Slashdot Mirror
AltaVista UK Withdraws Unmetered Service In UK
WhiteWash writes "AltaVista's UK branch is terminating its offer of unmetred access, and blaming BT for the trouble as the BBC says at their news page.
This was a good deal that provided an alternative to BT's monopolistic unmetred access options. Where does Britain turn now for unmetred access?" We originally touched on this subject a while back, for more background info.
I use "freeserve time" which doesn't go thru BT.
You're correct that the calls aren't billed via BT but you have to rent your line from BT, and keep the line BT, to use the freeserve offer.
I don't have the info to hand but I think the Telecom partner may be Energis. Although that could be my other ISP (U-NET), or both.
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
Look at the ISPs that have a successful free-call service (like WorldOnline, ClaraNET). Their money comes from Calls and Access provision - where they operate (or partner with) a piggyback access provider (like Localtel or whoever) and take a decent cut of the call charges, while also being able to profit from voice calls made from the same number. The free ISP access essentially acts as a catalyst to get people to use your telecoms service.
The companies offering access for a 'one-time flat rate fee' don't especially inspire confidence in me - the disappearance of these services from the fly-by-night operations currently in place supports this.
Don't put all the blame on BT. Yes, the local loop has to be unbundled, but this is a much wider problem. The telecoms infrastructure in this country isn't marvellous, and, in some areas, still suffers from load issues. It takes time to deregulate an industry, let's make sure it's done properly. In the meantime, check CUT for details of the unmetered access issues.
Yep - why do you think i just moved to within 10 mins walk of work? :)
They're not the only ones.
I'm online right now via Unlimited Freeserve Time, available to anyone with a BT line. This costs me 10 UKP per month, which I can (effectively) reduce by prefixing national rate calls with a dialler code. See, that £10 is technically buying that amount of national rate calls over Energis.
I've had some problems with a badly setup cache box on their system sending my firewall mad - and a POP server doing the same thing on a smaller scale - but in other respects they're good. No discernable difference in performance from normal Freeserve (perfectly good), but no phone bill.
I'm very happy with them and could recommend them to anyone else. Except, as a warning, that they're only taking 10,000 new users per week - took me 2-3 weeks IIRC to get added to the system.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
May I suggest you get a Freeserve account? I too am a Demon customer, and here is the deal:
Demon's Surftime is supposed to start soon (when was it supposed to start? October?). They are not going to charge extra for the use of their Surftime number for the evenings and weekends package at least.
Freeserve don't charge at all, and are doing Surftime right now.
So get Surftime now, use Freeserve with it for free (they even do a cashback of 3UKP every three months if you use them regularly on Surftime!). Then, when Demon roll out their Surftime number, you are already fully ready to use it from day one, because Surftime is not in any way associated with any one ISP, it just gives you access to the Surftime numbers (there is a Surftime national dialing code, just like there is a local-rate national dialing code, and signing up for Surftime just lets you use those numbers unmetered).
Who knows, you might (like me) discover that other than the percieved lameness factor, Freeserve offer everything you want from an ISP. I am seriously considering leaving Demon now that I have tried Freeserve... The old Demon email address is a bit of a legacy though.
And I should point out that this wasn't my original idea, a friend put me on to it. He is pretty happy with the scheme too.
Sorry to shatter your illusions, but Linux wasn't invented in the USA, therefore what are you doing here if you don't want non-USA stuff?
I don't know if anyones ever explained to you what the first two W's in WWW stand for?
Or what nationality Tim Berners-Lee is? Or what country Charles Babbage or Alan Turing came from, or where electricity was discovered?
No didn't think so America boy. You stick your head back up your arse, it's probably a lot safer for you, nothing to challenge your way of thinking.
Here it is. Lots of articles, on the reasonable side of patronising.
I'm patiently waiting for ntl to reach Exeter - I've given up on Eurobell (local cable company) for a cable modem, but have heard that they actual exist from ntl. Since 56k modems from most ISPs in this country are a joke (crawl...). Plus It should be easier to get the rest of my hardware (the none windoze stuff) to share a cable modem).
Agreed. World Online have a very good service, IMO. I've been using them for over a year, with only two occasions of the slightest service interruption. Hooray for them!
Regret for the past is a waste of spirit
Yeah, that's right, the Americans saved our asses in World War One and Two, apparently. I'm not quite sure what those people who didn't have donkeys got, but there you go.
It's a good job they didn't just pop along near the end and kill a few people then go home, otherwise where would the American film industry be?
I certainly agree that AltaVista's finger-pointing at BT is a desperate attempt to avoid blame for this unmitigated disaster.
