I picked AA ISP because of great reviews about the service provided.

They certainly aren't the cheapest and in an all-you-can-eat world, it seemed a step backwards to move to a peak usage pricing model. However, Internet access is so important that you want to know that someone will be there to fix it if it goes wrong.

For 6 months nothing went wrong: was it worth a little extra? The updates are well-composed and the CQM interface impressive. I was able to diagnose congestion we were generating on our network. Certainly more impressive than other providers.

But when a fault developed they showed how good they are. It was a BT fault. A quick chat over the phone to someone who would be third level support at any other ISP, a few tests and the fault was identified as BT fault. BT poked and problem fixed hours later when they replaced hardware at the exchange.

I can't help feeling that would have been a frustrating 7-day battle with one of the big name ISPs, and a great reason for using a company that believes in high levels of service and paying a little bit more for that.