The girl who says 'no'

[The Natural Philosopher]

Virgin will supply copper adsl I thiunk in areas not covered by 'cable'

[NY]

The other year I needed to order a pair of sliding runners for a drawer. I'd tried going to a few local hardware shops and no-one had the right size. So I tried phoning a company that I found from Google. A woman answered. From her voice she sounded as if she was a clerk or secretary, but I work on the principle that anyone who answers the phone will be able to help me - until proved otherwise.

So I started to describe what I needed - shelf runner brackets, size etc - expecting her to break in and say "can I pass you to someone else". But she knew exactly what I was talking about and could help when I wasn't sure which sort I would need based on the measurements I'd made of the old ones that needed to be replaced.

Within a couple minutes everything was ordered and I was left feeling confident that they would work. And they did. Job done. I was impressed - not because a woman knew about these things but because anyone (male or female) knew their products and could actually advise and give me fitting instructions rather than simply saying (effectively) "these are the ones we've got, you'll have to work out which will be the right one for you and work out how to fit it", as so many shops do nowadays.

[James Wilkinson]

Talktalk try to blame my neighbour every time. They always get me to phone Talktalk up as I can bypass all their "it could be this" crap, as I've already tried it.

[Capitol]

I think Plusnet/BT may reduce their prices as a result of a new pricing structure.

Reported a fault to Plusnet today when internet went down about 11.30am. They couldn't fix it, as it appeared to be a phone line fault which I believed had been fixed on Tuesday. Then went onto BT, managed to get a droid with some English in spite of their computer system and explained the faults to him, pointing out that the previous phone line fault occurrence had registered on their website on Monday, and that the phone had worked Tuesday and Wednesday. Internet was back working by 5pm. I haven't been brave enough to check the phone fault out again yet.

[Indy Jess John]

Not in the accepted sense of "monopoly". In my street, VM serve some houses, BT serve some houses via copper wire (and at least one house uses that copper wire for Sky broadband) and BT have a fibre cabinet along the road which serves FTTC to at least one house.

I call that a free choice not a monopoly.

Jim

[Indy Jess John]

They used to, but they discontinued that a while ago and sold the customers on to another broadband supplier. (I CBA to look up who).

Jim

[Andy Burns]

MutterMutter.

[Bill Wright]

I had a problem caused by BT's line getting inundated with water. F2S sorted it out then also sent a bloke to find out why we were only getting slow speeds. He supplied a mew modem and tidied up the phone connections in the house.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Sorry I meant TalkTalk.

Bill

[charles]

Then it's changed recently.

[Andy Burns]

I don't think anything's changed, BT/Openreach have long been forced to allow other operators access to their network, but none of the other operators (Hull apart?) have to allow access to anyone else.

[James Wilkinson]

Dunno who F2S is, but I've had 10 times faster repairs to stuff like that using Plusnet to get BT out, than I used to getting BT to get BT out.

[Tweed]

Not here. We've had the choice of BT ADSL broadband or VM cable broadband pretty much since both technologies were introduced. A few years ago BT installed FTTC, so now I have the choice cable broadband or VDSL. With cable you can only have VIrgin Media as the ISP. VDSL allows a choice of ISP.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Capitol escribió:

It's handled by whoever you pay your line rental to.

You can in theory rent your line from one provider, have calls provisioned by another, and broadband provisioned by a third.

But you'd have to be mental to do that.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Clive George escribió:

To be pedantic, it's Openreach who do the work on the wet string. They're part of BT Group but are (in theory) a separate entity.

There have recently been moves to increase the 'air gap' between BT and Openretch:

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Bill escribió:

Demon were well screwed before Vodaphone got anywhere near them. The rot set in when they were sold off to Thus.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Demon started life screwed.

And went downhill thereafter

[charles]

now that is going back

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher escribió:

Bollocks.

Cliff, the founder, ably aided by Giles "baby eater" Todd, Tony Finch and a couple of other guys whose names I forget, were pioneering and instrumental in bringing t'internet, previously the preserve of academia, to the public for a tenner a month. It was solid and reliable, using KA9Q to dial into the Warrington POP, if you could get through after 6pm. The virtual POPs with numbers ending in 666, went some way to sorting that out.

The only hiccups were the great ongoing News Server Disaster (anyone remember "nntp kick"?), partly remedied by the introduction of Ade's NewsBorg, and a bunch of servers falling through the floor at one of their datacentres.

demon.service was a great, entertaining, really busy NG in those days with lots of good-natured bitching. The Demon staff took part and you could get problems fixed quickly.

Cliff saw the writing on the wall when the likes of Freeserve took off and the great unwashed began to pile in, and sold the firm to Thus so he could retire and count his money. (Actually, he reinvested it in something else - Red Bus or something like that)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've been with 6 ISPs over the years. Current one BT Infinity - fibre to the end of the road. So far, much better than any of the others, since I've had no problems at all with them in over 3 years. So can't comment on so called service if things go wrong. Personally I prefer reliability to a help line.