Unfortunately for your illustrious company, however, it's a far too tempting target to shoot at. Regardless of the reality, the widespread perception is that BT is still a monopolistic quasi-governmental organisation with an inherent belief that the population of this little island should be gratefull for any morsels it happens to throw their way. You only have to look at the ADSL roll-out for a prime example (and ISDN before it) - BT won't even quote which *year* my exchange is going to be enabled, because I have the gall to live outside a megalopolis. Not that the so-called competition is helping one iota; you only have to look at the availability vs. penetration of cable-modem for that!
So you can certainly see where the temptation to "spin" this story came from... It's not like this result doesn't favourably affect BT after all - all those disappointed AltaVista users turning to the only other supplier of unmetered access in the UK (no prizes for guessing the company... Starts with a "B")
Regardless, in this instance it was wrong to attack BT. Just this once, mind!
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
I suggest you check back with Telewest (Blueyonder) about Surf Unlimited. I use it almost every day, and have had no major problems for months now. Nice and fast too.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Similar situation, I use Freeserve purely for my connectivity over ISDN. The throughput at times can be, shall we say, less than optimal, but for the price I don't think that it can be beaten (10GBP for what is effectively a 64Kbs leased line!). Especially as it allows my Linux boxen access throught my router - as you say, no special software is a blessing.
I still use my (paid for) Demon Internet account for email and web hosting, but as their service has been in decline for a while now this may change.
I'll be trying NTLWorld shortly for unmetered internet access, but I'll also keep my Demon account active - they're due to have 'SurfTime' offerings soon.
More details can be found at the following Register articles:
- AltaVista admits service a sham
- Alta Vista's world crumbles
- AltaVista mystery ends today
- AltaVista: the silence continues and the farce continues
- CMGI to buy ISP for Altavista
And the list goes on... And that's just from 1 source - talk about publicity...Richy C.
--
cable modems are [...] vapourware in this part of the country
We've found that the NTL cable modem service has mostly worked. There've been a couple of outages a few hours long, and the performance was a bit poor the other night - I think the connection from Cambridge to London is getting a bit full.
NTL have taken quite a bit of flack for the problems with providing free dialup, but personally I'm fairly happy with them at the moment; web browsing with graphics turned on is a joy compared to dialup, and interactive logins are snappy and responsive.
Did you have something in mind, how about some lovely Black Sausage? Or a pork pie, perhaps? We also have _real_ fish and chips, not those poxy French fries; and don't give me that sh!t about mayonnaise, that's the Belgians. BTW, why *are* they called "French fries"?
-- Cisk for the Cisk God
Probably because of the limited penetration of cable modem providers in the UK. We get NTL coming to the door, phoning up, etc., all the time trying to get us to take their TV/phone service, but ask them about cable modems, and it's "soon", "we'll get back to you", or mostly "what?!".
It's a great service, with both 24/7 and off-peak unmetered options available. The off-peak service costs only the standard line rental, and the 24/7 service is only about £5 more. However, I guess this company may never recover from the bad publicity it received in the early days with regard to transferring customers from BT etc. This is a shame.
It's funny I can't remember the last time I went to the Church of the Royal Family and worshiped there.
It's the american tourists who seem to "worship" the royal family a lot more than the natives.
You really should sell your story, to have had gay relations with one of the royals, perhaps the Weekly World news or whatever it is would take it.
Who has to pay for medical treatment and who gets it for free?
Have you got a mobile phone? What is it Nokia, Errikson? All good USAian companies.
Do you use Linux? Oh of course, we just give away our innovations, whereas you stick the customer for whatever you can get (mention no names, Microsoft).
Where does Britain turn? Well, FreeServe are offering unmetered use for a flat 10GBP a month!
You can really say that the service has been terminated - it never went live!
There are many options for a flat monthy fee connection in the UK...
I work for an ISP and we were offered surftime a while back. IIRC Surftime works like this - BT own the modem racks and rent them out to ISP's (boxes with multiple modems connected to bearers usually). They then stream the data to the ISP. The ISP gets money from the connection fee. These systems (Including ADSL) work due to contention ratios, i.e. you have a ratio for the number of customers to the number of active customers - if I have 1000 customers and can only support 50 at a full data rate then I have a 20:1 ratio. As most customers don't stay on for hours at a time and even when they do they aren't always pulling down data at the full rate this works ok. But it only works if you have a large number of customers. For smaller ISP's this just isn't an option.
They'll set it up to time out automatically if you don't keep the connection alive.
I have a much more interesting sig but this space is too small
Altavista havn't "withdrawn" their service, because it was never there. They lied to people, they have lied to tthe press, and have made themselves look very, very, stupid.
