IDNet www.idnet.net

By no means the cheapest but you do get what you pay for - fast, reliable and really well supported by UK staff.

I have had only one cause to contact technical support and that was sorted in no time (Finger trouble on my behalf)

If you need reliability then take a look at their deals. I would heartily recommend.

There was a time I believed the hype about getting what you pay for (about 10 years ago). Those times are over.

Once upon a time IDNet sent out quota warnings by e-mail, but about 5 years ago that stopped, presumably so they could make more money in accidental over-quota charges at the extortionate rate of £1/GB. When, a while after, I asked them to put me back on a certain package and they instead put me on an entry-level one with hardly any quota, I ended up paying hundreds of pounds in over-quota charges over the course of six months.

More recently, IDNet seem to think that selling "business broadband" means that they only have to provide service during office hours. I've just got my broadband service back after an 8-hour outage, during which I had to call their support line several times because the people whose job it is to update the status page on their website had gone home!

On my most recent call I was told that the (some TLA or other) hadn't posted any updates and when I enquired as to who this team or department belongs to, the phrase "not at liberty to divulge that information" was used. Apparently, in the middle of a huge outage with no end in sight, it's more important to IDNet to play word games and pretend that they don't subcontract to BT Wholesale than help their own customers. At this point it took a herculean effort of will to keep my temper with the smug git on the other end of the line.

Even my attempts to determine whether the problem was still being actively worked on by someone were stonewalled with "I don't know".

I wish I could say this was the first major outage I've had to deal with in ten years of being a customer, but it isn't. I'd seen glimmers of buck-passing and apathy from IDNet support in the past, but now I'm seeing things in a whole new light. The almost contemptuous lack of communication, or indeed recognition of the customer's right to service, or failing that, communication, makes it ten times worse.

This isn't the IDNet I joined - it's a cash-cow operation with little sense of responsibility to its customers. They seem to think that having a reasonably articulate Englishperson answer the phone in order to fob you off counts as "personal service".

Having been with IDNet for several years I have decided at the end of my fibre contract to move on, probably to Zen. IDNet gave its fibre customers a month of awful service while they tried to sort out the lack of bandwidth they had run into, so much for monitoring their network for such issues. There was no real apology, it was all blamed on BT, yet its IDnet who should order the bandwidth. Tariffs are way to expensive as well, £35 for 100GB (FTTC) yet Zen do truly unlimited for £25. IDnet are behind the times and seem to have given up on support. Don't bother with out of hours support, they are a bad joke.

Like any ISP, IDnet plod along OK whilst things are smooth and going OK. They are more expensive than other providers, and don't really provide any extra 'wow' for the extra money.

Where they really fail, in an EPIC way, is fault resolution. They are utterly hopeless.

I made the stupid mistake of migrating my small business broadband to IDnet in 2010 - and I've had numerous faults - and not one of them was resolved professionally or in a timely fashion.

At one stage our business was out of service for 28 days because of IDnet. They blamed BT, BT Openreach - who were excellent - were run around like headless chickens, proving faults off of their network. Each time it came down to IDnet core equipment being misconfiguration. Really, they are clueless.

This final straw came this week. After they carried out some 'planned maintenance' - something they had not bothered telling their customers about - the line went out. When it finally came back the DSL profile had been reset to 'dreadful' and it was almost impossible to work because just a few bps were moving over the wires. This remained for a week, despite a number of calls and emails to IDnet. I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt, which was stupid of me, and upgrade to Fibre (FTTC).

This was another two weeks of waiting with poor to no communication from IDnet. The install took place on Monday at 12pm. I write this review on Friday, some five days later, and it has never worked - again, because of IDnet's Mickey Mouse core and incompetence.

Naturally, they have now been told to shove it.

If you are running a small business and want dependable broadband DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. IDnet are dire. I've never had such a bad ISP and I still don't understand why I put up with it for three years.

Oh, and on the subject of 'support' - which ranged from wrong answers, no idea shrugs, and plain lies - they go home at tea time. This leaves you in the hands of a message handling come 'lip service' third party generic helpdesk which, whilst polite enough, are of the 'reboot your computer' type of expertise.

Idnet isn't the cheapest, but if you've ever been with a bad phone company you'll know that it's worth a little more to get fantastic service.

Idnet is reliable and you can actually get a UK-based support person who not only speaks English fluently but can also translate technical jargon to layperson's language. And every support rep I've dealt with (there haven't been many, because the service is so reliable) has been very friendly.

Having been with IDNet for quite a few years I have noted the service going downhill. Far to many drops in service which are always blamed on BT, and customer service comes over like they don't care, yes they say they will look into things but never get back to you. This company used to be a gold standard in care, speed and reliability, now its a shambles, its expensive the peak and off peak hours are useless if you want to download films use netflix, or iPlayer, and gaming eats up the peak bandwidth of 6am to 12am I mean who wants to wait to after midnight to watch a film?

I would caution anyone thinking of joining IDNet to look at other ISPs like Zen who have no peak off peak times, allowing you to enjoy your connection without fear of running up a big bill.

Customer care is poor and out of hours help is diabolical. Being told its BT's fault, your routers fault, in fact its anyone's fault but IDNets has worn very thin when other ISP's do not have these supposed issues.

Not recommended, and their FTTC packages are very expensive with the data caps they have, you will end up going over your limit every month and IDNet will make more money, meanwhile your off peak data remains virtually untouched.

We have been with iDNet for a number of years.

On moving we had to have a new connection set up, which was a little costly. However, the service was turned on 7 days prior to it's actual turn on, and so... for the price, we were happy as larry.

Never had any issues and the speed is constant.

Will continue to use. They beat the big ISPs hands down. No lies, no bull, you get what you pay for.

I signed up for IDNet's Home Value ADSL2+ service. Was given a migration date. On the day before migration I realised I had not received login or password details. Had to request them by email.

Soon after that I started getting emails to say if I continued downloading at current rates I would exceed the 40Gb monthly allowance. That struck me as odd because when I signed up it said 80Gb. Checked their website and the pdf invoice they emailed before activation. Not ADSL2+ - I'm on ADSL Max which has much lower peak/off-peak allowances.

Their website says "Packages shown are for ADSL2+, if you cannot get ADSL2+ we will suggest an ADSL Max based alternative during the ordering process." Thay didn't suggest any such thing during the ordering process. I know ADSL2+ is available at the exchange because I used to have it from o2.

If you think paying for a premium ISP will get you a premium service, think again.

I have been with IDNet for 5 years now for my Broadband, no complaints whatsoever, about 18 months ago I moved my telephone to them after disgraceful service from BT.

Great honest service with real technical support that is UK based.

A freefone number is provided should you need any help.

Well worth the money for a first class service.

I have been with IDNET for a number of years I have always found their customer service to be the very best. They even called me back when they said they would. unfortunately they do have to rely of BT and it is only when that happens that it gets annoying. When i have a problem connecting I was given excellent service each and every time I called the help line. They lent me a new ADSL modem free of charge to test out my equipment. The only problem I had was when BT failed to appear or even bother to phone to say they were not going to turn up. The visit was to check my hardware and line. Yes I called BTs bluff. It was at this point BT bothered to get off their backsides and fixed the problem at their exchange which they had broken. IDNET have a monthly contract period lets see BT do that and see if people stay with them.