The Horror Of British Telecom 651
MBCook writes "'Someone, raised amidst the elegant lattice of custom and tradition that serves as the foundation of English society, came up with a very elegant, very British, solution to broadband policy here.
And it absolutely, positively sucks.' So starts an article by Mark Hachman over at ExtremeTech chronicling his odyssey to get broadband in his new flat."
Been there, done that (Score:2, Interesting)
Took me 9 weeks to change UK ISP's (Score:2, Interesting)
So, I had to leave Tiscali and they wanted one months notice, which they got and after a month, my broadband stopped working. It then took many calls to Tiscali chasing them up to get BT to cease the line, what should have taken a week took three weeks. Then it took a another 2 weeks for BT to cease the line after Tiscali finally got off their butts and told BT to cease the line, that again should have taken 3 or 4 days. In that time Tiscali and BT constantly blamed each other for the delay.
I'm now with http://www.demon.net/ [demon.net] who I'm very happy with, but if they ever go downhill at least they support MAC codes so I never have to go through anything like that again.
Jonathan
Re:Should have checked his facts... (Score:2, Interesting)
At the other end you get something horrible like "BT Yahoo! Broadband". bleccch.
Re:BT (Score:2, Interesting)
First, lets be clear. BT are in this for the money, not for the coolness. They have no intention on offering cool products dot-bomb style that do not bring profits.
Second, they may seem technologically backwater, but they are obliged by the UK regulatory regime to offer their products on a national basis. As a result if it takes to limit DSL to 512 (old Fujitsu linecards) or 1M (new linecards) to offer it for the coverage defined in the approved wholesale product they will do so without any regrets.
If you want BT to offer better products they happily will, provided that they can charge you for it and that the product can get regulatory approval. The fact is that so far all ideas about wholesale products with sliding or flexible billing scale have gone fubar in the very early stage of negotiating with Oftel/Ofcom and the blame for this is clearly with Oftel (now Ofcom).
To add to that, it is clearly the better company as far as customer service and reliability is concerned compared to any alternative in the UK. DSL outages in most areas are usually under 20-30 minutes per year which for example is clearly above the US average. Compare this to NTL or BullDog which happily has them in the days or even weeks range (speaking from experience). If you line is broken they fix it in usually less then 4h. Compare to NTLs 3-7 days. If you have a billing complaint they fix it within 20-30 minutes. Compare this to NTLs "NEVER". The only way to get misbilled money from them is though a lawsuit.
Yes, BT is bad, but a large chunk of its badness is due to the regulatory regime and the alternatives are much worse.
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:2, Interesting)
Cannot send mail properly on £1000/quarter B (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, in our area the only provider available is BT (there are others who resell, but were significantly dearer).
You would think, with a £1000/quarter ($7500pa for American friends), that you might get an IP address from a range used solely by businesses (and that hasn't therefore been blacklisted due to residential customers in the same block relaying spam), and that you might get reverse DNS on said IP address to your company name, rather than hostxxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.in-addr.btopenworld.com, which looks like a dynamic address to most anti-spam filters.
You would think, but you'd be wrong. Spent 4 hours on the phone to them trying to find someone who could (a) understand the problem, and (b) have the authority to change the IP and set up reverse DNS properly. I gave up where their supposedly senior expert told me (a) that we couldn't have a residential IP address as home connections don't have IP addresses!? and (b) to ring 152 for further help (152 is the number for reporting normal analogue phoneline faults and is a separate company).
This is my latest involvement with them, but is typical of every time. Tossers all.
Re:Poor article (Score:2, Interesting)
While it's really cool that the 3G networks can do so much, it doesn't make me feel any better about paying $70/mo in France for 2 hours of talk time. Because, you know, a cell phone is, like, for talkin' and stuff. I could easily do without that extra network capability that no one ever uses in exchange for 50% off my bill.
Re:BT (Score:3, Interesting)
Total crap. On three different occassions BT has failed to even install their products and have given up. I have lost my own Internet connection, a large contract in the City of London (hardly a backwater) and in a smaller Woking office because, in each case, after literally weeks of talking to BT and reporting fault after fault with the work done by their so-called engineers, BT have simply said that they were unable to find what was causing the problem and that they simply were not going to try to fix it anymore. Note that there was no dispute about the existance of the faults, quite the opposite as some of the staff seemed to find the whole process facinating.
