Disillusioned with Broadband providers.

[bazz]

Hi,

Might seem to be a strange post title but wait for this.

We have been with TESCO (Finest, LOL) broadband for a couple of years. Told when siging up that they did not use British TelecoN infrastructure and because we were already fed up with BT bouncing our calls from one department to another, without any successful answers, they proved themselves to be infuriatingly annoying to try to deal with.

At sometime between midnight and and 3am on 24th March, our tesco broadband went out. why was this? well assuming the latest virus scan had knocked something out, I checked everything including re-installing the netgear router before calling them. On awaking at about lunchtime on 24th, I rang tesco internet. they informed me on a recorded phone call, that BT had been migrating from one server to another and not only had this failed, but they lost all the customers details! That meant they had to reconstruct the data from somewhere, before being able to get the customers back on line. Turns out the issue had begun 72 hrs earlier and seemed to cascade to then affect thousands of customers.

I asked what they were going to make BT pay us my way of compensation for the interruption to service and they said, 'nothing; the service hasn't been down for 72 hrs. As to what they would do to show apologies, they said nothing because the service hadn't been down for 72 hrs.

So my dilemma is.. what ISP should I use?
I am infomred that the 'old' AOL technology is what talk talk use and it is absolute rubbish.
BT is behind numerous other ISPs and are not only rubbish but incompetent to the point of ridicule: what professional company doesn't make back ups to prevent the scenario described above??

As an interim measure I am trying to use o2 mobile dongle broadband. nothing good to report about it either. said to be 3.6 Mbps, it is dial-up slow compared with my previous tesco 1.8Mbps.

What do you recommend I try next? And why does 3.6 3G Mbps go so much slower than hard-wired broadband of 1.8 Mbps?

Sometimes I wish I could run my own ISP.

bazz

[oracleguy]

And why does 3.6 3G Mbps go so much slower than hard-wired broadband of 1.8 Mbps?

Off the top of my head, the 3G is a much higher latency connection, that is why it feels slower. Plus with wireless, even if it is rated for 3.6, that doesn't mean you are getting it.

[effpeetee]

Hi bazz.

I am with British Telecom used via Open DNS. I don.t get any problems with my set up. Quite fast and reliable.

Frank

[MattF]

Told when siging up that they did not use British TelecoN infrastructure and because we were already fed up with BT bouncing our calls from one department to another, without any successful answers, they proved themselves to be infuriatingly annoying to try to deal with.

There's no such thing as an ISP in England who doesn't provide their system through BT if they're using ADSL, as far as I know. BT may have had to allow access to other companies, but BT still control of all of the hardwire. Same with the telephone providers. It still comes back to BT equipment.

Cable is pretty much the only non-BT option.

Btw, have you ever considered that Tesco were spinning a yarn to get themselves out of the crap?

[bazz]

When she signed up with tesco, she was told they were using virgin media hardware and when I checked this afterwards, with think broadband, it always showed us to be on virgin media.

I have also read on think broadband and other places of knowledge, that if the exchange is a LLU, then the hardware is provided by the company you have signed up with. The only part of BTs infrastructure being used in that scenario, is the copper line to the customer.


Local Loop Unbundling is the process by which third party network operators are able to install equipment in to BT telephone exchanges in order to provide their own services without having to touch BT's network. Only the copper pair from the exchange to the premises, which remains the property of BT, is used by the third party.


I seem to have found a lot of recommendations for 02 LLU so I may look into them.

@frank: the service has been the best I have experienced - until it stopped. Nobody else ~ however bad ~ has ground to a complete halt.

@MattF:

Btw, have you ever considered that Tesco were spinning a yarn to get themselves out of the crap?


lol, of course. But they aren't running thier own LLU and so BT is responsible for all their hardware. Best way I can think to explain it is that tesco broadband is a white labelled version of BT broadband.

bazz