Telco rants (Was: [Nottingham] Slashdot...)

[Martin]

Dave Silvester wrote:
> Hi everyone!
> 
> This is my first post to the list, having only joined today.

Welcome to the list, and to the rants!


[---]
> Anyway, the reason I'm contacting this list is because I'm seriously at the 
> end of my tether with NTL and their crappy transparent web cache.  I'm a bit 

The worst I suffer is having to do a ctl-shift-r on certain web pages, 
and also being bittorrent aware of them.


> of a Slashdot junkie, and in the last few days I've noticed that now even my 
> Firefox RSS feed has been banned.

That's more a problem of Slashdot blinkeredness and MS-crap MS-virus 
fallout.


[---]
> I don't fundamentally object to the idea of surfing through a web cache, but 
> when it's forced upon me, with no mention of it before the 12-month 
> minmum-term signup, and when it's banned by my favourite site, and when the 
> company responsible for it can't even be bothered to reply to an email about 
> it--- that's when I start losing my rag!

Yes, slightly irksome with your high 'new' expectations.

The "1GByte/day" 'rule' seems to be fairly relaxed and is more to stop 
certain download junkies breaking the local networks. The 'rule' seems 
to be extremely relaxed if you're downloading from the news binaries 
servers--- 65GBytes later and no letter--- (:-))


[---]
> NTL apparently don't give a damn, which makes me pretty annoyed that I'm 
[---]

That all depends--- I've recently had direct contact with their 
technical people whom have been very helpful. I'm presently talking to 
an NTL contact for some phone number transfers and I'm getting 
infinitely better service than how I've been arrogantly stuffed by BT.

(BT: You want your ISDN number changed on a Sat? That's £140 then!--- 
Number divert, that's £50 each--- plus extras. But, but, but, it's just 
a 5 minute job on a vt100 -> exchange--- Ahhh--- but its a very 
'technical' vt100 terminal--- Oh, and you must wait 2 weeks, and we've 
agreed with OfCom to take exactly two days to read the authorising 
letter (no fax). But I contacted you about this FOUR weeks ago. Oh but 
that's different to "BT Authorising", and oh further, we only count 
'working' days, not Saturday--- And there's other bureaucratic arcanery---)


The time I've lost in NTL's call centres is counted in minutes rather 
than quite a few painful BT _HOURS_.

And the broadband link simply works, as do their phones. No issues.

(NTL: Free installation and free number transfer, £1.75pm call divert, 
no 'extras'.)


There does seem to be a lottery in that a few people suffer great 
confusion (by them or NTL) and so suffer a bad time. However, BT must 
have much the larger of the complaints 'black hole'.


(And then unfortunately there is the BT telephone poles saga---)

Cheers,
Martin


-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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