:)
Not only that, they are now blaming BT (My employer, #include ) for not providing the lines. Nice one Altavista.
Still, there are plenty of other unmetered ISP's in the UK, so it's not a major loss to UK Net addicts like myself.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I do agree with all the points you make about BT. However, in this instance, I think Alta Vista were entirely to blame for their own inability to provide a service that several other ISPs (e.g. Freeserve, Demon, NTLWorld) are managing to deliver.
~Cederic
There's plenty of Burger Kings in USA, so some of your countrymen must like that.
What can I say, there's idiots everywhere regardless of country.
Some use British Telecom's "surftime" pacakge but not all. I use "freeserve time" which doesn't go thru BT.
While it's never good for companies to hype away without substance, in this case I think the announcement (in part) led to a more rapid bringing to market of other company's toll-free services, which ultimately benefited the consumer.
Good argument mate, you've completely talked me round. Go USA !
The entertainingly cynical UK tech website the register has been running an entertaining campaign over the last few days appealing for any real user of the service to come forwards. This has been building up in the media, until finally AV admit the service is totally phantom, as are the happy satisfied users that they have been referring to in previous press releases.
It was all an out and out lie. And now they are trying to pin the blame on BT ( the now privatised, previously state-owned telco that has a near monopoly ovet the UK tel infrastructure). This despite the fact that there are other (admittedly smaller) ISP's who are successfully offering a similar service right now.
I wonder what Alta Vista are going to do with all of the user data they collected for pre registration ? Donate it to charity perhaps ? [hollow sarcastic laugh]
The state of the UK ISP is a real mess. I have just moved house ( I live in Bristol ) and I can't decide what the best company / route is for connectivity - DSL and cable modems are both real soon now vapourware in this part of the country, BT changes tack every two minutes , and smoke and mirrors tactics like this AV stuff make it even more confusing.
Alta Vista got a hell of a lot of PR for this in the UK, government commendations, newspaper front pages etc. I feel that their behaviour over this is criminal, and I would like to see them punished
-- Oh Well
That was humorous.
Long signatures suck.
Now all the UK needs is ADSL connections...
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
A number of people have replied, commenting that FreeServe is a just alternative. It isn't. FreeServe offer their deal through the use of BT's SurfTime service, ergo, it is still being controlled by BT. AltaVista's deal was different, and made feasable by relulatory prodding...
Ah, but just try and connect to any Linux 2.3.x or 2.4.x box from NTL's network. Or 'notwork' in this case.
Caused me no end of hassle tracking that problem down. We've had to downgrade now, since NTL's senior network engineers have been quite uncooperative on this issue.
-- "This is IT support, not IQ support."
Well I have been unmetered now for 6 months and I live in the UK.
:(
........
There are many unmetered access providers in the UK now. This is partly due to the initial Altavista announcement. From this point of view it is great that Altavista made the announcement in the first place but on the other hand is sad that it has fallen through
The state of the UK's current flat rate or unmetered ISP provider standard and level of service is poor and its plain to all involved that it is infact BT who are holding back this market. They seem to have severe problems handling the increase of traffic on their network. You get all kinds of BT announcement whilst trying to connect to ISPs now.. Things like 'Sorry there is a fault, please hang up and try again' or 'The telephone network is currently busy, please try again later'. These messages are created by the switches being unable to open a new connection, ie the switches are overloaded.
If you ask me BT must be cringing at the thought of the 'unbundling or the loop' that is being forced on them by OFTEL (the uk telecomunications ombudsman). Expect to see the BT stock take a hit and all kinds of nasty telepone problems.
Funnily enough none of these problems affect BT's own ISP btinternet.com
Didn't you hear? The Americans won that one.
/tried/ to keep a straight face.
*laugh* Sorry, I
I'm on NTLWorld, and after waiting a VERY long time to get my CD, have found it to be a very satisfactory service.
And as an NTL customer, it costs me precisely nothing. Nil, nix, nada, zilch.
Only things are that the far end will disconnect you if you go idle for 20 minutes, and it disconnects after two hours anyway. However, you can just redial immediately.
--
Peter
They mentioned that other services were having funding problems and for that reason were withdrawing their services
I think they're referring to Line One and others writing to their customers claiming they were spending too much time on line and trying to limit them to 17 hours a week. Apparently they didn't realise that if you have free internet access you will leave it on all the time.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
I'd put about 60% of the blame on BT, and the rest on a very naive AV. BT makes all kinds of promises when Oftel is watching, but they seldom follow up and drag out the process as long as possible. AV should have counted this into their business plan, but the suits believed BT and ignored their own people who were cautioning them.
