ISP Choice

[truebluesteve]

Hello All

 

I'm sure this has been done to death, and for that I apologise in advance but I'm about to decide on our new ISP and its likely to be either RM or Schools Broadband, and I wondered if any of you had experiences, good or bad, that they could share to help the the decision making process.

 

We have Smoothwall hosted locally so there won't be any filtering done by the ISP, so its just bog standard connectivity that I'm getting

 

Obviously if you know of a super amazing ISP then let me know too!

 

Thanks

[rogerdnixon]

We have been with Virgin Media for a while. Zero downtime or issues.

[synaesthesia]

Just moved from Schools Broadband due to the poor reliability and lack of confidence to Wave9. Professional, quick install and so far service looks spot on Have heard good about RM and Exa Networks, both worth a look. Also if you're in a dark fibre connected area it will be worth checking as you can get some cracking speeds for not a lot of money with that.

[Saladin]

We also use Virgin Media and they have been excellent. Very fast and support has been great for the few times we have needed it.

[siuko]

Virgin Media and Smoothwall here too - no problems to speak of

[sparkeh]

Used to be with RM and connection was stable and had no complaints really.

 

However, we did move to Wave9 and have been really impressed. The installation was the most stress free I have experienced. Support is great and very responsive. Can't recommend them highly enough.

[Fazza]

We spent SIX MONTHS contacting Virgin Media trying to get them to quote for broadband but no one ever got back to us! We constantly phoned and emailed both generic people and a named person but to no avail, they didnt want our money.

 

We ended up going with EXA and you'll never guess who they used for the leased line?! VM!!

[synaesthesia]

Virgin have never appeared to want to get anyone's business, but generally you'll end up with one of 3 providers for leased lines; bonus is you never have to deal with them

[mikkydoos]

RM and Schools broadband (IMO) are probably the two worst you could think to choose. I remember RM from way back - never for me and I've read woes about SB.

 

Virgins support is sub-dreadful but the product is good and steady -- until it isn't.

 

Go for a Virgin reseller - they will be cheaper than dealing directly with Virgin for the same product.

 

Exa tried to give me the hard sell. Because of that they didn't get the deal -- didn't trust their support would hold up.

 

 

I saved £4000 over 3 years using Zen Internet this time around replacing a Virgin line with the same virgin line. Zen are very good.

Wave 9 seemed decent when I spoke to them.

 

Also compare the prices for another filtering solution. Just 'cos you have Smoothwall now doesn't mean it's the be all and end all.

Sophos looked damn good when I trialed it.

 

I tend to avoid BT and their resellers. Service support is no good.

Edited February 26, 2018 by mikkydoos

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hello All

 

I'm sure this has been done to death, and for that I apologise in advance but I'm about to decide on our new ISP and its likely to be either RM or Schools Broadband, and I wondered if any of you had experiences, good or bad, that they could share to help the the decision making process.

 

We have Smoothwall hosted locally so there won't be any filtering done by the ISP, so its just bog standard connectivity that I'm getting

 

Obviously if you know of a super amazing ISP then let me know too!

 

Thanks

 

Hi Steve,

 

although we've had a few problems with our hosted Lightspeed service in the past our core network is 100% for the last 3 years so customers with their own onsite boxes haven't had any issues unless its been down to a specific circuit or carrier fault.

 

Thank you for considering us.

 

Dave

[mikkydoos]

I stated this about Exa....

 

Exa tried to give me the hard sell. Because of that they didn't get the deal -- didn't trust their support would hold up.

 

That was too harsh. They were actually really helpful.

Their packages just didn't suit us at the time.

[round2it]

I can not fault exa networks, great service no down time support is great first class service they go above and beyond and it was the best thing we ever did.

[AlanD]

We have a 300Mb/s Virgin broadband line (20Mb/s uplink) and a plusnet 80Mb/s FTTC connection for resilience. We notice very little contention during the day (less than 20%)..and both together cost use around £120 a month. Thought about leased line - but our upload speeds doesn't justify it....despite using Office 365 and Google.

