On 13/10/2020 14:40, Tim Streater wrote:
On 13 Oct 2020 at 11:08:42 BST, Robin wrote:

On 13/10/2020 09:22, charles wrote:
In article , Brian Gaff \(Sofa\)
wrote:
I think most land lines except those for vulnerable people where they
need battery backed land lines are being supplied over the internet. Heck
Virgin have been doing it for a couple of years, but not mine since its
needed to be independent of broadband. I had hoped mobile could be relied
upon, but it seems that often when the broadband goes down due to a power
cut, so does the local cellular service. Would not one think in this day
and age that some redundancy would be built in by supplying such services
from another power source? Brian

not if you're looking at your profit margin. Gone are the days of a public
service system


it is a regulated market in which legislation and OFCOM determine the
obligations on suppliers. OFCOM have said they plan to require
providers to take additional measures to provide landline access
emergency services in a power cut with IP telephony. I expect the
Select Committee(s) will take an interest in that.

Though of course nothing they can do will protect those with no corded
phone to plug in when the base station for their cordless phones stops
working.

Which is why we have one corded phone here. Although that's less necessary
than before they put up a mobile tower at the other end of the village (I get
5 bars now :-)


I also have a PS2 keyboard permanently plugged into my PC, and the
keyboard sits, tucked behind the mini-tower for those odd occasions
when the USB keyb and mouse are having a sulk.

On 13/10/2020 12:34, charles wrote:
In article ,
AJH wrote:
On 12/10/2020 11:14, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
Considering getting full fibre instead of FTC as I have at the moment.
Does the existing phone line stay, or does the new fibre cable include
provision for a basic analogue phone?

How long since you got fibre to the cabinet? I only have copper to the
house and it's 50 years old and just a screwed junction box , I am now
considering fibre to the cabinet as fibre to the premises is not
available, but wonder how noisy the last bit of copper is, I can hear a
hum on 17070 which I am sure degrades my ADSL connection.

i've had FTTC for about 3 years. The cabinet is about 100m away; feed is
mostly underground with the last bit overhead. That was re-installed after
the "Great Storm" of 1987. 70 up/20 down.


Or maybe even 70 Down, and 20 Up ?. Unless of course you live in the
cabinet :-)

In article l.net,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 14:42:08 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

OR should I wait till fibre to premises becomes available?

Use the Wholesale checker to see if your exchange is listed for FTTP.
(Not FTTP on demand). If it's not, like ours, then your might be
waiting a while...

OpenReach just recently ran in fibre (and termination boxes) to all the
telephone poles in the street.

I found FTC a vast improvement. Not sure fibre all the way will be as
noticeable a change, though.

Depends what speeds your choosen ISP offer. Openreach install "1 Gbps
capable" FTTP, what you get depends on your ISP and how much you're
prepared to pay. B4RN, Gigaclear et al, install their own fibre and
provide their ISP at a nominal 1 Gbps.

I'll likely stick with BT as it's been the best of all I've had. And I
intend keeping a POTS line - still have one non cordless phone which
should work regardless of mains.

--
*The older you get, the better you realize you were.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 09:17:05 UTC+1, polygonum_on_google wrote:
How? When most ISPs simply WILL NOT handle FTTP.

Sky, TalkTalk, Vodaphone, Zen, apparently all do
https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broa...fttp-providers

as well as some lesser-known ones. Plusnet did a trial a while back but no further news.

Openreach FTTP covers 3 million UK premises, which will hit 4.5 million by March 2021 and then they expect to cover 20m by the "mid€“ to late-2020s" so there'll be a bigger market share fairly soon.

Owain

On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 10:58:01 UTC+1, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 13/10/2020 09:17, polygonum_on_google wrote:
On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 09:09:19 UTC+1, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 13/10/2020 08:46, polygonum_on_google wrote:
On Monday, 12 October 2020 22:56:02 UTC+1, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 12 Oct 2020 15:38:45 +0100, alan_m wrote:

From memory the contract had to be with EE.

Most if not all none Openreach physical broadband providers only
offer a single ISP be that one they also run or one contracted in. So
no choice of ISP like you get of OPENreach.

When FTTP was installed for us, we had very little choice of ISP. Most wouldn't touch us.

A quick check suggests that there are still problems.