I know personally several of the people who told AV to lay off all promotions and PR until BT actually turned up the trunks and calls could be passed. BT has a long history of screwing over any potential competitor, much in the same way american telcos behaved in the first few years after divestiture. They block access to equipment in buildings, cut power at odd times, jinx circuits, lose trouble tickets, and ignore regulator's demands.
So yes, blaming BT rings very true. But AV is also to blame for not realising this is business as usual for BT.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Anyway The Blueyonder serice is oversubscribed. Between the launch of the 24/7 service in February and July, it has been immensely slow or totally unusable. It was fine for most of July and early August (at least for me; others milage apparently varied).
This past fortnight however, the service became abysmal. No more than 2K/s download speeds from pretty much anywhere, epsecially through ftp ports. And on Friday night, all routes to the US were compeltely lost for about 20 hours!
The webcaching system they use is totally shafted; often showing porn sites rather than the correct site, but fortunately for me, the dialup area I am covered by doesn't use transparent caches, so that saves me those problems
I would love to know whether any other ISP would completely take down the network for 2 hours like they did on Monday morning this week (it should be mentioned on their service page at status.blueyonder.co.uk:888. OK it was at 4am, but it does seem rediculous to need to take the whole ISP down.
It is a good deal on paper and yes I am satisfied overall, but the failures are incredibly numerous and I will not trust their e-mail service, considering how often it fails.
Anyway, for £10/month with min of £10 on call charges it is a very good deal and the 3.99/month second phone line is also a worthy deal. Just don't exect as good a service as you might have had with other ISPs
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Only gullible people really fell for this (including some of my friends :-)), because they fell for all the advertising and the fact that it said 'Free' in the title. Many people ran up HUGE phonebills with this and got very pissed off, at which point i spent much of my time saying 'I told you so...'.
I personally thought that the first completely free service would be backed up by a large company. For instance, I thought that the first to offer this service would be places like banks, who would offer the service if you had an account with them etc., as they are already making money from you out of your business, so their own ISP can afford to make a loss, because they would be backed up by a large company. It turned out this didn't quite happen, instead the phone companies are taking a similar approach.
The third round is going to be with broadband access, and in fact it has already started. This time it's the cable companies (NTL et al with cable modems) vs BT with ADSL. To be honest, BT has already fucked up with the launch of ADSL, but on the other hand, the cable companies have caused problems by banning users from running http and ftp servers on their machines. To some extent that war is still up in the air, but i reckon the cable companies have the edge.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
In the words of the prophet, "Fuck off and die"
The best book I ever read
I am in the midst of installing a vpn and a framerelay one with AT&T and the other with MCI. MCI, doing the frame has to deal with three different local carriers in five different states. And local carriers are known for their anti-competitive practices.
I believe strongly in competition, but realistic regulation also needs to go along with it.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Slightly interesting to note that C4 news had this as their top story this evening and devoted several minutes of tonights show to cover it. It didn't mention once that AltaVista had lied about the service being up and running. The company came across very well and BT got all the flak.
I've used the NTL package from Linux more or less continuously for 3 months now. Works fine (even with it being used via diald to connect on demand from my home network).
Basically, once you've connected the official way under Win9x for that first registration call (it rings up a dedicated server not the normal dial-in number) and got the passwords etc you can bin the NTL 'ware. Stick the relevant info in your dial-up config and away you go. All very jolly.
Andrew
Britain has not been very lucky with unmetered access up until now. There is no single provider that offers a simple flat access for a set out tariff. It's always some sort of "pay half and we pay the other" or metered access with bonus points earning or even "recommend to a friend and get free hours online"!. I can't wait till someone comes and offers a simple deal on unmetered access with no strings attached. We still have no cable or dsl available so 99% of us still rely on dial up. I certainly hope this freak show ends soon!
if you happen to live in Britain you may want to check out this page for all the "offers" you can get.
Personally I use the "Scream" crap and it is actually getting better but the 3 hour disconnect is getting progressively more annoying (or am I being a spoilt brat?). Also you have to pay for your phone bills with your credit card! Just like I said every one of them has some weird strings attached.
Have to go now cause the dialup line is about to get discon
I got my NTL disk a couple of days after the service started and have been using it ever scince on both Win98 and Linux.
When you logon for the first time (must be under widows) they e-mail you a welcome message which contains all the info you need to configure your dial-up under Linux.
They disconnect you after 2 hours but you can reconnect immediately - A small price to pay for cheaper calls and unlimited free dial-up
Um, and how does your call get to Energis? Could it be via the BT-controlled local loop? Do you think that Energis are getting this for free?
