I'm with Andrews & Arnold. I won't need to tell them anything because I know they take my privacy very seriously. They're the best ISP I've ever dealt with.
Another happy A&A customer here. In a world of every ISP being amazing, they'd take the crown as the best one.
I get an amazingly advanced web UI which lets me do things nobody can do on any other ISPs (advanced options on my line etc). I can get a text/email/tweet whenever my line goes down and back up. I can hop on IRC and talk to sales/tech or even the owner (this[1] is his blog, by the way - He writes a lot, I recommend following him). And needless to say, full ipv6 support.
They're expensive, but that's because they don't oversell bandwidth. People constantly complain about ISPs overselling, but when someone comes along and does not do that, people say "Oh but it's too expensive".
"Even in 2013 it is almost unique to find a "home" package that includes IPv6. In IPv6 ::1 is the address for "Home". Calling it Home127.0.0.1 seemed silly."
I did consider switching to them, but the plan I looked at (Fiber to the cabinet and a higher 200GB download cap) comes in at £50 + (as far as I'm aware) BT line rental, so around £66/month... My BT bill for the above is around £40... Do you think it's worth the extra £26 ish for peace and mind? Are they really that much better than other ISPs? Thanks for the info!
EDIT: Ignore my comment, after reading up on them a bit more, they do seem like a pretty amazing ISP. Thanks for reminding me of them :)
Looks like they've cut their prices with that home::1 offering, I would seriously consider moving back there if I wasn't really satisfied with my current ISP. (I'm with goscomb.net at the moment due to my higher bandwidth requirements - comes in around £20/month cheaper than the equivalent AASIP setup with 450GB/transfer, 80:20 FTTC profile, IPv6 and a /29 IPv4).
Used these guys years ago for bonded ADSL and they were awesome, can't rate them high enough.
To any reasonably well-paid tech professional saving £30/month by going with one of the 'Big Four' ISPs: Buy cheap beef, get horse-meat.
That's pretty much the A&A plan that I have, and I think it's worth it for me. This is a case where you get what you pay for, and I both need an excellent level of service (because I depend on my ISP for work) and can afford to pay for it. The equation would be different for other, say, casual users or people on tight budgets.
Also ... IPv6 just works, and I have a /48 assignment.
A&A doesn't supply enough bandwidth for our home (including work from home) use, at least on their pricing page.
On a 5Mbps line, our average monthly usage was about 300G/month, according to router statistics.
Now that we're on BT FTTC at 76Mbps (rate to nearest speedtest.net when there's no contention), I wouldn't like to guess the usage, but I'd estimate over 1TB a month at least. The BT provided router resets its count every 30 minutes or so, and I've not yet put my own routing box in the middle, so I don't know exactly.
Both my GF and I stream a lot of HD video, and I mirror a number of repositories every week. That video is a lot more HD now, and there's far less need to ever turn it off, since it doesn't significantly affect other users.
A more feasible approach would be to combine A&A with BT, and switch depending on reliability vs bulk requirements, but that would require a level of systems administration I'd want to be compensated for.
Also great to be able to trigger BT's line tests directly from Andrews and Arnold's web interface, see the history of usage, line sync rates, etc. That, and their ability to configure low-delay shaping upstream of BT's backhaul so you don't build big download queues in the DSLAM. Greatly improves my VoIP quality. Another happy customer.
This is my favourite part:
"Sorry, for a censored internet you will have to pick a different ISP or move to North Korea. Our services are all unfiltered."
- Unfiltered Internet access - no filtering of any content within the A&A network - you are responsible for any filtering in your own network, or
- Censored Internet access - restricted access to unpublished government mandated filter list (plus Daily Mail web site) - but still cannot guarantee kids don't access porn.
I work for one of the ISPs in question as an Analyst and work is in progress to stop the storing of certain data after a certain time period.
The main reason for holding call data is for billing purposes, no e-mail information has ever been stored (other than in customer's own inboxes and sent items in their e-mail accounts). All browsing data is anonymised and only used for optimisation purposes.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent annually on data storage, it’s welcoming that there is now a reason to reduce the amount of useless data we hold.
Can you clarify what you mean by "browsing data"? I understand why some data could be useful for debugging, but it's the DPI-style data that I'm most concerned about. I'd assumed that it would be too expensive for ISPs to bother collecting it if they weren't legally obliged to.
So information is collected regarding what IP addresses are accessed from our network, it isn't traceable back to customer accounts (in its usual form anyway, I’m sure if some data forensics people got hold of it they could maybe do something, but that’s outside my scope of knowledge) this information is used to improve customer experience and reduce network traffic.
For example, in 2012-2013 almost 40% of traffic on our Network was Youtube related, not just streaming, Youtube specifically! Obviously millions of these requests are going to be for the exact same video, say for example Gangnam Style. So instead of us pulling the data from Youtube every time a user requests that particular video we store that video on our Network, so when a user requests it (even for the first time), it actually comes from us. All my company needs to do is check for any changes to the specific page. The result is a better customer experience (faster streaming) but also far less network traffic (this literally saves millions).
Without the storing of IP addresses accessed we wouldn't have the information needed to determine what sites/data we should be cashing and what we don’t need to bother with and this sort of thing would be considerably harder to pull off.
UK ISP have probably the best track record in the world when it comes to defending their customers data and rights.
They have fought the Government and the Judiciary at every juncture to ensure net neutrality.
Where legally compelled to do so; the interpret the law in the absolute narrowest sense of the ruling.
I would be loathe to suggest they can do more. I trust my ISP more than I trust most people.
There are a ton if links I could produce but am on a mobile device. A simple Google search regarding Sky, TalkTalk et al will yield the case history and lobbying for privacy.
While this may look like bitching at ISPs, I think it's just recognising that they can only really go into bat for their customers if we actually show we care. Otherwise they might as well do what the government asks and get on with their business.
Germany has a very similar problem. By law, the ISPs are only allowed to store user-identifiable information for billing purposes. When you have a flat rate (and nearly everybody has), there's no reason whatsoever to store any IPs, and yet they are stored for at least two weeks.
Can anyone evidence the claim that Virgin Media record internet access in line with the EU DRD? I tweeted them about it but they said they don't, and while I'm sure that's wrong I can't find a source that names them explicitly.
Virgin Media have replied to some users already - here's the email (copied from the Open Rights Group blog post[1])
Virgin Media's response says: “...We have also been in contact with government and with the Information Commissioner's Office following the ruling and the UK government's current position is that although the Directive was held to be invalid, our own Data Retention Regulations are still in force and we must comply with them until such time as they are struck down by a UK court.”
While we're recommending alternative ISPs in the UK, here's a nod to Fast[1]. UK-based support, no filtering or other obstruction, even remaining polite and understanding when I inadvertently took down a large portion of their network for the afternoon. Competitively priced FTTC (I'm on a £22/m 40/10 offer - now expired) including cheap no-frills line-rental.
I remain very interested in A&A but by comparison I have all I need for now with Fast. A&A have my full support (fwiw) in their vocalisation of tech-community concerns and I hope Fast can follow suit.
