Alright UK internet denizens, who is the least despicable home internet provider at the moment
@joenash increasingly depends where you are. If you’ve got a local fibre provider they’re usually pretty good from what I’ve seen, otherwise Zen will provide the same service everyone else does over the same line but with support who know how to do more than read a script. Andrews & Arnold remain incredibly competent but somehow always feel like they begrudge having customers.
@joenash If you've got an altnet option (I think Oxfordshire is mostly Gigaclear) then go with Squirrel as a gigaclear reseller.
A&A are generally good although I do feel they've slipped in recent years.
Virgin are to be avoided at all costs, I'd rather go back to Dialup than pay those assholes
@joenash Depends what altnet is in your area, but probably Zen if all else fails.
A&A are good at dealing with complicated issues, but do cost more.
Don't go to any mainstream supplier, that's for sure.
Oh, and Octopus for energy :)
https://share.octopus.energy/rust-may-956
@sammachin @joenash iirc Gigaclear finally ignored their wholesale customers hard enough (offering retentions deals below wholesale pricing) that Squirrel has stopped selling on GCs footprint, fwiw. GC themselves are technically quite good and if you can get them the alternative is probably awful copper, though Openreach will overbuild it all eventually probably.
@james @joenash oh thats a shame I'm still with Squirrel for now and very happy with them, static IP, IPV6 and none of the BS about price hikes when your out of contract. I guess at some point I'll have to re-evaluate. Luckily I have the choice of Gigaclear, Truespeed, Openreach or Virgin (yeah right) fibre into my property
@sammachin @joenash Four fibres! That's pretty good on the overbuild lottery. We've just got Openreach and Airband here, though I'm hoping Gigaclear don't notice either of them and tack us onto a build they're doing nearby just for redundancy (we have services on both fibres w/ failover, they're diverse beyond two shared telegraph poles!)
@quixoticgeek @joenash ... and they're right. +1 to A&A. Zen a good other option, by and large.
Unless you can get altnet fibre in your area in which case you probably want that because it'll (usually) be symmetrical whereas Openreach still isn't (mostly). https://www.thinkbroadband.com/ have most of the altnets' coverage data.