-- Jim
-- Jim
If in doubt, use a bigger hammer!
Admittedly I have to reconnect every few hours so I have to use a smart FTP package for downloads (go!Zilla), and lately it's taken a few tries before connecting.
Oh, and that's 64k ISDN, not V90, the only downside is still paying BT for the ISDN line rental, but I'm not going back now- so my quarterly bill is down to about £110 from $300-£400, because the ISDN is a business line almost exclusively for intrenet. When ADSL rolls in (Ha ha, it's already 2 months late) I shall have my ISDN line down-graded to PSTN and then up-graded to ADSL, as BT can't install ADSL over ISDN, even though Deutsche Telekom can....
I also get the 'free' £10 calls from Energis too - and that's on a separate line from the ISDN.
As the Freeserve service has a 7 day notice period I'm happy to drop it to get ADSL and I'm also keeping my old (non-free) ISP account to handle my email etc.
I suppose it could be simpler...
----
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
It's one of the best things about Slashdot these days, a good USA/UK slanging match.
Thankyou very much sir, I shall look forward to that beer. (I haven't got anything against USA either, it's all just a bit of a laugh, innit !)
It's crazy to complain about people 'leaving it on' - My company encourages us to work from home and we get a free BT line, all costs paid, to access the web and email. I sometime stay connected for 13+ hours a day - 8 hours working, 5 hours downloading stuff, getting the news etc. I don't feel I'm abusing the deal.
It works pretty much like the guy says, except that Linux or NetBSD with SSH is my preferred remote access method. Remote FTP and CVS (through SSH) is feasible, but a web-server is pushing the upload speed of the modem a bit much.
"What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death."
These problems are apparent when making TCP connections from a Windows or Mac box to a Linux 2.3.x or 2.4.x server. The setting up of a connection is fine, and occurs as usual, but data transfer is very, very slow - to the point of unusability
Oddly, these problems don't occur when dialled up from a Linux machine - but they're still apparent when masquerading a Windows or Mac box behind that Linux gateway.
-- "This is IT support, not IQ support."
I'm in good company.
ive been using telewest's unmetered access since feb. at £20 a month, its sweet.
the problem is that all the ISP's int he UK are waiting for BT to get their surftime thing done. i know this as i work for an ISP, for the last 3 months, theyve been delyaing the unmtered rollout, for no reason whatsoever. they just dont help. the isp are also doing ADSL access, again, delayed because of BT's lack of support.
they dont help, because they are making so much money from metered access at the moment.
the other problem is the consumers, the majority of the ppl in the UK (probably) have only been online since the launch of the "free" isps, (non-subscription) this wasvery bad, because att he time AOL were justa bout to trial an unmtered service for around £30 a month (~$70) but as freeserve were taken up so heartily they rejected the idea. and ever since, everytime someone suggested some unmtered access (first seen a year ago, trials by AOL) the consumers said: "why should *I* pay £50 a month???" sot hey stopped that plan.
the problem is nobody thinks of the future., and the press, they are to blame too.
everyone claimed how "bad" the service from telewest was, about 5% had a problem. most other people (like me) had no problem.
</rant>
- red red's quadmonkey quake news
Here's a list of UK freephone access providers.
Richy C.
--
And then we discarded it again. Funny, really, when you've got all those American natives confined to reservations because you took all their land and don't want to give it back. --
Said it couldn't last, said it wouldn't last... This is the last stand against tomorrow's world.
Yes, it seems he was right, and that you don't know a thing about Northern Ireland.
"AltaVista's deal was different, and made feasable by relulatory prodding"
:-)
Putting it a lil bit more accurately: they didn't like BT's terms trading freely for line costs - so they went public with a huge vaporware in the hopes of getting our polls-obsessed govt to straitjacket BT via the telephone regulator (Yeah, they privatized the company and kept all the control. Govts, hmph). When everyone else - including BT - came up with me-too unmetered services, AV's plan floundered. Good tactical planning there by BT
Least, that's how it looks to me.
Briefly, BT is regulated by Oftel. However when BT says "this is hard to do" Oftel says "OK, how long will it take you". This is not a recipie for getting things done that BT doesn't want.
In this case BT has two major cash cows: leased lines (GBP 1000/month for 64kbits) and per-minute charging on voice and ISDN lines (a penny a minute upwards). Oftel, the EU, the UK government and just about everybody else want to knock these cows on the head because they are blocking the widespread uptake of the Internet. BT wants to keep them.
