Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) Reviews

Great speeds and mega fast migration (BT has me migrated in 4 days from me putting the order in, although AAISP waited until my official activation day to recognise that).

Their control panel is very powerful, and the usage tracking is the most comprehensive I've seen (they give you an hour by hour breakdown, not just a monthly total).

Prices are also great for off-peak usage (6pm - 9am weekdays + all day weekends). 100GB of usage per "unit" during these times. Peak usage is quite expensive though (2GB per "unit") so if you plan to use it heavily during the day in the week, you might want to look at other alternatives. You pay a fixed amount for the service, and then pay for a chosen amount of usage "units" each month. Unused units can be rolled over to the next month, as can over-usage. I pay £18.68 for the service itself (including an extra £8.51 for BT premium ADSL2+) plus £18 for 6 units (£3.00 each). Totalling £36.68+vat. This gives me ADSL2+ and 6 units of usage which I allocate to 10gb daytime usage (5 units), and 100gb off-peak usage (1 unit). For another £3 per month I could extend that to 200gb of off-peak usage if I wished. This to me seems a great way of handling usage charging and is a refreshing change from all the other ISP's I've used where you get a fixed amount of usage no matter if its peak of off-peak. Usage is much more generous than my previous ISP (fast.co.uk) who had extremely stingy usage allowances. Paying more than I am paying now, I got a flat 45GB per month. Anyhow, gave a value rating of 9 purely due to the expensive daytime usage.

Now onto the downsides. Support is a little lacking, especially if you need help at anytime not considered as business hours. So if you have a problem with your broadband or need a question answered at night, or at weekend, you had better be prepared to wait until the next working day to get a response. So far though I've not had reason to call on support, so this hasn't affected me as yet. Again an 9 rating for support because of this "business hours only" philosophy. Even basic email support only out of hours for answering queries would be welcome.

On the whole though, a great ISP that I am happy to recommend to others. Also having a fixed IPv4 address as standard and a massive block of fixed IPv6 addresses allocated to me is a great advantage. I just need Netgear to hurry up and release a firmware update to allow my router to support IPv6 now :)

Much of what can be said of A&A has been said. Connection was very speedy, and I was also supplied with the best modem/router I ever had, along with the confidence of having an IPv6 address. Their control panel is second to none. Much has been said about their tariffs, I personally think they are very logical, and actually very generous.

They deserve the reputation they have built up,reliable,dependable, very decent speeds and excellent CS.

Staying for keeps

A&A was recommended to me by a sysadmin at a large PLC. They are the ONLY company that was able to get a BT engineer to visit my home, diagnose and fix a fault on my line. EasyNet - despite being a BT affiliate - was not interested.

The service has been largely free of issues since the engineer visit, which left me with around 7.5MB down, 448k up, on a line which was previously unable to get 448k DOWN. The service is quite expensive relative to other retail offerings, but the support alone is worth it - it is close to being a managed service at a fraction of the price.

The only downside of the service is that A&A doesn't offer an unlimited usage tariff, so I had to do a fair bit of work on my router to throttle back traffic during the day. Other than that, I have absolutely no complaints and would recommend them to anyone.

I moved from Tiscali after their service took a plunge following my exchange being upgraded to 21CN.

I'm now getting great speeds and their web panel gives you precisely how your connection is being used. You will also get an SMS when your connection goes up & down.

They provide a static IP address, and for those of you who are techie enough, a /48 IPv6 block (you will need an IPv6 capable router though)

It's great to call tech support and speak to somebody who actually knows what they're talking about - I'm a systems administrator and nothing is more frustrating that calling tech support and finding that you know more about the subject than the "tech support agent".

The "major" ISPs could really learn something from these guys.

I'm currently recommending them to anyone I speak to, including a tech support guy from the company we buy commercial routers from!

Switched to AAISP after 10 dreadful months on BT "broadband" services (56K-like speeds).
During those 10 months I've had 8 BT technicians trying to address the problem with no success and uncountable hours spent on the phone with them without improvement.

After switching to AAISP my connection went flying to a real 10Mb/s (sometimes even more) with great latency, which is as good as it can get on the Isle of Dogs/Poplar where I live.
Their Customer support had been excellent so far, their notifications, logs/usage statistics, account management pages and wiki are very well organized, comprehensive and informative. I particularly love their text messages notifications that will let you know straight away if there is something wrong, since when and how long it lasted. They even have a map of storms around the UK possibly affecting broadband lines.

Would definitely. definitely recommend them to anyone, especially if you've been having issues with your current ISP.

Moved to aaisp on mon 20th dec 2010.
Ultra smooth move from previous isp,with no down time at all.
Speeds are up from my previous isp (fast.co.uk).
Very comprehensive online detailing of your usage-line stats ect.
Phone mannerism is excellent,when you need to call for any more info.
You can change your usage package-add new lines extras ect, all from your online control panel.

My choice was between AAISP and xilo.
Took AAISP for there detailed control panel & package variations/price.

Gaming(xbox) is important to me...pings are the same as my last isp, fine for gaming.

Just trying to decide on what package is going to be suitable for my usage needs...but i can change it when i need to through the online control panel...great !

UPDATE - 28/3/11....

my exchange got LLU enabled, so i,m off to sky...
cant fault these guys on anything - speed 100% all the time - pings good.
if they had LLU here, i would have gone with them..
If you want an ISP that gives you the constant full speed, good pings for gaming, & a bloody great control panel....i wouldnt go by AAISP.

Thanks guys for being the best isp i have had in YEARS.
if only they were ALL like these guys we wouldnt have so much bitchin & complaining on any forums !..

johnny........

Andrews and Arnold are just amazing. Took on my line with known problems. Worked tirelessly to get it resolved.

My line in a new build was appaling. It was losing sync and having to reconnect several times a day. Sometimes it would be so bad I would have no Internet connection for hours at a time.

My previous ISP (Demon) gave up on it as soon as one BT engineer said he thought it might be REIN. He has no evidence to back this up, just a hunch. I was told point blank by Demon's support supervisor that they were not prepared to persue my issues any further.

AAISP got BT out many times until BT found the fault was in the E-Side pair. Once they changed the pair, it has been stable ever since.

On top of that, the whole way through with AAISP, I had one engineer who was keeping on top of my ticket (thanks Alan!) I was kept informed of what was happening and what he had been doing to get this sorted.

Cannot recommend them enough!

Jerry

I have just migrated to AAISP and the whole process was seamless. I took advantage of their offer to "Fix your line for free" and my connection has been carefully monitored with regular emails from Support during the 10 day training period.

I am very impressed with the information and facilities offered in my Control Panel options, they are far better than my previous ISP's.

Migrated from Sky LLU to AAISP (21CN). Sync rose from ~2500 to ~3100, ping times dropped by half. Control panel is excellent, lets me see exactly what the line is doing. Support staff available at the end of the phone or on IRC which is light-years ahead of Sky, plus you can talk tech to someone without having to jump through hoops.

Having previously been a customer of Eclipse and Zen in years gone by at a previous address, I was attracted to Sky because of the lower costs and the belief that with such a long line at my new house, I wouldn't appreciate the benefits of a more specialised ISP. Now I'm with AAISP, I remember what I was missing. The monthly cost may be higher but you get what you pay for. Just praying for a FTTC rollout by Openreach now :)

AAISP suits my needs as a technical user better than any other ISP I've used since my early days online with Demon and Cymrunet. Good service, helpful staff and a sane pricing structure.