Broadband Problem - Consumer Act?

[Rich44]

You should be fine what broadband device are you going to be using to connect to the phone line?

If its a freebie usb modem then I would try to save up and replace it with a cheap router these can be had for as little as £30 if you shop about.

The reasons I suggest this is

1. Routers tend to hold on to noisy phone lines better so you dont end up with flashing lights meaning loss of sync and no broadband

2. Much safer as the only device "visible" to the internet is the router rather than your PC so the router acts as a primitive firewall (or not so primitive depending on how it works) to protect you from hacking attempts

Let me know once you get all set up etc and shout if you have any problems

[Mumofthreeboys]

Rich44 thanks again for all your help, much appreciated

Still nothing in the post this morning from Tiscali (they said on the phone on Saturday when I ordered it that it could take 10-15 days)!!!!

Will certainly get a router asap tho and 'll let you know how I get on, MOTB xx

[Rich44]

Even once you receive the pack it may be the case that BT havent provisioned the ADSL onto the line yet but we'll cross that bridge once the stuff arrives, BT are pretty snappy these days.

[breadline]

Ive just brought a wireless router and its true i have better connection than the home PC.

If and when i do get a prob i click repair and it resests the IP address and im ok. i would say im thrown out about 3 times in 18 hours.

Telewest have haunted me for 12 months, and i have been with customer relations, they are the only peopel who have an ear open and a will to help. trouble is anything they do gets thrown out teh window as teh company has no internal communictaions.

Eventually after many months of hassel I now have my TV free, My broadband at £9.99 and teh y wanted me to have My phone left onat half price but i declined , to many hidden charges.

Every bill time i ring customer relations who deduct what should never have been on there and round up the bill, ususally £24 pound less.

Telewest are a joke....

I hope you manage to get your broad band sorted you may get offered everything half price or free before you close your contract. Say yes to it all thn send then send the disconnection letter lol but it has to be done in writting giving 30 days ( more charges)...

BL

PS i had to stay or it menat paying a line rental with another company.

[bitbob]

My brother has no end of problem with Tiscali, he can only connect after teatime 5pm ish and is going to cancel after fruitless hours speaking to somebody in India reading from a script (we guess).

I Use IC24, they have just uprated the speed and it throws me off every now & then.

I like the Bulldog offer, any Bulldog customers out there?. Do it as Ebay customer and they give free for first few months or money off for better packages.

[Rich44]

Bulldog are about to stop accepting new residential customers (1st July)

The Ebay sign up is great if you want to provide your own equipment otherwise they charge you for it, with the other offer the modem/router is free.

Dont forget if you have 8MB the USB modems will NOT work reliably.

If using Doublespeed aka ADSL2+ then you need an ADSL2+ router ADSL wont work above 8MB.

The problems your brother is having is probably not Tiscalis fault (unless he is a llu customer) then it sounds like a Bt line noise problem, a lot of people turn their PCs on and start using broadband about 5pm so could then be generating more line noise and knocking his off. Try a new microfilter or trying disconnecting all the phones and use a rj11 to BT phone jack to plug the router in directly with no filter see if that helps.

Failing that take the 2 screws off the front of the BT socket (the main one where the cable enters the property, it will have a BT logo on it) carefully pull the front towards you and behind it is the "test" socket plug the filter in there as this will disconnect any house wiring and prove the fault is outside your premises (and as such not your problem) keep a log of times and see if theres a pattern like a water heater switching on or your fridge compressor starting up stuff like that.

If running ADSL from an extension get a router plugged into the master socket and then run network cables round the house to your PC phone line extensions is a big no no for ADSL

[bitbob]

Thanks Rich44,

I will check the points you mention.

You may be able to shed light on another problem. That of surges on telephone lines. My brother had a storm & after it his ASDL modem & USB ports no longer worked. Hence new m/b or computer He (& myself) have suffered with the old 56k modems a few times during storms but only the modem ever broke.

If this happened on the 240v mains then the Electric board (as i understand it) are responsible even thought it was an 'act of God' there are reasonable steps that can be taken to prevent the surges.

Is this true of telecom companies. A 56k modem blowing was little inconvienience but the USB ports going makes a big impact.

Thanks for all the great info,

Mike

[Rich44]

You probably wont get anywhere with it but BT were supposed to have put stuff on the lines to stop this from happening, you can bet ya ass the DSLAMs in the exchange are surge protected.

All I can suggest is to find a compatible power surge protector that has a phone socket on it make sure its listed as ADSL compatible, also some UPSs come with a filter for phones.

As for the USB ports if you pop to the local PC shop you can buy a 2 or 4 port USB PCI card which are very easy to fit.

All you need to do is turn the PC off
Open the case
Find an empty slot (cream coloured ones there will be several it doesnt matter which one)
Take the blanking plate off the case and slot the card in using a firm pressure on either end (will be a little stiff), put the screw back in and turn the PC back on XP will find it and wont need any drivers

Failing that you need a new motherboard which you can buy from around £30 (make sure you get the right one for your CPU and RAM) and fitting somewhere will probably cost about £40-60 including getting Windows straight afterwards.