This has manifested itself in two main ways:
The only dodgy thing that AV did do was to pretend that their service was up and running with 10,000 users. The Register has the story so far.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
to expect a yank to have anything like a realistic view of anywhere else in the world.
I wondered when AltaVista were gonna own up to that one. They actually had the cheek to send me a mail promoting this service today. Here are some quotes:
"Since AltaVista made its ground-breaking announcement of its intention to launch an unmetered internet access package on 6th March 2000, the entireUKaccess market has transformed dramatically."
Umm...bullshit!
"AltaVista Unlimited Internet Access launched on 30 June, 2000, and is currently being rolled out to our list of preregistered customers. So as to ensure the quality of this service, AltaVista has elected to rollout this service in a controlled manner."
Infact, it was so tightly controlled that it didn't actually get rolled out, period!
Thanks to the fat monopoly that is BT, we in the UK are way behind the US in terms of broadband internet access. The UK's Telco governing body (OFTEL) have set a deadline for BT to lose their monopoly on the local loop at the end of this year, after which the price of non-NAT ADSL installation/usage will hopefully become comparable to the US. I for one will be waiting until then before I get my ADSL.
---------------------
%46%55%43%4B !
People are allways running to bash bt here. I think they are a good company, offering a good service. (but a little pricy). My phone broke, it was back on in 2 hours, on a bank holiday AND I got compensation. Plus, I'm getting ADSL installed and I live on the Edge of a town of only 80,000. Adsl is a little overpriced however.
Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway.
Well, that's just wrong - at least here in the North East. NTL do cable modems, you have to buy the modem for £150 and then it's £40 a month for always-on access.
:)
Make of that what you will. And stop making me sound like an NTL salesman, cuz I'm not
--
Peter
I was already paying for NTL cable + telephone.
The impact of NTLWorld on my monthly outgoings is therefore zero. Well, it's better than that because I no longer pay for my internet calls.
--
Peter
I recieved my 'unmetered' (0800 number) NTL CD this week, after a _very_ long wait - it appears that new subscribers to the service were prioritised over existing customers. The account has a pin number (helpfully printed on the address label) and a serial number for the CD inside the package. It installs something called Gearbox, which runs at bootup, replaces Dial-Up Networking and tries to make you surf in its own 'customised' window. You can fire up IE/NS after you've connected, however. The setup offers you the option to install IE 5 or NS 4, but no opt-out clause, so you have to choose one. It seems not to bother if it finds a version on your machine, but even so it's a confusing bit of interface design. The installation does place an entry in Dial-Up Networking, but I couldn't get it to work that way the couple of times I tried. The service cuts off after five minutes of inactivity, or after two hours of connection. In practice, it seems to 'freeze' after 30-60 mins, requiring a reconnection. I've tried to change my password a number of times, and had a 'connection reset by peer' error every time. I've mailed the support team and received nothing back, though presumably I could ring their _£1 per minute_ helpline for an instant response. Obviously, the CD mentions nothing about getting the service up under Linux, and also informs you that it won't work under NT or 2000.
One good tip is that despite the pin numbers/serials, you can easily install the service on several PCs (if the Dial-Up number doesn't work on its own) by choosing 'reinstall' from the setup options and putting your password in. My flatmate and I are using the same service, despite NTL's claims that this wouldn't be possible.
I know it's a free service - as in beer (providing you don't have to call the helpline) - but even so, it smacks of crap and I think I'd rather pay a set amount for a well-designed and provided service.
I don't think free net access in the UK will work out correctly until we have a phone system similar to the US's, though American readers may wish to correct me here...
SurfTime is actually a pretty good idea - in that it diverts IP traffic out of voice switched circuits as soon as possible i.e. at the local exchange. The customer's exchange has to be surftime-enabled, meaning that it has a bank of modems that connect directly to BT's IP over ATM network thus freeing up all those trunk routes that would otherwise be used routing the call via PSTN to wherever the ISP's modems are. Instead the modems are as close to the customer as possible, and BT provide a PPP stream to the ISP using their Colossus network. The ISP then routes these streams to their peers using their own fat pipes (which may or may not be BT bandwidth). Authorisation is performed at two levels: the line used to dial into SurfTime must be registered as such and provide CLI; and BT authorise the ISP account info when setting up the PPP session on behalf of the ISP. As usual with BT, the technical support is dire! I had to work all this out pretty much by myself whilst struggling for 3 days to get a Cisco Dial on Demand ISDN router to use SurfTime. The secret (no pun intended) turned out to be to use CHAP and not PAP authorisation, but of course BT's phone-monkeys kept telling me to call my ISP (who of course have no access to the BT modems at my local exchange, and were as in the dark as I was). The thing works great now - PAT on the Cisco allowing a LAN to have 24/7 unmetered access, and 128k multilink too for the same price. Multilink is still flakey, but I just haven't worked up the energy for another round of phone ping-pong yet :)
Spock! Do the thing!