BT are fucking useless and it's not squat to do with regulation. Regulation is the only thing that stops them, from trippling their prices again.
I would be very happy to hear that BT had gone bust and all the bastards that work for them are unemployed; as far as I can see none of them, from the board down to tele-sales, are actually in useful employ now anyway.
NTL are bad but at least they've never told me that they won't bother fixing a fault because they can't find it.
TWW
Everyone loathes BT (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm on one of the last exchanges in the UK scheduled to be upgraded to broadband, and at present I use a combination of Satellite and ISDN. The sat is rock solid, the ISDN is a continual tail of woe. It regularly dies and BT won't fix it within 72 hours unless you pay extra for some 'service' contract. However the 'service' contract only guarentees a 'response' - which BT seem to take as simply phoning you up on another line and saying word to the effect 'oh dear, looks like your ISDN needs an engineer'. They don't actually do anything until they absolutly have to.
They always make the excuse that they are short of engineers because 'work is heavy at the moment'. Work is always heavy, in 5 years of my ISDN line they have never had even the glimmer of enough engineers to service the system with any hint of a timely response. An as to bullet-proofing the line so it doesn't do down as regularly - dream on, that would only take the fun out of torturing their customers.
In the days when they ran a mobile phone business I made the mistake of having a contract with them and their behaviour came pretty close to fraud.
I used to commute regularly on the railways, and bad as their service was - legendary awful in fact - the rail companies still can't lay a finger on the shere loathsome corporate dreadfulness that is British Telecom.
Highlighting the issue (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A very specific problem (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, that kind of customer service and ability is VERY rare in the UK. When you find a company that does it, you grab it with both hands.
US Equivalent (Score:3, Interesting)
Having just arrived in the US, you wouldn't have a social security number. So no one would give you credit for anything. So you can't get anything which you pay for in arreas.
Of course being unable to get broadband would not be a problem. In the absence of electricity, what would you plug your computer into?
Phil
Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Yes. Partially due to the fact that the USA is very large and sparsely settled in places. We have multiple carriers. We saw fit some years ago to dismantle our telephone monopoly. Perhaps that was wrong, I can't say.
2.) Yes. Choice is bad?
3) [shrug] Prepay is expensive? OK. I wouldn't know. Sounds like it's not a good choice. Bummer.
4) No, it's 50 minutes of calls per month. There's no restriction on calls being 1 minute or less. I think I know what you meant, but what you said isn't true. Yes, minutes are rounded up. Is an average of a half-minute per call really going to break you?
5) I don't pay anything to talk within my family. My last two plans have included unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes within my network, not just my family. I can talk to anyone who also uses my provider, all I want, no minutes counted. While it's true that half of zero is still zero, it's not really relevant.
6) I don't pay to receive text messages because I don't receive text messages. Perhaps I would find them more useful if I didn't have to pay for them... but I don't use them at all.
7) last I heard, we can text between networks. Again, I don't care - but I'm pretty sure you're mistaken about this as well.
8) In some cases, yes. Not in all cases. If you get your phone unlocked, you can juggle the SIM cards, if your carrier uses SIM cards, and your phone speaks the network protocol of the carrier you want to use... I got the phone I wanted. You might pay more... but what you'd be paying is the actual cost of the phone, not the subsidized and discounted cost, the balance of which the mobile carrier recovers over the life of your contract.
9)
10) This is purely a consequence of large area and population. It's not symptomatic of mobile service in the US, it's symptomatic of telephone service in the US and it's pretty close to unavoidable. It's certainly not conveniently avoidable. There IS a reason that we have area codes, and it's not to make BT look good. Besides, I haven't had a mobile plan which charged for long distance in what? Five years? More? It's not an issue. If I wait until after 7 PM, I get long distance from my land line at $0.016/minute - no, that's not a typo, not 16 cents per minute - 1.6 cents per minute. Who cares?
The picture isn't as bleak as you paint, sir.
Re:Let's review...Where the horror ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds to me like he has a FAR wider range of options for broadband than I have in the US, at prices that look pretty reasonable: UKP29/m for 8Mbit ( US$60) including telephone service - wow !?!?
Short version: "I'm American, and I want it now ! Whaddya mean there's a problem - didn't I tell you I'm American ? Stupid beaurocratic Brits. Bwa wa wa, I'm telling..."