We found that many checkers said they could supply fibre, but when they found out it was FTTP only, they would not offer anything. But their websites often continued to make offers based on FTTC. (It is because our copper is so bad, we couldn't get even halfway acceptable broadband until FTTP was laid. Totally unsuitable for FTTC. But the ISPs don't know/understand that.)

get a better isp


How? When most ISPs simply WILL NOT handle FTTP.

I contacted pretty much every ISP in the UK which handles any fibre. Ended up with a choice of two or three, IIRC. Including BT who were least expensive.

Well Idnet are no more expensive than BT and handle fttp


Yes - just checked back my emails.

Their site refused to accept we had FTTP.

When I emailed, their offer was significantly more expensive than BT, had a set-up fee, and longer lead time.

Although we don't actually use it, BT included a phone connection. Nice to be there for emergency use and spam calls.

On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 20:27:12 UTC+1, wrote:
On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 09:17:05 UTC+1, polygonum_on_google wrote:
How? When most ISPs simply WILL NOT handle FTTP.

Sky, TalkTalk, Vodaphone, Zen, apparently all do
https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broa...fttp-providers

as well as some lesser-known ones. Plusnet did a trial a while back but no further news.

Openreach FTTP covers 3 million UK premises, which will hit 4.5 million by March 2021 and then they expect to cover 20m by the "mid€“ to late-2020s" so there'll be a bigger market share fairly soon.

Owain

At the time, Sky did not. Nor TalkTalk. Zen was more expensive. Plusnet didn't either - we used to have ADSL (appalling speed though it was) through them and would have just allowed it to be switched over. If they had done it..

On top of being less expensive, and would anyway have been our choice, BT also had a substantial cashback offer at the time.

It happens that Theo formulated :
No, just the end of analogue voice on your FTTC. Unless Openreach replace
it to meet implausible target for full FTTP.

So I would simply have to switch to VOIP on my FTTC connection?

AJH wrote:
On 13/10/2020 14:19, Andy Burns wrote:
AJH wrote:

any suggestions for a reasonable modem/router to replace my old
netgear adsl one?

Most ISPs will "give" you a router ...

Mine won't and now they appear to buy their telecoms services from
talktalk a firm I had terrible problems with a decade ago.

Who are your ISP?

A cheap option is a BT Homehub 5a installed with OpenWRT:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BT-HOME-H...r/164260334643
(no experience with that particular seller)

It's actually a decent little router, and putting OpenWRT makes it a very
flexible beast. Downside is it's not preconfigured for your ISP and you'll
have to do a little setup. I think it'll do ADSL and VDSL so you can set it
up before you switch over.

Wifi performance is respectable but not top of the range.

It appears VDSL speeds are slightly less than some other models. There are
apparently some VDSL firmware tweaks that can be done to improve that.
I don't know if that only affects the top end of the speed range (ie 76
dropping down to 70Mbps or whatever).

Theo

On 13/10/2020 21:48, Theo wrote:
Who are your ISP?


It was called ICUK but name has changed to CIX, I have been with them
without problem for around 10 years so no real incentive to change.

On 13/10/2020 11:57, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 11:37:30 +0100, AJH wrote:

How long since you got fibre to the cabinet? I only have copper to the
house and it's 50 years old and just a screwed junction box , I am now
considering fibre to the cabinet as fibre to the premises is not
available, but wonder how noisy the last bit of copper is,

Plug your landline number into:

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

That'll give you lots of info about your line and exchange. The rates
it quotes are generally pretty accurate.

I can hear a hum on 17070 which I am sure degrades my ADSL connection.

There's a bit of hum on our ADSL2+ I don't think it has any effect at
all. 50 Hz is way out of the band used by ADSL, the uplink carriers
don't start until 26.075 kHz and the downlink ones go up to 2.2 MHz.
What does knock back the acheivable ADSL speed are strong LW and MW
broadcast stations, which varies between day and night of course.

If the hum is really loud it *may* have and effect but then just
report a POTS vault and get it fixed.

A hum may not of itself be a problem but it is usually indicative of a
ground loop, which can be.


