RIP BT

[tut]

Just checked my bill and they have added £1.75 for 1571 and £1.75 for caller display, this without any notification or asking me if I wanted them. My contract is up so getting rid of them today.

Unfortunately I am stuck with the robbing barsteward for Broadband, as it is an 18 month contract. They were charging me £26 per month for it which i managed to get reduced to £16, the price for new customers, but it meant I started a new one years contract in November.

I will change over to Sky now for the phone, and also for Broadband as soon as I can.

tut

[Shug]

Careful if you don't have a Sky's own kit in your local exchange. I was really happy with Sky in the old house, as I was getting a Sky product. If they are re-selling BT Wholesale, it will be limited to hell. Throttled connection in the evenings (like under a meg most nights), 1.2GB download limit per day before they throttle the connection to almost zero, 40GB a month.

Also, you have to have a BT phone line to get BT Broadband, I'm sure, so they might have you nailed in there. I sadly had to go to BT to get a connection that works for me.

It's completely anti-competition, and it needs sorted out, but at the moment, the connection is more important to me than fighting a near monopoly...

[tut]

Thanks Shug, just been talking to BT, and as my Broadband contract finishes in July I am leaving it to May when they will look at a new plan and try to match competition rather than lose me. Just cancelled the £1.75 x 2.

Did not realise that Sky's BB was that bad, I am not on LLU so they have no equipment in the Mintlaw Exchange, and I am getting the best results possible from BT, 7mb download speed and unlimited usage with no throttling, on around 200GB/month average at the moment.

After the lightening strike the engineer said that they were probably fitting fibre into the local exchange but he had no date yet, we have our own relay cabinet in Old Deer, so if so we would be on it straight away.

tut

[CubanGav]

Tut,

Your exchange has LLU Sky in it - so you won't be hampered by the evening slow down on the wholesale version.

Exchange info here:
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NSMIN

Fibre broadband live dates here:
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/

FYI Shug it's nothing to do with BT being sh*t to Sky. Sky don't want to pay for a larger backhaul capacity when using wholesale for the broadband. There was a BBC article on it a while back.

I don't work for BT and don't have any bias in this. I'd rather folks get the best deal they can and the Sky one is a cracker. Personally I wouldn't be with BT for my services if I didn't get the broadband side for free through the Openreach staff deal.

The charge for 1571 was sneaked in the T's and C's update in the booklet that comes with the bill. I've just removed it too.
BT are going nuts with this TV deal and I can only see prices going through the roof. There no lack of choice with suppliers these days so shop around. (stay away from Talk Talk - they are crap)

Gav.

[tut]

Cheers Gav, did not realise that LLU was in. Does that give a max of 8mb?

Fibre shows as second best, not available now but Under Evaluation.

tut

[Shug]

FYI Shug it's nothing to do with BT being sh*t to Sky. Sky don't want to pay for a larger backhaul capacity when using wholesale for the broadband. There was a BBC article on it a while back.

Dunno. Depends who you believe really - Sky customers are leaving BB in droves over this, it's the No1 hot topic on their support forums, so if it was financially viable, I'd suspect they'd be doing it. My suspicion still lies with BT trying to price them out of it. Don't get me wrong, I have no great love for Sky, but it seems a strange business decision for them to make unless they have to.

Still, no matter the reasoning, still means I've had to go back to BT, which doesn't make me happy.

[j2 lot]

Gav, you say Talk Talk is crap - in what way ?
We have been with them for several years now and no complaints or issues and the one time we lost internet service they replaced the router in 24 hours at no cost.
( not being argumentative but I am interested in where the issue lies as I have had no cause to complain but also not had any real technical or customer service issues so maybe just been lucky)

Edit to add: I would rather not have phone and internet if it meant dealing with BT

[CubanGav]

Tut - you'll have to speak to Sky to check what speeds they are offering. If it's LLU then you may find they are offering up to 24mb speeds instead. You might be limited by your line length though.

Remember when your exchange goes live for fibre you don't have to go BT Infinity. All providers will have the opportunity to offer their own brand of fibre connection. Shop around.

J2 - It's just experience of dealing with them every day. As a provider they are the cheapest (as far as I can tell) and if everything gets ordered and connected up without any hitch then you are onto a winner. If something goes wrong it can prove very difficult to get it sorted out. Why? - no idea but rarely do I turn up and not have to listen to a half hour story about the problems people have had when dealing with complaints. Line not working - 2 months before they agree to send the fault to the engineers. Broadband not working - same story. Bill wrong - same.
Don't get me wrong all providers can be good one time and rubbish the next but from years doing this you see which companies on average get it right and which don't. Talk Talk doesn't (this is my view and not that of the company ).


