their website.
Full fibre 100 and 300 18 months Full fibre 500 and 900 24 months
BT retail, only their lowest tiered FTTP package is 12 months, they did the minimal possible to comply with Ofcom, but what I will say they at least offer a package, unlike Zen. If you can confirm “all” their FTTP tiers are 12 month min term then please do so.
AAISP all their FTTP tiers 12 months min term. There is a reason they call themselves a no nonsense ISP.
Plusnet dont sell FTTP. Probably same with John Lewis as they resell Plusnet.
With providers hiding theur packages unless you pass a availability check its difficult to check everyone, but why are ok with people with this kind of segmentation of availability of products and long term commitment requirement? The wholesalers dont require these commitment lengths.
Wow who thought that this announcement from AAISP would be so controversial?
Anyway, I’d just like to wade in that AAISP do actually offer a truly unlimited service: ethernet. That’s symmetric bandwidth that you can saturate 24/7 with no restrictions on you, ever. It’s right there in the product description. They can offer this because it’s a 1:1 contention ratio service, ie only you.
The catch of course, is that it costs a huge amount of money to install and so is the monthly fee. These are business prices.
Someone above said even a LL was not designed to be maxed out 24/7
They are of course wrong and they need to stop assuring people otherwise but I agree with you
I will say at 8k a month Aaisp were a bit too rich for my wallet and I can run the quote again if anyone wants proof. That was for a 1gbps on the same carrier
Over 10 years my bandwidth usage has went from about 200 to 600GB a month
Only this past 3 years i’ve went from VDSL2 50/10 to FTTP 500/500 my usage? its went up about 5% yet my speed has went up 10 fold
My ISP told me my speed might go up but my usage won’t as I’ll just download things faster. But now I download more because I can do more in the same amount of time so not really dumb
They operate on the assumption that people download and upload content, etc, they intend to use, not because they can.
They’re nearly always right.
Just read the comment. It’s accurate. Networks aren’t scaled on the assumption every Ethernet user is using all their capacity all the time alongside the residential peak.
This works pretty well as business peaks are morning and afternoon weekdays while residential is evening and weekends.
Businesses use what’s needed to do business. They don’t use capacity because it’s there. Constantly saturating capacity means needing to use technology to try and keep real-time traffic smooth and is hit and miss on Internet traffic.
Even business focused ISPs heavily overbook. It works fine and no-one notices thanks to the wonders of statistical contention.
okay so because I don’t have fixed times then I shouldn’t be maxing out my line all the time? Is that the jist of what you are saying?
If so they mis sold me and told me I could! – and I will be mighty pissed!
The testosterone is showing ‘Anna’.
When you switch names it’s a good plan to use both simultaneously for a bit so that it isn’t blatantly obvious when you post about the same stuff and write in the same manner while the earlier name goes silent on a topic that would be right up their alley.
at least I am still in Business Carl – unlike those who had to fold due to being crap at it.
Know what I mean? Of course you do.
Thanks for that – confirmed who you are though it was obvious.
The company you mention was put to sleep and never traded, it didn’t ‘fold’ I just didn’t see any point in leaving it there, filing dormant accounts.
As you might have known had you read the Companies House filing history the one set of accounts were for a dormant company, and it was voluntarily dissolved afterwards.
I guess you got a bit excited over seeing ‘dissolved’ on there but nothing exciting I am afraid. A placeholder that was never used.
Crazy to me that quotas still exist in 2022! And people are still spewing the “it’s a premium service” argument. Also, I’d like to know, how exactly is it a premium service? Does it come with an SLA, any sort of performance, or uptime guarantee? or is it just a rebranded, resell of an already existing access infrastructure that AAISP doesn’t really control.
“They have better support than other ISPs” This maybe true but how many times are you needing support a month to justify the £20-£30 a month price increase over other ISPs. I personally haven’t used my isp support in years and that’s with FTTC and if we’re to believe that FTTP is inherently more reliable then the need for super awesome support goes down yet again.