--
€œIt is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of
intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on
intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is
futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into,
we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every
criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a
power-directed system of thought.€�
Sir Roger Scruton

On Wed, 14 Oct 2020 09:02:51 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

There's a bit of hum on our ADSL2+ I don't think it has any effect
at
all. 50 Hz is way out of the band used by ADSL, the uplink
carriers
don't start until 26.075 kHz and the downlink ones go up to 2.2
MHz.
What does knock back the acheivable ADSL speed are strong LW and
MW
broadcast stations, which varies between day and night of course.

If the hum is really loud it *may* have and effect but then just
report a POTS vault and get it fixed.

A hum may not of itself be a problem but it is usually indicative of a
ground loop, which can be.

Agreed hum is normally down to a damaged cable and some form of
connection, damp, to ground. Mind you having said that the hum seems
a bit louder than normal ATM but the ADSL2+ has a download sync speed
of 6902 kbps and S/N ratio 7.2 dB which for 3 km of line is pretty
damn good.

With a 7.2 dB S/N ratio I'm tempted to force a resync to see if it'll
go over 7000 kbps which I never ever seen.

later Flipin' 'eck 7435 kbps 6.1 db S/N ratio using carriers up to
1.4 MHz. Be interersting to see if that stays stable overnight.
Recent "Normal" was around 6500 kbps 3 or 4 dB S/N and 1.2 to 1.3
MHz, a few years ago it was nearer 5000 kbops...

I think some one in Openreach has been fiddling, this last week there
have been a few NO CARRIER resyncs on the line in the wee small
hours. I can't imagine they are poking about in cabinets/joint posts
at that time of night. Maybe they have been upgrading the line card
firmware? NO CARRIER resyncs are very rare normally.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 13/10/2020 08:46, polygonum_on_google wrote:
On Monday, 12 October 2020 22:56:02 UTC+1, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 12 Oct 2020 15:38:45 +0100, alan_m wrote:

From memory the contract had to be with EE.

Most if not all none Openreach physical broadband providers only
offer a single ISP be that one they also run or one contracted in.
So no choice of ISP like you get of OPENreach.

When FTTP was installed for us, we had very little choice of ISP.
Most wouldn't touch us.

A quick check suggests that there are still problems.

Not all ISPs do, however there is now good choice of those that do. Even
when getting ours a while back there were probably half a dozen that did
then.

We found that many checkers said they could supply fibre, but when
they found out it was FTTP only, they would not offer anything. But

Sometimes it takes a while for the openreach databases that indicate
what services are available to be updated and indicate that FTTP is live
- so you may find with new installs that many can't actually identify a
service they could provide for.

their websites often continued to make offers based on FTTC. (It is
because our copper is so bad, we couldn't get even halfway acceptable
broadband until FTTP was laid. Totally unsuitable for FTTC. But the
ISPs don't know/understand that.)

That's usually the main driver for Openreach to in install FTTP -
basically when (like here) the cabinet network is unable to support FTTC
at the location)






--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 13/10/2020 20:38, polygonum_on_google wrote:
On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 20:27:12 UTC+1,
wrote:
On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 09:17:05 UTC+1, polygonum_on_google
wrote:
How? When most ISPs simply WILL NOT handle FTTP.

Sky, TalkTalk, Vodaphone, Zen, apparently all do
https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broa...fttp-providers

as well as some lesser-known ones. Plusnet did a trial a while back
but no further news.

Openreach FTTP covers 3 million UK premises, which will hit 4.5
million by March 2021 and then they expect to cover 20m by the
"mid€“ to late-2020s" so there'll be a bigger market share fairly
soon.

Owain

At the time, Sky did not. Nor TalkTalk. Zen was more expensive.

You would expect premium tier ISPs to be more expensive than mass market
operators like BT, this is hardly news.

Plusnet didn't either - we used to have ADSL (appalling speed though
it was) through them and would have just allowed it to be switched
over. If they had done it..

On top of being less expensive, and would anyway have been our
choice, BT also had a substantial cashback offer at the time.

Each to their own. You would have to pay me to accept broadband from BT!



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 13/10/2020 09:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 12/10/2020 15:38, alan_m wrote:
Â*From memory the contract had to be with EE.

No. Any ISP can offer you the same. What gets back to the ISP is
identical to what gets back via ADSL.

That's not always the case. If the FTTP was an openreach install, then
yes any ISP that can purchase connectivity from openreach can provide
the service.

