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Broadband Disaster

I'm in an area, in fact there's a box at the end of my drive but apparently my property can't be hooked up! Doesn't stop them from knocking on my door and trying to sell me it though!


Posted on the move; please excuse any brevity.
 
"Virgin Media's superfast fibre optic cable network covers more than half UK, but is mostly in urban areas." (VM website). I can't find a figure for BT Infinity. Also, we've got a WIMAX provider setting up in the Cambridge area offering 30mbps. It would be interesting to know how much WIMAX provision there is nationally.
 
fenlander said:
"Virgin Media's superfast fibre optic cable network covers more than half UK, but is mostly in urban areas." (VM website). I can't find a figure for BT Infinity. Also, we've got a WIMAX provider setting up in the Cambridge area offering 30mbps. It would be interesting to know how much WIMAX provision there is nationally.
Click to expand...


The only figures I could find were 12m houses Virgin Fibre, 4m BT Fibre, and that is availability, not actually connected. I also read that about 50% of houses should be able to access Virgin's 100Mb service as of now.

Edit: Conflicting information on thinkbroadband.com

Fibre broadband currently has a limited roll out. As of March 2012 around seven million homes had the option of fibre from Openreach (28% of UK households) this is expected to rise to ten million by the end of 2012. It should be remembered that while an exchange is announced for FTTC/P that not all premises served by an exchange will benefit, generally only 85% of properties see their cabinet enabled for FTTC on an exchange. BT have committed £2.5 billion to invest in the technology which will allow them to reach two thirds of the country by the end of 2014.
Current roll-out plans are predominantly FTTC and BT expect FTTH/P to make up around 17% of the completed fibre deployment. In 2013 the FTTP on Demand option should launch, which will allow small businesses and home owners to pay perhaps £500 to £1500 to get FTTP installed to their home if they live in an area with FTTC.
 
Wallace said:
@ RobH1.

So you are the one? :)
Click to expand...


No. There are two of us :hug:

That said, we had a few issues with a flaky connection when we first set up with them (a good few years ago now) and their customer service was pretty dire - just too inflexible and working from a script. Could be better now, though the odd survey suggests probably not much, but the connection has generally been very good - touch wood - so I've not tested it lately.
Contract is due for renewal soon, so I've been checking options, but there's nothing significantly cheaper, and plenty more expensive, so probably be a case of the devil I know.

We are not in a cable area, so whoever we use would be running over the same 37+ year old copper. FTTC might happen one day, but TBH what we get now, about 12Meg down I think, is adequate most of the time. I would like to have more than 1M upload though as I use a cloud storage service and it can be painfully slow to shift big or lots of files up to it.
 
We've been with them since joining Tiscali in 2004, minor niggles but sorted easily. One engineer took control of the laptop remotely and repaired whatever the problem was at the time. Since T/T took over we have had consistent connection (16/18 down and 0.8 up), adequate for us. The original Siemens router gave out and T/T replaced it with their latest Huawei gizmo foc with no encouragement necessary.

Rarely any spam to the inbox, they sorted out the filtering system a couple of years ago and the phone line is good too, don't get many spam calls either.
Up to three months ago we were paying £17 per month for line rental, free 24/7 calls and b/band, 6 months at this price then 12 at £25, average approx £22.
We are confident that when the contract expires they will come up trumps again. Also about to sign up for their half price mobile sim, too good to miss.

We are avid motogp fans and are choked that BT have snaffled the exclusive rights. That said we wouldn't swap our consistent T/T service unless they overpriced themselves, which looks doubtful for the foreseeable future.
 
Today I received a letter from Sky announcing that they would make my move from O2 Broadband to Sky as smooth as possible. Nice of them considering I am not with O2, have no intention of moving to Sky and the letter was addressed to my son who hasn't lived at this address for 10 years and also does not have O2.
The letter was couched in terms of "we will move you" - it was not a poorly worded sales pitch. I called them to find out what was going on. I got into a circular debate with the 'assistant' along the lines of "why did I get the letter?", "because you had an O2 broadband account at this address", "no I didn't", " then there's nothing to worry about", "but why did you send the letter?", "because you have an O2 broadband account"..... After I pressed the point he became rude and hung up ( this from a uSwitch Best Customer Service award winner. )

Anyone else receive anything similar? I don't know whether this is just incompetence or whether I could be bounced to Sky. The call was cut without them taking any details to check.
 
My Sky letters are being received at my old address, where my broadband used to be but has not been for a good two or three years, so it doesn't surprise me. I vote for incompetence, and not to worry about them taking over your service (I'm pretty sure they would be technically unable to do so).
 
Me thinks:
"Sky - believe in better ".

The adverts state the word 'Sky', so you think of Sky and then the advert follows up with "believe in better".
"Believe in better - Sky" doesn’t work either if its said out load.

When they first heard the slogan did anyone else have the initial thought that the advert writers appeared to be putting down Sky?
 
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