Info requested before deciding to switch

[BIGEYE]

I am a long term user of Zen and have their Unlimited Zen Fibre 2 account. I am now looking at moving to IDnet and would like some advice. Firstly, can anyone advise the difference in layman's terms between FTTC 40/10 and FTTC 55/10. Also, what actually is FTTC?

Now my existing router is a TP-Link TD-W9980 N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit VDSL2 Modem Router. Will this be compatible if I switch?

Lastly, is IDnet any better than Zen, by way of speed, support and customer service?

TIA

[nowster]

FTTC is "Fibre To The Cabinet"

This means that the DSL (VDSL in this case) link is just between your modem and some equipment in the street cabinet within a few hundred yards of your premises, rather than all the way back to the exchange. The link is shorter and has much less signal loss, meaning that more bandwidth can be provided.

Optical fibre runs directly into the equipment in the street cabinet, forming the link to the rest of the OpenReach network.

This is against FTTP which can be either Fibre To The Premises (the fibre optic link comes into your premises) or Fibre To The Pole (same as FTTC but with much smaller equipment mounted on the pole your phone line hangs off).

Glossary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL

[colirv]

You could check ISPreview and Thinkbroadband. Here is one recent report. There'll be more recent ones, also favourabe.