There are a number of fibre installers other than openreach though, and
some will only deal with a preferred ISP. Some also sell to a range of ISPs.

For example I have one customer in Basildon that is on a symmetric
100/100 fibre service provided by a local area fibre installer that only
covers a few towns in Essex. However the customer's ISP is TalkTalk
business (who to be fair seem massively more competent then the retail
out). Virgin, EE, Gigaclear, and others all install their own fibre as
well.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Wednesday, 14 October 2020 15:59:15 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:
On 13/10/2020 08:46, polygonum_on_google wrote:
On Monday, 12 October 2020 22:56:02 UTC+1, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 12 Oct 2020 15:38:45 +0100, alan_m wrote:

From memory the contract had to be with EE.

Most if not all none Openreach physical broadband providers only
offer a single ISP be that one they also run or one contracted in.
So no choice of ISP like you get of OPENreach.

When FTTP was installed for us, we had very little choice of ISP.
Most wouldn't touch us.

A quick check suggests that there are still problems.

Not all ISPs do, however there is now good choice of those that do. Even
when getting ours a while back there were probably half a dozen that did
then.

We found that many checkers said they could supply fibre, but when
they found out it was FTTP only, they would not offer anything. But

Sometimes it takes a while for the openreach databases that indicate
what services are available to be updated and indicate that FTTP is live
- so you may find with new installs that many can't actually identify a
service they could provide for.

True - but Openreach did update their database fairly quickly.

Even when I contacted some of the ISPs, they either didn't understand, or their internal systems were not checking the Openreach database, or something.

their websites often continued to make offers based on FTTC. (It is
because our copper is so bad, we couldn't get even halfway acceptable
broadband until FTTP was laid. Totally unsuitable for FTTC. But the
ISPs don't know/understand that.)

That's usually the main driver for Openreach to in install FTTP -
basically when (like here) the cabinet network is unable to support FTTC
at the location)

Our cabinet was showing that some properties it supplied had pretty good broadband. But others, sometimes literally the house next door, had appalling speeds (like us). Openreach decided to install FTTP capability for every house. Since when we have seen them installing FTTP for, I'd guess, at least half the properties we can see from the road outside our house.

I actually got a map, checked the broadband claimed for every property, and marked them all up. There was no sense to it at all. Especially as all the ducting is in tiptop condition, properly installed, and with good access.

Looking back, it appears that someone made a few mistakes either with the original installs, or how they recorded the information.

The people who did the work were excellent. Friendly. Worked hard and long hours. Came from up to several hundred miles away as well as some locals.

Afraid the few ISPs which at the time would offer FTTP were either much more expensive or unimpressive outfits. A&A, for example, were more expensive and had a download cap.

The companies that came out well were Openreach (once they made their decision to go ahead), BT, and Plusnet. Our annual renewal with Plusnet had only just been done when the FTTC option appeared. Despite their T&C saying we were stuck with them, Plusnet did agree it would be unfair and agreed a refund. They were very pleasant to deal with.

On 14/10/2020 17:37, polygonum_on_google wrote:
On Wednesday, 14 October 2020 15:59:15 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:
On 13/10/2020 08:46, polygonum_on_google wrote:
On Monday, 12 October 2020 22:56:02 UTC+1, Dave Liquorice
wrote:
On Mon, 12 Oct 2020 15:38:45 +0100, alan_m wrote:

From memory the contract had to be with EE.

Most if not all none Openreach physical broadband providers
only offer a single ISP be that one they also run or one
contracted in. So no choice of ISP like you get of OPENreach.

When FTTP was installed for us, we had very little choice of
ISP. Most wouldn't touch us.

A quick check suggests that there are still problems.

Not all ISPs do, however there is now good choice of those that do.
Even when getting ours a while back there were probably half a
dozen that did then.

We found that many checkers said they could supply fibre, but
when they found out it was FTTP only, they would not offer
anything. But

Sometimes it takes a while for the openreach databases that
indicate what services are available to be updated and indicate
that FTTP is live - so you may find with new installs that many
can't actually identify a service they could provide for.

True - but Openreach did update their database fairly quickly.

Even when I contacted some of the ISPs, they either didn't
understand, or their internal systems were not checking the Openreach
database, or something.

their websites often continued to make offers based on FTTC. (It
is because our copper is so bad, we couldn't get even halfway
acceptable broadband until FTTP was laid. Totally unsuitable for
FTTC. But the ISPs don't know/understand that.)