Now let me ramble about quotas! Let me give you a real-world scenario, for me at least. I currently have a NAS that has around 18TB stored on it. It’s fully backup up to the cloud. If for any reason this NAS outright fails I could fully rebuild and restore all data from cloud back up @ 940mbps in around 2 days. Now if I was to use AAISP @ 940mbps that same rebuild time would take 4 Months or I could buy the needed bandwidth for £650. Crazy!
Yea its crazy how people are defending them but this ISP Andrews, uses Openreach, same as other isps and none of them cap and give data. Everyone’s saying premium service, how so???? Lol people are really brainwashed. Its 2022 not 2002, stop trying to defend ispd that give data caps when it doesnt charge the isp anything.
@John be nice to know the service you use please? I can’t fine more than 20tb for a mind bending PPM
They use the TalkTalk Business network too which is far superior IMHO
@John: Curious: What cloud backup service do you use with such a high diskspace allowance? On what ISP do you use, presumably it won’t be an asymmetric Openreach fibre?
‘On what ISP do you use, presumably it won’t be an asymmetric Openreach fibre?’
People with big data, weirdos using tons of data because they’re sad who want to backup the latest Marvel ‘Linux ISO’ aside, will use incremental backups, not full ones every time.
Depending on the service they’re using it’s quite likely they do what I do and automatically sync the content they want backed up as it arrives.
Lastly basically no backup service that most folks are using will allow gigabit upload. Even commercial backup services won’t. For that you’re talking a full cloud infrastructure from storage to network or leasing colocation space and an uplink.
With all that in mind while the Openreach solution isn’t ideal it’s an option that’ll work fine. If you’re generating so much data that you can’t maintain recovery point with 100 Mbit/s and it’s legit you really shouldn’t be using broadband as your reliance on SLAs makes it unviable.
@Anna @Gnewton Maybe I used the word Cloud backup too loosely. It’s more of a personal dedicated server @ Leaseweb that I use as an offsite backup using rclone/synching.
It’s a 4x12TB Raid5 from WalkersServer for around £60p/m
Thanks. That’s cheaper than I have to fork out for mine so I will look into that!
@CarlT: My question was directed at John, not you. But since you commented on it:
“People with big data, weirdos using tons of data”
“If you’re generating so much data that you can’t maintain recovery point with 100 Mbit/s and it’s legit”
I think you come across here quite judgemental or biased here. Not every small business uses leased lines. Nor do most user get involved in local campaigns just to get a normal fibre telecom service like you did in the past. 2/3 of this backwards country don’t have the option of a FTTP service at all, unlike you.
Umm I’m not the one who responded to OP’s comment about how he uses his service with snark over how it can’t be an Openreach FTTP service.
The rest I stand by given the context: your fixation that everyone must have symmetrical else it’s pointless making you produce a pithy comment then getting all butthurt when called on it.
On another point your response to: ‘With all that in mind while the Openreach solution isn’t ideal it’s an option that’ll work fine. If you’re generating so much data that you can’t maintain recovery point with 100 Mbit/s and it’s legit you really shouldn’t be using broadband as your reliance on SLAs makes it unviable.’
‘ I think you come across here quite judgemental or biased here. Not every small business uses leased lines.’
I think you come across as not having read things properly, and you don’t know what a recovery point is. If you did you would know that I specifically said that if a business were generating so much data they needed to backup over 100Mbit/s they should not be using regular broadband. Falling back to a copper or 4G service can’t work for them, they need the SLA that comes with a leased line.
The last part quote me in full context: ‘People with big data, weirdos using tons of data because they’re sad who want to backup the latest Marvel ‘Linux ISO’ aside, will use incremental backups, not full ones every time.’
Anyone using their broadband’s capacity for no valid purpose other that that this shared resource is there merits disdain. They need psychological help, not symmetrical broadband.
The other stuff about broadband availability no idea what that has to do with the thread in question. It was about a single person’s use case with the service in hand.
