Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) Reviews

My experience was not so good with AAISP. In particular, they failed to resolve a problem with my BT line, and I did not find the support provided particularly helpful.

I also found they were not competitive in relation to download limits.

These problems were only resolved when I moved to Xilo, though this may be because the switch to Xilo meant using BE in my local exchange rather than BT.

In general, if a broadband supplier does not fix a recurring problem in a couple of months, it may be time to move.

And yet, the perfect broadband supplier may be forever elusive. For the first time, I have experienced a problem with Xilo - being disconnected twice when trying to contact their technical support. I can't help wondering if most small broadband suppliers struggle once they become more popular. And of course, if they are bought up by one of the major ISPs, service will usually rapidly deteriorate.

Part of the difficulties I have experienced may be due to distance from the exchange (5 km), and it would be nice to think that 4G will (eventually!) provide an answer, except that there may be technical capacity issues ...

In the meantime, I guess wasting time switching suppliers is an inevitability given that none seem to remain that good for that long ...

I have been with Andrews and Arnold now for many many years and I must say you get a lot for your money and dedicated support at no extra cost.

The only downside to A&A is BT Openreach and their lack of turning up, understanding the faults or willing to do anything. A&A are always on their toes but BT Openreach have no common sence or even redundancy in their network. If I had my way I would have a cable laid from site direct to A&A but the distance is far too long.

Their graphs are excelent, even BT engineers are impressed with what we as a customer can see, we seem to see more than them.

A&A has many features such as packet dump and many more planed as they grow from strength to strength.

This is one company I would buy shared in if it was floated on the stock market.

You can't fault this ISP because their efforts to resolve issues are taken on a personal front.

They don't just provide internet access, so I would have a look at their website to get a better understanding of what they offer, and if they don't offer it then I'm sure they will in the future!

My exchange was upgraded to FTTC fairly early and as I am 3.5Km from the exchange but only 50m from the cabinet I was looking forward to my ISP offering the service. After waiting a year it admitted that the wait would be much longer so I decided to move.

From my ISP I need a connection with a block of allocated IPv4 addresses. I don't need web space, email and other frippery. I picked A&A because it can provide this with no fuss and I've heard nothing bad about it from people I know who already used it.

The installation was difficult, which was Openreach's fault - two missed engineer appointments and then third (and what I had said would be final) time lucky. I think that some people at A & A had to work quite hard to get that third appointment right and they even discounted half of the install cost (which I hadn't asked for and I expect wasn't refunded by Openreach). When I needed to call A & A the phone was answered quickly by a human.

Since then the connection has been great. I pay for 'up to 40 Mbps' and the line sync speed is 39.8 Mbps. Can't say fairer than that. I can download .iso files from Technet at around 4MB/s at 9.00 pm - 15 years ago I couldn't copy files across my LAN at that speed!

An added bonus has been the chance to get to grips with IPv6 properly. I was given a /48 block without even asking for it and the free router is perfect for my needs (it sits in front of my firewall and managed the PPPoE stuff).

I'm paying a little more than I was paying my last ISP and I'm still a bit nervous about the use-based charging structure - but that does seem fairer than a 'FUP' and the web site tells you where you are up to whenever you want to check.

Been with AAISP for over 2 years both at home and in my business.
Not the cheapest but the level of knowledge and tenacious tech- support have left me very impressed.
On a recent fault, even when things appeared to be back to normal at my end, they were not happy it was totally resolved and have chased and escalated the fault.
Many of the things I would need to spend 1/2 an hour on the phone to an anonymous call centre with other ISP`s I can simply deal with myself using their control pages.
On the (rare) occasions I have contacted them by phone I have quickly been connected to a competent, knowledgeable IT professional rather than a call centre worker reading from a script.
Night and Day compared to any of the "mainstream" ISP`s I`ve tried.
My 7 speed score would be higher but I do have a long, remote line and they have squeezed more out of it than any other ISP I`ve tried.
Cheaper would be better but I`m happy that I`m getting what I pay for.
It`s not all about bottom line speed.

Impressed. Won`t be moving anytime soon.

Fantastic connection (FTTC) once I finally got it.

Most of the delays were BTs fault, but A&A had terrible communication, customer service and explanation of the process, which resulted in an unexpected 2-week delay after already having waited 3+ weeks for a line install before FTTC could be connected. A&A knew there would be a second two week delay but failed to communicate that to me proactively.

Very disappointed with their sales process.

AAISP may appear to cost a little more but it's definitely a case of getting what you paid for. I was tired of dodgy connections, traffic shaping, blocked ports and patronising, dumbed-down service, so I was pleased to find AAISP.

I've been extremely satisfied with the service so far. The line is stable and up 100%. I'm provided with fine-grained information about my line and usage. The static IP and the lack of filtering and traffic-shaping means I feel like I'm actually connected to the Internet, rather than being granted limited permission to access it.

What little customer support I've needed has been prompt and precise. There's a general air of competence about everyone I've come into contact with.

If you want an ISP that treats you like a peer, then AAISP comes very highly recommended.



