I have to be honest, I think the experience that BT were clear and communicative would not be a typical experience, and EE themselves admitted their customer se

I have to be honest, I think the experience that BT were clear and communicative would not be a typical experience, and EE themselves admitted their customer service just completely fell apart last year. The split between Openreach and ISPs in the UK has been very helpful for increasing competition in the UK and avoiding the malaise of regional monopolies the US found itself in, but the one time it presents clear issues is when something goes wrong with the line. The ISP has very limited diagnostic options, and a customer cannot speak to Openreach directly despite the fact it's their cabling that's usually at fault. So you're stuck playing Chinese Whispers with the engineers looking at the problem and offshore support, normally with the consequences you'd expect. And the perverse situation where ISPs have to tell customers they will be charged several hundred quid for a visit if the Openreach engineer decides that the ISP supplied router is at fault rather than the line (O2 quoted that line at me once when I was looking out of the window while a bunch of roadworkers looked on at the steamshovel they had just wrecked putting it through a main power line and all our fibre. I was fairly confident the router was fine...). I had a terrible experience with Sky recently, when my line started to fail and drop intermittently, something that has happened multiple times before to me in this property, likely due to weather damage to the poll. Sky tried to charge me £50 for an Openreach engineer visit despite them not being charged by Openreach for this. Meanwhile they're trying to charge me for an ISP service they're not providing. I told them to sod off in no uncertain terms.