I subscribed to ast a few days ago because exp was completely down (not for any sort of political reasons tmk; they've simply been slacking a bit recently), and here's a quick comparison:

-ast works far better on my pc via home wifi than exp
-exp works far better than ast on my phone, and when tethering from my phone
-netflix is better on ast
-torrents are difficult on ast, but not so bad on exp if you can connect
-ast doesn't seem to cause problems with WeChat when I'm connected, while exp often does (disconnecting to send messages is annoying)

In closing, I still think exp is a better product on the whole, and have no plans in canceling, but I wanted a backup solution. Like many of you, I have HK sims that always work much better than both, but they are pretty expensive.