Don't forget those smart Americans who cracked the Enigma machine.
--
--
E_NOSIG
I thought there was also the issue of waiting until your local exchange was magically upgraded to support Surftime? IIRC, this is the reason why I opted to go with Freeserve unlimited time over the limited time service. BT couldn't send ET out quick enough to upgrade the exchanges.
As a side note I use ntl for cable access, after eventually remembering to reset the modem when trying a DHCP request from a different NIC I managed to finally get OpenBSD to NAT and firewall the connection. (Just look how secure it is, it doesn't even respond to pings)
127.0.0.1
wrighty.
Now here is where I have a problem knowing who to believe. On the one hand, AV has been saying that it has been rolling its service out since June, which has turrned out to be a blatent lie. On the other hand BT hasn't exactly been willing to let go of its monopoly on the local loop, and has spouted just as much shite in the last year.
Anyone know the whole story?
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Oh say can you see.......
God-dammit boy, god-bless gods-own country the good ol' US of A, where a man can get life in prison for posessing weed, but it's everyones god given right to walk around with a gun.
I wish the rest of the world was as advanced as you guys. What other country could come up with the likes of hmm, let me see, Microsoft, Jerry Springer, a president that is a worldwide figure of fun, McDonalds, the KKK etc. etc.
Be wary, elst you may awaken my wrath :-[
I'm not from Holland, or the Netherlands either. I'm British (God Save the Queen!), and come the revolution will be wearing a big floppy hat.
Anyway, clogs are cool. Check out Jackie Chan's "Mr Nice Guy", for a bit of Clog Fu (copyright Jason Holland).
-- Cisk for the Cisk God
From what it sounds, AltaVista was the bad guy in this situation. They promised big, provided nothing, and when people started to complain they started pointing fingers. One out of three is a bad practice to get into. Two out of three shows lack of thinking or disrespect for customers, but all three of them... I am shocked.
I thought that only in the USA could we get stomped by some faceless giant. Don't we own a trademark on that or something???
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
you rather prove our point :-)
ZDNet UK has a list of ISPs offering unmetered access in the UK... along with information about costs and current availability.
...or wait for BT to pull its finger out and offer SurfTime on my exchange.
I still haven't had an answer from BT as to why I have to wait until October. Why the hell should I subsidise people living in places like London, anyway?
--
Hell hath no fury like a pissed-off Glaswegian.
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
Totalise do a deal where you pay 200 groats and get ~340 groats in shares back and unmetered access for two years.
see www.totalise.co.uk
Also NTL provide free access in return for 10 groats of calls a month.
see ntl
others?
I'm still waiting for BT to offer their own 'unmetered' access service (SurfTime: http://www.bt.com/surftime/) via my ISP...
[Happosai]
Well, I can get to see a doctor as soon as I want for free. Its the actual operation I have to wait for (dependent on necessity)...
Of course, if I have the money (or health insurance - which is routinely provided by employers) I don't need to wait at all.
As for all the innovations that the US has provided to medicine - I can't think of one. Okay, I'm not a medic, but all the biggies: Antibiotics, MRI, even Viagra were invented in Europe...
http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~jason/ - cool Manchester Uni's compsoc is still going then...
I think the headline of the story is complete rubbish. Altavista never launched any service to withdraw. The whole thing was a marketing ploy to increase their allready overvalued stock.
For the last two weeks the UK arm of the company has been trying to avoid the simple question of show a single user who is using the service. They lied and twisted anything they could and only today they have held their hands up and said 'ok, so we dont actually have a service' and then what do they do? Blame British Telecom of course!
The simple fact that they never asked BT for any resources before they 'launched' the service tells me they knew they were never going to be able to deliver what they promised.
The ISP you refer to is Telewest. AIUI their unmetered offer is only for people connecting via their own telephone network, which doesn't involve BT.
If you are in Telewest's service area then this is great: go for it. (I like my Cable Modem too). But outside their area you are stuffed.
(Actually I think NTL offer a similar deal.)
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
If my history serves me correctly, the United States of America is exactly that: a confederation of independant states; each with it's own laws and local governing body.
There is not actually one single country named "America".
"America" is the name of the continent consisting of North America, Central America, South America and Canada. With a few other odds and ends around it, such as Canada, Cuba and the West Indies.
Now, I don't have anything against the American people, I thought Crazy Horse was pretty cool. But, those white guys get right up my @55.
