I’ve had an ADSL connection with Andrews & Arnold for a good few years, and have been very happy. We now also use them at work and some of my colleagues use them too. They are very much the “thinking man’s” ISP and treat their customers like adults with lots of good info available and helpful support whereas most ISPs are just black boxes with really unhelpful support (I’m somewhat cursed with a MEng in effectively computer networks – most ISP support lines just piss me off with their stupidity and haste to get me off the phone).
A&A’s back end web site looks like it was designed by geeks but that does mean it gives you everything you need even if the presentation is a little rough. I’ll forgive them that! And you get a Static IP address (or range) – very very very useful if you have a loft full of servers. Plus their office is about 5 mins drive away from here so we can pick up a configured router rather than have to wait for the post which is helpful.
Anyway, they’ve started offering lines with Be rather than BT and I thought I’d give it a go for the work ADSL line we have back to our house (personal stuff goes over Virgin, work stuff over the A&A ADSL line).
On Sunday using http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ I was getting about 2,800 kb/s down and 600 kb/s up on our ADSL line which I think was going over the BT 21CN network. It switched to Be this afternoon and I’m now getting 6,000 kb/s down and 950 kb/s up.
That is an amazing difference. Same line, just different network in the back. Same price, and the changeover was just the matter of a different router (which cost £30 but was easier than reprogramming my old one).
I wasn’t going to blog about it because hey, it’s just ADSL and A&A are one ISP amongst many. But they are one of the better ones (IMHO) and the speed difference in the Be line is quite a shock.
Andrews & Arnold – Highly recommended. Be lines – if you can have one on your exchange, go for it.