That's usually the main driver for Openreach to in install FTTP -
basically when (like here) the cabinet network is unable to support
FTTC at the location)

Our cabinet was showing that some properties it supplied had pretty
good broadband. But others, sometimes literally the house next door,
had appalling speeds (like us). Openreach decided to install FTTP
capability for every house. Since when we have seen them installing
FTTP for, I'd guess, at least half the properties we can see from the
road outside our house.

I actually got a map, checked the broadband claimed for every
property, and marked them all up. There was no sense to it at all.
Especially as all the ducting is in tiptop condition, properly
installed, and with good access.

It seems to be a regional thing, but there was actually quite a good map
like that for our area:

https://www.superfastessex.org/inter...s/rollout-map/

You could drill down to individual properties and see what the status
was. For a couple of years we were in a shaded area saying "might get an
upgrade in the next tranche of work" kind of message.

But often, these things are only as good as the data.

Looking back, it appears that someone made a few mistakes either with
the original installs, or how they recorded the information.

It could also be that not al properties were supplied from the same
cabinet.

The people who did the work were excellent. Friendly. Worked hard and
long hours. Came from up to several hundred miles away as well as
some locals.

Yup, ours were good. The install of the actual fibre along the street
seemed to be mostly the work of one chap working for KMCO, on his own.
He climbed each pole in turn, pulled along and fixed the next segment of
wire, and then every few poles installed a junction box ready for the
drops to the properties. He came knocking on my door to ask if he could
park on our drive and climb the pole buried in the hedge in the garden.


Afraid the few ISPs which at the time would offer FTTP were either
much more expensive or unimpressive outfits. A&A, for example, were
more expensive and had a download cap.

You often get what you pay for in service though. Of the more budget
providers, Plusnet tend to be somewhat better in that respect than the
big four.

I already had and account with IDNet so it was much easier to go with
them so I kept my static IP etc. They were initially slightly more
expensive than BT for the 160/30 service, and noticeable so for the
330/50 - however their prices fell to about the same after a few months.

The companies that came out well were Openreach (once they made their
decision to go ahead), BT, and Plusnet. Our annual renewal with
Plusnet had only just been done when the FTTC option appeared.

Plusnet did participate in a FTTP trial, but then decided not to offer
it as a service for some reason.

Despite their T&C saying we were stuck with them, Plusnet did agree
it would be unfair and agreed a refund. They were very pleasant to
deal with.

Yup they are usually not too bad, although not as good as they once were
with 24/7 support etc.



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Wednesday, 14 October 2020 20:44:30 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:


It seems to be a regional thing, but there was actually quite a good map
like that for our area:

https://www.superfastessex.org/inter...s/rollout-map/

You could drill down to individual properties and see what the status
was. For a couple of years we were in a shaded area saying "might get an
upgrade in the next tranche of work" kind of message.

But often, these things are only as good as the data.

That is pretty much what I did - using OpenStreetmap (or something) and checking status for each property!

I think it was actually persuasive - made it really obvious where neighbours had ultrafast and "might mange 6 Mbps if you are really lucky".

Looking back, it appears that someone made a few mistakes either with
the original installs, or how they recorded the information.

It could also be that not al properties were supplied from the same
cabinet.

Definitely the one cabinet. Still the one cabinet feeds all of us.

The people who did the work were excellent. Friendly. Worked hard and
long hours. Came from up to several hundred miles away as well as
some locals.

Yup, ours were good. The install of the actual fibre along the street
seemed to be mostly the work of one chap working for KMCO, on his own.
He climbed each pole in turn, pulled along and fixed the next segment of
wire, and then every few poles installed a junction box ready for the
drops to the properties. He came knocking on my door to ask if he could
park on our drive and climb the pole buried in the hedge in the garden.


Afraid the few ISPs which at the time would offer FTTP were either
much more expensive or unimpressive outfits. A&A, for example, were
more expensive and had a download cap.

You often get what you pay for in service though. Of the more budget
providers, Plusnet tend to be somewhat better in that respect than the
big four.

I already had and account with IDNet so it was much easier to go with
them so I kept my static IP etc. They were initially slightly more
expensive than BT for the 160/30 service, and noticeable so for the
330/50 - however their prices fell to about the same after a few months.