[Andy_Cap]

Stay away from Schools Broadband, awful company.

 

Over 4 years, regular technical issues (service down, poor performance). On contract renewal, I dared query the cost and why we had to pay a year in advance when others in the industry state they are charged monthly after the initial term. The reply was hostile, evasive and duplicitous. We were threatening with disconnection if we didn't pay in full immediately.

 

We've now left the company for the most part (I still have other schools with them) and they're insisting we pay to ship their equipment back otherwise we'll be charged (I'd be interested to know what they charge for 5-year old equipment!). Never had any service credits back, despite being owed and were confirmed by email.

 

I've never used RM, but had quotes which were very competitive (for leased line, not so good for FTTC). I don't feel they would ever act as petty as SBB. Save yourself future grief and stay away from SBB.

[synaesthesia]

Whilst they've had issues I've certainly never heard of them suffering with problems like that; we may have moved away but I will defend their support & sales guys until the end. I'd strongly suggest getting in touch with David Tindall even if you are now out of contract; one thing they continue to do well and always have in my opinion is actually listening to people to improve.

[rob_coles]

We’ve been with exa a number of years. Support is first class when you need it. No real problems.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Stay away from Schools Broadband, awful company.

 

Over 4 years, regular technical issues (service down, poor performance). On contract renewal, I dared query the cost and why we had to pay a year in advance when others in the industry state they are charged monthly after the initial term. The reply was hostile, evasive and duplicitous. We were threatening with disconnection if we didn't pay in full immediately.

 

We've now left the company for the most part (I still have other schools with them) and they're insisting we pay to ship their equipment back otherwise we'll be charged (I'd be interested to know what they charge for 5-year old equipment!). Never had any service credits back, despite being owed and were confirmed by email.

 

I've never used RM, but had quotes which were very competitive (for leased line, not so good for FTTC). I don't feel they would ever act as petty as SBB. Save yourself future grief and stay away from SBB.

 

Hi @Andy_Cap,

 

i'll send you a PM shortly. Firstly I'm sorry you haven't been happy and have moved away. This is of course your choice which I respect. Let me please respond to some of your specific points as many people do read these threads.

 

Annual contracts - We have always charged annual in advance for our contracts. The main reason for this is that our UTM and web filtering licences we buy are on a minimum 3 year term with an annual 1 year extension. We can't buy these licences monthly. From some of our carriers to get the best prices we also have to pay annually in advance. In the Education sector annual contracts are the norm. Yes some ISP's do monthly or quarterly contracts on connectivity only but then they don't always do the other bundled services. Even if you went a day over your contract we'd still have to buy another 12 months UTM and web filtering licence so we have to hold our clients to an annual renewal as we are held with our suppliers.

 

Ref Service credits - I will PM you. If you are owed service credits then we will give you these back. It's not the norm for ISP's to give any service credits and I know we go over and above the industry average as other education ISPs do not give any and only have "target SLA's" rather than true binding SLA"s with penalties for failure.

 

Equipment return - Unlike some ISP's we do not charge you for the equipment up front. We effectively lend this to our customers over the period of the term. The routers still do have value and we do sometimes re-use them. if not we have to dispose of them correctly. We don't think it's too much asking you to pop it back to us in the post and this is clearly defined in our terms and conditions everyone signs up to. We don't charge to ship to to you either.

 

PM to come to you shortly.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[DGardiner]

Virgins support is sub-dreadful but the product is good and steady -- until it isn't.

 

eh? they have a 4-hour sla on fixes for our leased lines, only had downtime one link arguably a couple of times but it was always fixed prompt? the other 4 lines have been rock solid since install 7 years ago.

[nicholab]

We are with Wave9 and every thing happened as quick as they could make it (In time for my holiday). Personal service people to talk to they must be running the company wrong.