The actual physical job of changing a M/board isnt that hard but can be daunting for the beginner so unless youre sure pay someone to do it but by all means source your own (you generally get a longer warranty that way)

[bitbob]

Thanks for the reply, great idea the PCI USB card, will have a look around for one. Meanwhile he has bought a new one computer, needed upgrading anyway.

Will be good to sort the USB and give it to one of the kids though, super idea, cheers.

All the best,

[Rich44]

Expect to pay about £10 for a 4 port one theyre not expensive

Also if I may make a suggestion of buying a nice ADSL Router theyre available from £30-40 upwards and are a touch more robust than modems, instead of connecting to the PC via USB they use the network connection.

As they are mains powered typically if it gets a spile it can dump it to earth rather than earth it through the PC

It also has the added advantage of making your time on the net more secure as your PC will not appear to be there it will effectively be hidden behind the router

[bitbob]

Thanks again, i know i can rate your post ......but where the heck is the link??????

[Rich44]

the little set of scales to the top right of each post thanks

[Mumofthreeboys]

We're back online!!!

Finally got it sorted, it did take the whole weekend tho!

Tiscali stuff arrived Saturday morning, installed it - no problem, but wouldn't go online at all.

DB spent all weekend round ours trying to get it working. In the end we went and bought a wireless router (£49.99) and it seems to be fine.

Rich44 - thanks again for all your help on this one, MOTB xx

[Movingon]

Originally Posted by Rich44

You're missing the point it is NOT free it is subsidised by the phone calls etc although it is transparently free to the end user the resultant bandwidth costs are NOT free to them they will still have to pay for transit costs which are very high.

No, I'm not missing the point... it's not subsidised by the calls etc because I don't PAY for calls. I take your point about the costs to them, but what do I care about that? I'm not paying for my broadband. By the way; I DO take your point about the new ISP etc; it's just that I'm willing to take the risk, and I'll be the LAST to complain if they get it wrong; rather I will be looking for a new ISP instead. I can do that because I'm not paying for it so I won't have to worry about the 18 month contract; I'm more than happy to get all my calls free for the £20-odd it costs me in line rental and plan fees every month, for the next 18 months.

[Rich44]

I wasn't necessarily referring to you personally but how their business model is laid out the cost of everyones broadband IS I can assure you being paid for by phone call charges the fact that you are not paying for any calls is largely irrelevant (except to your finances of course). As for caring about the costs to them you will care if they cannot afford to pay for their transit costs and cut all their users off with no warning leading to at least 4 weeks of downtime before the cease clears the BT checker database and returns the line to BT for another ADSL and phone order to be put through and reconnected

The downside to the 18 month contract even though its "free" it's still a contract you will still be tied in if it suffers from horrible contention you would not be able to break the contract and get out early as in the existing terms you have agreed to the contention ratios so there would be no grounds for breach of contract (on their side) as this was the level of contract that you have agreed to at the moment you wont be seeing any contention as they dont have enough users but so far they have on paper signed up 300,000 consumers so its only a matter of time before their central pipes start to fill up, how they intend to manage this is anyones guess at this moment in time but I would put money on employing something similar to the Ellacoyas that +net use to manage data traversing their network which deprioritises certain data and prioritises other data to maintain thruput.

The worrying thing about this is who decides which data needs prioritising? The ISP does so technically they could deprioritise ALL VoIP data apart from their own to force you into using their product. I'm not saying this is there plan but it clearly is easy to implement this to manage data costs.

Also with regard to the 40GB cap whilst this is obviously ok for yourself and many other users likewise it isnt the best for all users (myself included) I regularly throw about over 100GB a month all of which is legal data (no copyright infringing stuff) so the 40GB cap and 18 month contract becomes a serious issue, especially when you factor in Sky by Broadband, VoIP, rich website content, streaming videos, BBC content the list continues.

I hope that CPW will review that 40GB cap because otherwise by the end of the 1st 18 months that is going to start looking increasingly tiny.

I hope CPW works out for you, personally I pay £42 per month with no other bills all calls included on a 24MB ADSL2+ line with no caps/fups/aups or throttling but if you are a light user and can live with the contract length and your exchange is ready then it might be worth a punt

[Movingon]

Yeah - and if I don't like it I'll just let it lie dormant and go back to NTL Cable LOL.

I really do have the best of both worlds here so I'm prepared to take the risk.

[Mumofthreeboys]

Originally Posted by Mumofthreeboys

Now had a bill from the bloodsuckers for £137.49 - for a service we never had!!!

I've fired off the following letter to them:-

'Thank you for your letter dated 17th May demanding £137.49. As has already been explained to various people at Telewest, the reason we have chosen to leave Telewest is due to the appalling service on our broadband.

You should have records of this, but I will explain again:-

Our broadband was constantly going off line. When I say constantly, the time that the broadband remained online was sometimes 2 minutes, or it could be as long as 10 minutes if you were really lucky! Broadband is supposed to be continuous. This has been happening since we moved into our property in November 2002.

We had our computer ‘repaired’, at our expense, as advised by your IT Department.

The engineer maintained, and still, maintains, the problem is not with our PC, but with YOU.

The Sale of Goods Act clearly states that the goods should be:

∙ of satisfactory quality - which means the product should be reasonably reliable.
∙ fit for purpose - which means it should perform the function you bought it