Also, my welcome pamphlet had a picture of a cat on the front. :D

I joined AAISP after Christmas 2010. I had always thought Entanet a good ISP until I tried to leave them. Problems getting the MAC code and then they tried to continue charging me after I had left. Support very poor and pro BT.
I went to AAISP initially because of their “we will fix your line offer, if we don’t, leave & owe us nothing”
I have nothing but praise for AAISP. My connection is still rubbish most of the time after twenty engineer visits from Openreach and the replacement of two sections of underground cable, one of Aluminium and one of Copper.
It is a refreshing change to deal with a company that is honest, straightforward and completely open as far as their dealing with their customers and their suppliers is concerned.
How fast is this ISP? 100% of what BT give them.
I always feel it is unfair to rate ISPs on speed when the problem may be due to their suppliers. AAISP do nothing to throttle connections and ALL my problems are due 100% to BT. Openreach try to blame BT Wholesale & vice versa. Until BT are forced to charge for the level of service they supply instead of “up to figures” coupled with a no promises, take it or leave it attitude, this situation will continue.
How much does this ISP cost compared with similar offers? I am not aware of ANY similar offers.
AAISP are not the cheapest but I know exactly what I’m paying for. It’s all about SUPPORT and when BT are involved that is what you need. I honestly cannot think of anything they could do to improve either their website or their support.

I swapped to A&A last February. My previous provider was Zen, who were excellent. I jumped because lightning zapped my Draytek and FTTC with a free router was cheaper to install than adding another to my pile of fried routers. At the time I believed that Zen would not consider supplying FTTC in locations where BT's availability checker indicated less than 12Mbit/sec. After I'd reached a point of no return in the swap Zen did tell me that long slow lines were OK really.

My old Zen line maxed out at 512Kbits/sec download and sometimes spent days losing sync every four minutes. We'd more or less reached the end of the road in persuading local BT management to do anything to fix things. I live in an isolated old farm 2Km from the cabinet and another 5Km to the exchange, so you can appreciate a degree of Openreach reluctance when it comes to spending money on it.

I have just come out the end of a service episode with a big smile on my face. After politely enquiring by email for a trick to encourage the FTTC to retrain at a higher speed A&A were onto it like a staffie terrier. In spite of my initial apathy surrounding any attempt to get Openreach to look at mere speed problems, they booked a customer visit from Openreach who found and replaced a noisy section of copper about a Kilometer away. I don't know how A&A do it, but a good Openreach tech with the right equipment is a minor miracle in itself. It is still slow, but twice as fast as yesterday.

Good as Zen were, I was pleasantly surprised by A&A right from the start. Everything is so open and direct.

Their control pages are awesome, they sniff line quality all the time and show the results. They gave me a /29 block of IP4. Their IP6 support is top. Mail and phone support is only 9 to 5 with the basic fees, but IRC holds some pleasant surprises if you can handle the level of geek wit from the other customers. They use uk.net.providers.aaisp to keep you informed of general problems.

You pay for every bit you download. Weekday 0900-1800 is priced to discourage wholesale leeching, but every other time is fine. The pricing sums up everything about A&A. There is no sleight of hand. No caps, no weaselly block of usenet in the daytime, no sneaky throttling. They show planned engineering work on their site. They admit their own mistakes. They have a robust attitude to government spying.

It is hard not to like 'em.

Been with AAISP for just over a week now.

I used to (a still do for a short while) have a Virgin Media connection (50mb) but it just became too unstable with issues for 6 of the last 12 months on and off.
It got so bad I couldn't even use SSH to manage remote devices without keystrokes going missing or being severely delayed making it almost impossible to use.
I'd often have to tether my 3G connection to get any work done.

So having decided to switch and FTTC being enabled in my area I set about looking for an ISP and settled on AAISP.

Signup with AAISP went well, the Openreach engineer arrived at exactly the time specified, I believe a few people have issues with them doing no-shows, but couldn't have gone smoother for me.

I'm getting 37.3Mb down / 8.3Mb up on speed tests (using 40/10 FTTC line) and I haven't even started tweaking interleave settings and MTUs yet.

Pros:
IPv6 range and static IPv4 address(es).
Ability to tweak line settings like interleave, mtu etc.
Customisable network graphs.
Virtually no packet loss and low latency (especially compared to my old VM link)
* Before: VM - http://i.imgur.com/np4hB.png
* After: AAISP - http://i.imgur.com/QJM6F.png
Their philosophy on internet filtering.
No throttling. If you want to use all your transfer budget on torrents then that's your choice.
xkcd.com/806 compliance.

Cons:
Non really, early days but I'm not expecting any issues.
No good if you are a torrent-happy mega-downloader, but you probably knew that already.

I'm glad I made the switch because:
* I'm saving money (about £8pcm over VM)
* The link has worked 100% of the time so far.
* I get full bandwidth 24x7, it doesn't slow down in the evening which is when I do a lot of work from home.
* I can remotely manage servers and networks.

AAISP have been very helpful on the two occasions I have had to use their tech support.

First, they got my line upgraded to 21CN after our exchange had been upgraded but before all lines were automatically upgraded. They dealt with BT when they hadn't actually done the job properly.

Second, when I was setting up native IPv6 on my router. I didn't have things quite right on their control panel or my router. They sorted out the control panel and advised me what to do at me end. Within just a few emails everything was working fine.

Thoroughly recommended if you want an ISP that knows what they're doing.