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.