UPDATE AAISP UK Officially Launch New Home Broadband ISP Package

Business ISP Andrews and Arnold (AAISP) has today officially announced the introduction of a simplified new broadband package for home users (Home::1), which forgoes the providers complicated “units based” charging model in favour of a simple usage allowance quota. But is it too expensive?

The service, which includes a free wireless router and IPv6 support as standard (plus one IPv4 address), is largely unchanged from the trial package that was launched at the start of last week. It costs from £25 per month with a 50GB (GigaBytes) usage allowance (plus unlimited uploads) or £35 if you want a 150GB allowance (additional top-ups can be bought for £10 per 50GB).

The standard package offers ADSL / ADSL2+ connectivity (maximum speeds of up to 20-24Mbps) but customers choosing to pay an extra +£10 per month will be able to add a superfast broadband (FTTC) connection with maximum download speeds of up to 40Mbps (10Mbps uploads); another +£10 on top of that will get you the up to 80Mbps (20Mbps uploads) boost.

Needless to say that AAISP’s first real attempt at a home package is somewhat on the expensive side, although they’ve always targeted themselves more towards “technically savvy individuals” who seek a competent IT customer support team and more advanced line monitoring services.

Alex Bloor, AAISPs Business Development Manager, told ISPreview.co.uk last week:

“Our home users are often technically savvy individuals who appreciate our level of support, very proactive line monitoring (we LCP echo every line every second, then plot all those on graphs of loss and latency), and range of services; including some that might be considered less commonplace, such as a static IPv4 address, a real IPv6 block, the possibility of bonding multiple lines, and so forth.”

In essence it’s a business connection targeted towards home users, which is not unlike Zen Internet’s approach. AAISP are also well known for going to extreme lengths in order to get their customers broadband woes resolved. Even so it’s still quite pricey.

For more information:
http://www.aa.net.uk/broadband-home1.html

UPDATE 12th December 2012

AAISP have boosted the packages usage allowances from 25GB to 50GB for £25 a month, while the “high usage” option has increased from 100GB to 150GB for £35.