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"Coms" buys out ADSL24 and turns it into a trasheap

Coms recently bought out my ISP, ADSL24. Since doing so, the support department has become useless and the connection speeds have become borderline non-existent.

With ADSL24 I always had my full, albeit shitty 7Mbit, line speed at all times and all days of the week. On Coms I am lucky to get more than 200KB/sec and thus all video streaming services are rendered unusable. Coms have taken the ADSL24 customers, stuffed them all onto a congested pipe, and said thanks very much for your money.

Where have other ADSL24 customers migrated to? Clearly staying with "Coms", whoever the hell they are, is a huge mistake. This is not what I signed up for.
 
Sorry to hear this hope you can get a MAC code to escape them it is a tough situation you are in, with us not knowing the agreement you made with them it is hard to advise.

You can always do a review of them on here to try and warn others to avoid link below.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/products/543.html
 
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Is there anyone that will allow me to migrate without charging a fortune for migrating a line that "currently has LLU DSL" and does not require being locked into a year long contract?
 
All unlimited packages you will find are subject to a 12 month contract, if you select from the older packages such as the capped ones on Aquiss then it is monthly contract sadly moving from LLU to BT network will cost £49.95.

If you follow the link Markj gave and visit the websites all those ISPs may still have the capped packages tucked away which should be monthly.
 
This comment should also apply to Coms PLC's Broadband services, amongst their other offerings, such as VoIP. After acquiring ADSL24 (and all of their customers), Coms are slowly using "purging out" tactics and imposing their 'Fair Use Policy' to drive out the 'undesirables' from the ADSL24 customer base - although the undesirables are paying a good premium as customers too. They are the "undesirables" because of the way they use the Internet and their Broadband service. Hence the reason for the ISP's excuse, including Coms, to use traffic shaping and management tools to affect people's behaviour and usage. In other words, they are playing God in deciding what service is good for their customers and what service they should avoid using! They decide if you can stream YouTube or to use a peer-to-peer client at a certain time, as well, for example. If that is not playing God, what is?

The irony is that we pay for a 3-course meal, to use the analogy, but are only served the soup... You are refused the rest, despite the fact that you are paying for it!

Coms.com are currently trialling Traffic Management tools, imposing their way of how the network must be used (during peak periods of 1700-2400 hours). This was confirmed (forced out, was more like the scenario) by one of their representatives and I understand that it will end at the end of the month. It is needless to say that it is causing quite an irritation and they have also been introducing changes over the past few months, which is NOW reflected in their service, at the point of delivery.

I am moving on, I am afraid. I have witnessed enough changes so far to see the repetition of the past (dirty) games with previous ISPs being re-played, again!

In short, generally there are more drop-outs, Web pages taking ages to load. Overall, less stability and reliability with Coms Broadband services, as the experiments continue! I would advise potential customers to keep well away, as their broadband packages are not competitive either.


Please note that this review is for the late March 2014 period. I hope it will help your decision-making process as to whom you should and should not choose.
 
Were ADSL24 doing well, or were they in some trouble?

Makes me wonder if "Coms" have acquired the company, found that say half the bandwidth is used for P2P, and that the maths never did work which is why ADSL24 sold up in the first place. I don't know that this is true, and I am not asserting it as fact, it is purely a hypothesis.

A little like "BE" which collapsed in on itself after ostensibly promoting the service as being suitable for P2P and then went to the dogs because the subscription fees coupled with the type of users meant that it was chasing growing bandwidth usage with no money available to put in upgrades.

So it makes good financial sense to get rid of the heavy users. Doesn't make for good PR sense to fail to make the restrictions abundantly clear to potential customers though.

Having read a thread on this elsewhere it does appear at first glance that most of the complaints are about P2P speeds, with other services suffering as "traffic management" is "trialled".

As VDSL is rolled out and people can actually get speeds from a phone line as opposed to ADSL, I'd have thought more and more of the smaller ISPs or those offering just broadband services will get squeezed to the extent that something has to give - whether P2P speeds, or "unlimited" packages, and that only the likes of BT (who only have to pay the cost price for the service, within the Group, so they get it cheaper than anyone else) and Sky (who can do cross-subsidy as they sell bundled services) would be suitable for those wanting speed and unlimited data. Companies like Zen have doubtless invested in their own POPs in order to be able to afford to provide more bandwidth at lower prices.

The shape of things to come perhaps?
 