I can see that there might be reasons but in the nearly-a-year we have had no significant issues. The very occasional few seconds of dropping out. And, though better than they used to be, I still dislike their routers.

The companies that came out well were Openreach (once they made their
decision to go ahead), BT, and Plusnet. Our annual renewal with
Plusnet had only just been done when the FTTC option appeared.

Plusnet did participate in a FTTP trial, but then decided not to offer
it as a service for some reason.

That was something of a surprise - I think I found out they had withdrawn between news we were getting FTTP and it actually arriving.

Despite their T&C saying we were stuck with them, Plusnet did agree
it would be unfair and agreed a refund. They were very pleasant to
deal with.

Yup they are usually not too bad, although not as good as they once were
with 24/7 support etc.

Thinking about it, I did have to send email to chief exec's office (or whatever) because their drone-level did not have the authority. But, as I said, once we explained, they were excellent.

'Tis funny how experiences vary enormously. But I would never, ever, ever, have gone with TalkTalk. Especially now Play-DiDoh Harding has re-demonstrated her utter ineptness for, well, everything.

On 14/10/2020 21:29, polygonum_on_google wrote:
On Wednesday, 14 October 2020 20:44:30 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:

The people who did the work were excellent. Friendly. Worked hard
and long hours. Came from up to several hundred miles away as
well as some locals.

Yup, ours were good. The install of the actual fibre along the
street seemed to be mostly the work of one chap working for KMCO,
on his own. He climbed each pole in turn, pulled along and fixed
the next segment of wire, and then every few poles installed a
junction box ready for the drops to the properties. He came
knocking on my door to ask if he could park on our drive and climb
the pole buried in the hedge in the garden.


Afraid the few ISPs which at the time would offer FTTP were
either much more expensive or unimpressive outfits. A&A, for
example, were more expensive and had a download cap.

You often get what you pay for in service though. Of the more
budget providers, Plusnet tend to be somewhat better in that
respect than the big four.

I already had and account with IDNet so it was much easier to go
with them so I kept my static IP etc. They were initially slightly
more expensive than BT for the 160/30 service, and noticeable so
for the 330/50 - however their prices fell to about the same after
a few months.

I can see that there might be reasons but in the nearly-a-year we
have had no significant issues. The very occasional few seconds of
dropping out. And, though better than they used to be, I still
dislike their routers.

Of the bundled ones, their routers are better than some IME. Having said
that, you don't necessarily have to use the bundled router.

Although that is one area when the quality of support staff becomes more
apparent. If you phone them with a technical question using a third
party router, and a computer that is not a windows PC, many just refuse
to even engage in conversation!

I recall a while back trying to to get VPN remote access to an office
setup for someone. In the end I concluded that their sky router was
blocking all VPN traffic. Then we had the fun of swapping the router
since they will not disclose the account login details that they preload
into the router before supplying it. (fortunately it leaks them onto the
ethernet on power up, so if you are ready and waiting with wireshark you
can grab em!)

The companies that came out well were Openreach (once they made
their decision to go ahead), BT, and Plusnet. Our annual renewal
with Plusnet had only just been done when the FTTC option
appeared.

Plusnet did participate in a FTTP trial, but then decided not to
offer it as a service for some reason.

That was something of a surprise - I think I found out they had
withdrawn between news we were getting FTTP and it actually
arriving.

Despite their T&C saying we were stuck with them, Plusnet did
agree it would be unfair and agreed a refund. They were very
pleasant to deal with.

Yup they are usually not too bad, although not as good as they once
were with 24/7 support etc.

Thinking about it, I did have to send email to chief exec's office
(or whatever) because their drone-level did not have the authority.
But, as I said, once we explained, they were excellent.

Yeah, I remember in the very early days of the talktalk "free" broadband
deal, someone had got stuck with completely non working broadband, and
could not get them to fix it. I had already checked, and the router was
not getting DSL synch, so it was obviously a physical line fault, yet
she spent hours on the phone to them (at premium rate) trying to get
them to fix it. It was always the same story, "Have you re-installed
your OS", or go away, do this and then phone back. Next call she would
get someone different, "oh, we don't support Macs"...