Just think of it as Karma for all the times you moved into an apartment in the US and got free cable.
What bugs me about BT!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England... (Score:1, Interesting)
Speed cameras are an atrocious way to police the road network - and cause more problems than they solve. The WAY that people drive now on major routes is completely different to the way they did before the cameras - many drivers now roar along at over 100mph and just slam on the brakes when a camera comes into view, knowing full well that traffic police hardly exist anymore as all the budget has gone into cameras and other priorities. Road deaths are actually CLIMBING now for the first time in decades, yet we have thousands upon thousands of speed cameras paying out millions of pounds in fines - what the hell's going on?
Sounds familar: Telstra (Score:3, Interesting)
There best effort for me was watching a Telstra tech out on the street playing in the Telecomms pit. He accidently disconnected an E1 (30 digital phone lines) of ours at work. I noticed it go down so immediately went out to speak to him.
He realised what he had done and appologised. I asked him to fix it, he said he wasnt able to do that, and Id have to ring Telstra and lodge a fault. But HE broke it! Not me! Sorry, but he couldnt raise a fault or escalate it.
So I ring Telstra in a bad mood. We have a few decent service contracts with them, so it shouldnt be a problem. No worries, I ring telstra and lodge the fault. The woman on the other end of the phone mentions that they will have to Test the line and that it would take FOUR HOURS. But the tech is already there! Call him. He will tell you that its broken and exactly what the problem is. Sorry, they cant do that, they have to test it and you WILL have to wait 4 hours. (Meanwhile we are short 30 phone lines.)
I get a call in four hours, that yes the E1 is down (no shit sherlock!) and they will need to send a Tech out. But there is a tech already here! Anyway, three hours later and another tech arrives, but he sees the first tech in the pit still, so he leaves. Another call to Telstra sees him come back. The tech then speaks with the first tech and decides that he cant do anything that the first tech cant, so we need a DATA technician. Guess what, I need to call tesltra again. Why me?
But heres the best bit, Its now very late on a friday, because of all their time wasting antics, so a Data Technician wont be able to come out to MONDAY. A weekend with out the E1 we desperately have to have in our crucial period.
When we did get our data tech out, it took 30 minutes of him scratching his head, and 30 seconds to do something in the exchange to fix it.
Monopolies suck.
Re:Learn some f***ing geography (Score:2, Interesting)
As a non-British anglophone, it's a constant embarassment to me to travel the world and be assumed to be English because of the language my ancestors were forced to use by the English colonisers.
An embarrassment? I'm British, and I'm not embarrassed about what my nation did at all. It happened well before I was born, and I can't travel back in time to change those events, can I? So what does anybody being identified (rightly or wrongly) as British have to feel embarrassed about?
I'm not fond of what the English did to my people and don't appreciate them for it.
I'm English. Do you hold a grudge against me? It sounds like it. "The English" is a term that includes me.
if an Englishman is offended by my opinion he needs to learn what was done in his name to understand the non-English world's view of him.
Nothing was done in my name. I wasn't even born.
And no, I'm not offended, just confused at a nonsensical opinion.
Isn't that the same critisim the English anti-Iraq War movement made of Americans?
No, because that is the present, and that war is being carried out in both our names. We (supposedly) have control over our governments, and (supposedly) could stop them if we wanted. 1/60th of our population marched to our capital on a single day to protest the war, but it fell on deaf ears.
Re:Free Market (Score:2, Interesting)
But, yes, in principle I agree with you about many things. However, lest we forget the purpose of a cell phone, it's to talk. Not to send emails. Not to send SMSs. Not to download web pages. To talk.
America: calling to a cellphone is free.
Europe: calling to a cellphone costs from $0.25 to $0.45/min.
America: 3500 minutes for around $30/mo.
France: 120 minutes for $70. (And England is even more expensive)
So while we do have access to these technologies, no one uses them because no one can afford them. In Europe, we have everyone jumping on the same bandwagon, 3G, and everyone was hemorraging money for a long time because no consumers wanted those services. Don't get me wrong, offer me unlimited surfing on my phone for free, and I *might* consider it. But ask me to pay $15/mo. for that?
They can take their technological advantage and shove it. I just want to pay less to talk.