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Some history on it here, dates all the way back to changes in 2012.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...nd-isp-division-for-gbp800k-to-fund-wifi.html

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...cures-private-investment-and-name-change.html

Certainly though the market at the smaller end of the scale has been shrinking for years, with only those that are able to invest, deliver real quality and keep themselves in the public consciousness seeming to grow through it (e.g. AAISP, Zen etc.).

I can recall adding ISPs practically every time we did a full sweep of our ISP database, but that was back in 2005/6. Today I tend to find that we're having to remove 5-8 ISPs with each update because they've vanished, gone bust, merged or been eaten by giant green aliens from Planet X.

There are tons of smaller altnet projects out there which we could add but we don't because most of them aren't operational yet (we only list active providers) and with the way things are going I expect most of them will turn to dust in the wake of a BT alternative.

Put another way, right now you'd have to be mad to launch a new consumer ISP in this market.
 
Some history on it here, dates all the way back to changes in 2012.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...nd-isp-division-for-gbp800k-to-fund-wifi.html

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...cures-private-investment-and-name-change.html

Certainly though the market at the smaller end of the scale has been shrinking for years, with only those that are able to invest, deliver real quality and keep themselves in the public consciousness seeming to grow through it (e.g. AAISP, Zen etc.).

I can recall adding ISPs practically every time we did a full sweep of our ISP database, but that was back in 2005/6. Today I tend to find that we're having to remove 5-8 ISPs with each update because they've vanished, gone bust, changed their focus away from home broadband, merged or been eaten by giant green aliens from Planet X.

There are tons of smaller altnet projects out there which we could add but we don't because most of them aren't operational yet (we only list active providers) and with the way things are going I expect most of them will turn to dust in the wake of a BT alternative.

Put another way, right now you'd have to be mad to launch a new consumer ISP in this market.
 
I was a happy ADSL24 customer and moved onto their LLU offering in 2012. After recently being moved to Coms the service took a dive and I wanted out. I decided to move to AAISP, having been aware of them since they launched back in the nineties. After talking with AAISP it became apparent that I wasn't able to migrate with a MAC since I was no longer on the BT backhaul, I was on the TT backhaul. The ADSL24 LLU had been a "full metal path installation". There were two options open to me:

1. Ask BT to do "a working line takeover". This would reconnect it to the BT backhaul and would require me to enter a minimum contract with BT for the phone service.

2. As a rejoining customer BT were able to offer me a brand new line into the house for £40 instead of the usual £130, again conditional on entering a minimum contract for the phone service. Since the existing line was really old copper with no removable plate socket and located in an awkward place I went for this option.

On speaking with Coms, and ending up with an operations manager, they said there was in fact a third option:

3. Coms could have returned the line to the BT backhaul at which point they would have been able to give me a MAC to use with AAISP.

I wasn't entirely convinced because who would be looking after the phone line? Unless Coms are saying they could still own the line but physically on the BT backhaul not the TT backhaul.

In the end everything went okay with option 2. Coms did not charge for the cease and the total cost was £50 to provision the new service on the new line at AAISP and I'm pleased to say the combination of AAISP and new copper is rapid. I mention all this in case any other ex-ADSL24 customers find themselves in the same LLU boat wanting to move away from the dismal service that Coms is providing. See if option 3 really is viable as it will save provisioning costs.

Regards,
Chris
 
There was another option since you selected a new line other companies do resell BT landlines where new line is £60 monthly contracts Like mine. I will not have long contracts anymore last one was for FTTC and that caused some panics when it looked like we might have to move while only 3 months in...

Seems strange BT have the new line as £130 but do offers of less if tied to a long contract, they get their work from BT openreach just like the smaller ISPs who charge £60 approx on monthly contracts something seems fishy with BT long contracts...
 
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I seem to recall this coming up in a news item once where I argued that only the likes of BT and PlusNet seem to be positioned to pick up customers from other platforms and that other ISPs seem to prefer to lose the customer. ;)

Can AAISP really not organise this? Mind you IIRC their "new line fee" was always something ridiculous like £150, seemingly, they would rather push the customer to BT where they get offered free setup and Infinity 2 than gain the customer.
 
The phone has to be moved back to BT network this can be via a new line plus new broadband if using Aquiss this would be one off payment £60 for line then £13 a month monthly contract. BB would be either £49.95 activation fee for ADSL or if available FTTC free activation 12 month contract.

Most ISPs that also do line rental can supply this setup but perhaps activation charges for FTTC as not all are doing free activation.
 
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