There was just not a path through the tech support scripts that would
accept "just ignore the effing computer, concentrate on why the router
can't get DSL sync, and send openreach out to fix it!" In the end she
got Mr Dunstone's direct email from somewhere, and pointed out she had
so far spent £700 on their premium rate line not getting anything fixed
and she wanted out of the 18 month contract, plus a refund! (she got out
and got about £500 back). Ported to plusnet, where obviously it still
did not synch, and they had an engineer out in a few days who fixed a
problem with the line before it entered the building and it all started
working.


'Tis funny how experiences vary enormously. But I would never, ever,
ever, have gone with TalkTalk. Especially now Play-DiDoh Harding has
re-demonstrated her utter ineptness for, well, everything.

Indeed the above put me off fairly permanently.

The client who ended up on their business service kind of got there by a
roundabout route, first by going to a specialist ISP that did EFM
services, when that was the only (really really expensive - like
£360/month for 30/30) way to get anything useful in the area). IIRC that
was provided by Gamma (a fairly decent B2B ISP). Then a couple of years
later they had the option of a deal to go to 100/100 fibre at about
£180/month - but they did not mention on the ISP actually doing the
connectivity would be talktalk). However to be fair its been rock solid
reliable, and the actual infrastructure is installed and managed by
another outfit that specialise in B2B fibre.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Thu, 15 Oct 2020 01:28:32 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

There was just not a path through the tech support scripts that would
accept "just ignore the effing computer, concentrate on why the router
can't get DSL sync, and send openreach out to fix it!"

er stupid question. Was the POTS working? If not it's far easier to
report that fault and get it fixed which invariably fixes the DSL
than try and report a DSL fault.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 15/10/2020 10:10, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 15 Oct 2020 01:28:32 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

There was just not a path through the tech support scripts that would
accept "just ignore the effing computer, concentrate on why the router
can't get DSL sync, and send openreach out to fix it!"

er stupid question. Was the POTS working? If not it's far easier to
report that fault and get it fixed which invariably fixes the DSL
than try and report a DSL fault.

Yeah, phone was fine. It turned out there was an extra box of tricks
connected in the line path - may have been a DACS or similar[1]. But
while voice was fine, DSL was not going to get through it.

[1]Not sure if the attending tech actually specified what it was or not,
or whether it was just lost in translation before I got to hear about it.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Thu, 15 Oct 2020 15:18:27 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

er stupid question. Was the POTS working? If not it's far easier
to
report that fault and get it fixed which invariably fixes the DSL
than try and report a DSL fault.

Yeah, phone was fine. It turned out there was an extra box of tricks
connected in the line path - may have been a DACS or similar[1]. But
while voice was fine, DSL was not going to get through it.

Yeah DACS would kill DSL. Not very common though, I think there are
one or two around here or at least at oone place the box is attached
to a pole but of course it may no longer be in service.

[1]Not sure if the attending tech actually specified what it was or not,
or whether it was just lost in translation before I got to hear about
it.

ADSL or VDSL? For the latter maybe they forgot to change the
jumpering to loop the line via the VDSL cabinet or for some strange
reason removed it.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 14/10/2020 17:37, polygonum_on_google wrote:
The people who did the work were excellent. Friendly. Worked hard and long hours. Came from up to several hundred miles away as well as some locals.

I said to ours "What's the minimum bend radius for this stuff?"

One looked at the other then said "We did that on the course didn't we?"

Andy

On 15/10/2020 15:43, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 15 Oct 2020 15:18:27 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

er stupid question. Was the POTS working? If not it's far easier
to
report that fault and get it fixed which invariably fixes the DSL
than try and report a DSL fault.

Yeah, phone was fine. It turned out there was an extra box of tricks
connected in the line path - may have been a DACS or similar[1]. But
while voice was fine, DSL was not going to get through it.

Yeah DACS would kill DSL. Not very common though, I think there are
one or two around here or at least at oone place the box is attached
to a pole but of course it may no longer be in service.

[1]Not sure if the attending tech actually specified what it was or not,
or whether it was just lost in translation before I got to hear about
it.

ADSL or VDSL? For the latter maybe they forgot to change the
jumpering to loop the line via the VDSL cabinet or for some strange
reason removed it.

ADSL - this was probably before there was any significant roll out of FTTC.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/