Shug - It is a shambles. I once escalated one customers problem to the director at Openreach and got told it's between Sky and BT Wholesale and we had no influence over it. Openreach are only responsible for the line, not the services running on it. Sadly the customers end up with the three parties involved all blaming each other and getting nowhere. I can't see why they can't fix it. The prices for it are set by Ofcom so it's not as if they are paying more than any other provider. Problem is there are only about 3000 of the 5600 exchanges in the country that are financially viable for any provider to bother with the set up costs of LLU. The rest are stuck with BT wholesale versions.

[tut]

Glad I brought this thread up, as we get the views of a professional in the form of Gav, and a variety of views for some of the ISP's.

Unfortunately I may be left with the devil I know rather than change at this point. Even so when we had the lightning strike I was told it would be a week at least before they got an engineer round to repair the phone line. I really had to lay on the disability aspect hard to get them to attend within two days.

As it is I will have to carry on paying from two to four times the price of other ISP's and getting drop outs during the day ranging from seconds up to 30 mins, at least until July. At least I have a stable speed connection and unlimited usage.

tut

[Dipper]

we don't use caller display and very very rarely 1571 so ill be onto them to take those charges off as well. it also hacks me off that i pay full whack for broadband and yet can't get 1mb!

I'm tempted to ditch the landline and and broadband and go with a satellite service instead.90% of our landline calls are nuisance calls anyway. the other 10% are for my daughter! As a family we use mobiles, Skype, FaceTime etc much more these days

[Shug]

I looked into Satellite, but supposedly it's not the best for realtime stuff like Skype - good download speeds but glacial ping.

[Dipper]

I've not looked into it much myself. we're moving further into the country this year so thought it might be a better option. maybe not. can't get sky BB here either so stuck with BT also.

[campbell]

Lisa called to change some admin details with Virgin recently, and for about the same as our previous package cost for 20Mb broadband, phone, and "medium" size telly package with no HD, they have moved us onto a TiVo box with HD, bumped the broadband to 30Mb, and shipped us a nice new "superhub" router thingy with stronger wireless strength.

We'll see, but I think that will keep us with them for a few months yet...

Such a shame about rural disadvantages for some. Whatever happened to WiMax?

As for TalkTalk, two sets of my inlaws have it and when it's working it's OK but any issue takes ages to resolve. I also believe our own Robin had some very disappointing experiences with them despite providing practically all of the diagnostics they needed to sort the issue out at a very deep technical level (as you'd expect...!) Robin can explain more if need be...

[CubanGav]

That's the first time I've ever been referred to as a professional

I've had decent reports on Tooway Satellite. A few companies doing it these days. Set up cost can be high but if you aren't paying out to have a landline installed it's offset. It's useless for anything relying on latency/ping so If the kids are looking to gaming online forget it. I know plenty people using it in non broadband areas and it works very well. No problem working from home and accessing a work server or remote desktop type use. You will be charged based on what bandwidth you need but silly speeds are possible.

I should also say I'm liable to a gripe as much as the next guy. The broadband situation in this country is a joke but......... it would frighten you how much money is being pumped into infrastructure. Only 2 companies went for the BDUK pot of cash from the government to fibre up everywhere. This cash was not paying for everything. In the end because return on investment was in excess of ten years Fujitsu pulled out and it was only BT willing to move it forward. It's a slow process but I know moves are being made to get fibre into smaller exchanges, or at least a version of copper based broadband, that will give up to 80Mb down and 40Mb up. Years away yet though.

As I have done for a few people here I am happy to help where I can. So if you are having a problem drop me a PM and I will see if I can do anything. I'm at the bottom of the food chain but I do know some people with a little clout, which is nice

[Lazydonkey]

BT have moved into Sky's territory with their move to TV and the purchase of the football rights. This had come off the back of BT loses broadband customers hand over fist.

Strangely this activity had precisely coincided with a massive increase in complaints from sky customers on their broadband being throttled at peak times. It is possible BT have said they can fix this with a significant investment from sky (don't know if that's true or not) but i would understand entirely if sky didn't want to give them a penny more than they already do.