-- Cisk for the Cisk God
In packed areas like London I'm surprised people aren't just slinging ethernet out the windows. It'd be cool if they could build at least a city wide network that way (Possibly with wireless microwave links or bluetooth taking up the gaps.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But obviously not enough to know that half the people there don't *want* to be "set free"?
>great understanding of the US
Tell me, oh great one, what have I misunderstood about the US? Could it be that you're one of the deluded ones who think they won the Vietnam war? Or was it the donkey-saving you were taking objection to?
As long as I don't have to eat McDonalds!
Connect to, or connect from? I can certainly connect to ntlworld from my Linux 2.4.0-test2 box with no problems whatsoever. What problems are you having? Of course, I'll be switching to a cable modem as soon as I get some funds into my bank account ...
.cab files they shipped, either (claimed they were corrupt), or I'd have tried fishing the details out manually. :(
The ntlworld installation was probably the most complicated I've done in a long time, as I had to use Windows 95 inside VMware (and of course VMware crashed more than once in the process). Nothing I could find could open the
Great once you get it going, all the same.
at the time of the inital annoucements i thought it was too good to be true, unfortunately that proved to be the case!
Well after several months of waiting, we finally got our ntlworld CD at the weekend. It's a free - including free phone calls - service, as long as you are an NTL telephone customer and you spend at least 10 pounds per month with NTL.
-uncreative sig
I pay the bad guy BT £10 a month, and they give me access all the time I'm not at work. Which is good enough for me. Especially when they give me a freephone number to dial in on, and they don't complain when I stay dialled in for 56 hours at the weekend. What does that cost on *your* unmetered service of choice. Freeserve still aren't a freephone number are they? The best you'll get is 1p a minute, but after 56 hours? Bad Monopoly types they may be, but until someone matches them, they get my money. And this Service has run since March, before AltaVista service was promosed.
This is like watching kids arguing in the playground.
Come on people, we're better than this. The US is our closest ally. They've got their problems, so have we.
Lets stop this pissing contest.
Of course those of us that read the register have been waiting for this to arrive on /.
I have to say I expected them to roll it out, rather than admit lying... Even if it cost them money, it's still gotta be less than the bad publicity it'll surely cause them.
Unless of course BT get slammed for it... Serves them right if they do, it's about time they got blamed for something they didn't do (Rather than getting away with the things they did do)...
How do we get BT and Altavista to have Karma points so we can moderate them down?
Gav
"There's no such thing as data that can't be manipulated"
Great news for all those 56k webserver admins out there!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
The main reason for not using the net too much at home is that dialup access is too sodding slow, even with a 56K modem.
When are Tory B Liar and his cronies and Oftel to pull their fingers out and force BT to open up the local loop, particularly for those of us who live in the smaller towns without cable.
I would move to Hull, where BT don't run things, but the place is an utter sh*t-hole.
Sorry matey but that's a bunch of arse. Freeserve do offer an off-peak unmetered scheme via BT Surftime (limited to weekends and 6pm-8am) but their peak/off-peak (ie. any time of day) unmetered scheme is via Energis.
With Unlimited Freeserve Time (the Energis service) you pay a minimum of 10 pounds per month. As well as getting unlimited Internet usage, you can also make long distance voice/fax calls at a discount up to your 10 quid (if you want to make more, you can, but you pay extra).
Unlimited Freeserve Time has the following restrictions:
Yup, I'd hardly call that "unlimited" either, but it's good enough for me- my 'phone bill has gone down from 80 quid a month + rental to 10 quid + rental in one fell swoop. Neat.
Combine a 64kbps ISDN line, Unlimited Freeserve Time, auto-redialling software and a dynamic domain name plus a bit of socket/port wizardry and you too can remote control your PC from the office or run FTP/web servers etc.
Readers might like to know that the NTL offering, unlike Freeserve, doesn't support ISDN at all, not even 64kbps.
Find out more on freeserve.help.isdn .
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
BT is still in a real monopoly position in the UK, within the local loop (the copper running from exchange to peoples homes and offices) they have virtually no competition aside from a few cable TV companies who are still in the process of connecting people for their core business.
Later this year BT are supposed to be 'unbundling the local loop' but it's a case of I'll believe it when I see it!
Those unmetered services that are available (for example my local cable TV company (Telewest) run an unmetered ISP for thier cable TV subscribers) are so heavily over subscribed that they are having to stop taking on new accounts cos they physically can't get the hardware in place fast enough to service the demands.
To quote one of BTs own operators in a conversation with me in summer of 1992 "Well, it's [BT] not an honest company.".
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Regret for the past is a waste of spirit