I’d hope you’d also know what incremental backups are – that’s why I mentioned the 100 Mbit figure. Once the initial backup is done only changes are sent.
Taken in context, with the appropriate background knowledge, nothing I said was especially controversial.
Given the amount of mock outrage in the comments on this story [despite the fact that all the points raised were covered in the article], I wonder if the Russian troll factories have mistaken this story for something to do with an upcoming election in the UK? Meanwhile, back on topic, Openreach subbies have been pulling blue rope in the ducts in my street. Maybe I will be able to order a fibre product at some point this decade?
No idea – who are you calling a Russian Troll anyway?
I dread to think what cap zealots would think of the metered service I have. I pay 95th percentile usage on my second line in return for a lower monthly charge. Perfect for a backup / policy based routing line.
Aren’t you a bit judgemental here? Different users have different profiles, as simple as that!
‘Given the amount of mock outrage in the comments on this story [despite the fact that all the points raised were covered in the article]’
If you’re on here complaining about the data limit of an ISP you have no intention of using just because it’s there you’re a cap zealot. You’re also a tool.
‘Different users have different profiles, as simple as that!’
So do ISPs. They aren’t obligated to change their products because randoms that are never going to use them anyway think they shouldn’t have data limits.
ISPs have ‘profiles’ that are too absurd they go out of business. Users have ‘profiles’ that are too absurd their ISP, hopefully, boots them. It’s legitimate for users to cross-subsidise one another to some extent, it’s not legitimate for a small group to consume excessive resources not because there’s any legitimate purpose because they have some kink over how many TB a month they can use.
@Ferrocene Cloud “FTTP is far more reliable which means support is much less required.”
True you do remove one big class of faults, but gain a set of new ones by having individual config on the ONT, in particular it can’t be replaced by simply popping out to the shop and buying a new router as is the case with ADSL/VDSL if needed, you’ll need to get Openreach out to swap and configure the replacement.
Zen customers who have been through a backhaul shift and had things break will know that this can be a completely non-straightforward task…
Do CityFibre’s ONTs also need to be configured? Or are they plug-n-play out of the box ?
‘True you do remove one big class of faults, but gain a set of new ones by having individual config on the ONT, in particular it can’t be replaced by simply popping out to the shop and buying a new router as is the case with ADSL/VDSL if needed, you’ll need to get Openreach out to swap and configure the replacement.’
The individual config is part of the provisioning process and is done remotely. Much the same as the individual config on VDSL DSLAMs is done remotely.
Openreach engineers don’t configure anything. If an ONT breaks they’ll replace it and phone someone to provision the new one.
I’ve had 3 FTTP services provisioned on my ONT, 1 of them moved from BT Wholesale to TTB, and seen no issues at all.
Your ISP to device mapping is done by the OLT in the Openreach headend. The ONU doesn’t do much, it just maps an Ethernet port onto a GEM Port ID and does some QoS.
Given the vast majority of people just plug in whatever their ISP gives them and the PON+ONU fault rate is way lower than xDSL it shouldn’t be a problem.
Well, i love the latency above all else, and that 5tb limit i never reached, in fact they’ve been rolling the unused data to next month and I’ve been downloading massive updates for games and demo try-before-buying games. For xbox, ps4pro and win10. Some games are around 100gb easily. If the internal hdd fills up, i got external 8tb, so that i dont have to waste life downloading again.
Real-time online games needs perfect latency, even with a few folks from my line watching streaming stuff…
I was with virgin for good 15 years… never going back to anything. I’m a freedom & choice sort of person, none of that botism, if folk are too stupid to notice being shafted, and not technically minded, can’t be bothered to learn or even read up on stuff online and arm themselves with knowledge, good luck to them! All in all, I’m very satisfied, and love the service, i could stay with them for ever, it does everything i want and need.
Not sure why I’m even bothered telling some ignorant fools, I’m sure everyone has made up their minds, as have I.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.