The Horror Of British Telecom

MBCook writes "'Someone, raised amidst the elegant lattice of custom and tradition that serves as the foundation of English society, came up with a very elegant, very British, solution to broadband policy here. And it absolutely, positively sucks.' So starts an article by Mark Hachman over at ExtremeTech chronicling his odyssey to get broadband in his new flat."

Comments

What's taking so long?

[michaelhood]

Can someone from that side of the pond clear up what the big controversy holding up affordable broadband in the UK is? I've been paying US40/mo for 5mbit cable since around early 1997. And I've not been in New York or any other large metro areas.

Re:What's taking so long?

[rogerzilla]

Two words: British Telecom (and a toothless regulator). But you read TFA, so you know that.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Herbster]

Outdated ex-state-owned monopoly owning all the local loops and doing everything they can to trip up LLU (local loop unbundling), which allows other companies to offer DSL, and a lack of decent cable providers - Telewest are OK but NTL SUCK!

And there's only cable in BIG cities. Unless you live within 50 miles of Central London.

Other than that it's all good, all good :rolleyes:

Re:What's taking so long?

[taobill]

Dur what?

Are you in possession of the facts?

You can get 2Mbps for £14.99 (about $28.17) per month.

2Mbps is the highest speed generally available.

Later this year, higher speeds will be available (up to 7.2 Mbps), and "hip" ISPs will offer these speeds at no extra charge. "shitty" ISPs (e.g. BT) will probably restrict the higher rates to premium services.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most ISPs over here are around £50 ($93) activation, 2mb/256kb £39 ($73) per month. Also more and more are introducing monthly caps of 1-5gb.
I'm pretty sure we have one of the slowest and most expensive services in West Europe

Re:What's taking so long?

[FidelCatsro]

Most of these problems would likely not of occured if they hadn't privatised BT .
Well the lines atleast , it gave the private BT a near unbreakable telephone monopoly outside of state controll due to the rather pathetic regulators.

If only they had just privatised the telephone service alone and kept the lines state owned we likely wouldnt see many of the problems .
Everything must go through BT at one stage so prices are allowed to pile on and they have no real reason to worry about reducing costs as either way they make money.

Just my opinion , but i don't like infrastructes such as water ,power , telephone lines and hospitals privatised . It has never reduced costs as they had said(well gave the reason as to why they did it) The trains are worse and more expensive than ever and telephone line costs have gone up.

Re:What's taking so long?

[lemnik]

Anyone been to South Africa. I don't think we even have a 5mbit connection available here, and if we do it will cost more per month than I earn. ADSL here costs around 96USD/month for a 512kbit connection (capped at 3GB/month may I add).

Re:What's taking so long?

[matthew.thompson]

How does 29.99GBP sound for 8Mb DSL?

We don't have fprofitable cable companies so we get gouged on the cable side of things.

Re:What's taking so long?

[KiloByte]

Outdated ex-state-owned monopoly owning all the [local infrastructure]

Beh, it's not just the Britland that's suffering this problem. In Poland, we have Telekomunikacja Polska SA (tp SA), although the name obviously must have came from "communism" rather than "communication". Abysmal service, and no competition -- a cable operator would have to provide his own backbone as tp sa obviously isn't going to cooperate.

Just a few tidbits:

• when my workplace moved, it took a month and a half to get the damn phones connected, and a bit longer to get DSL as well. We gave them notices several times, the first time four months before.
  Our business crawled to a halt during that time -- but, there is nothing we can do about this. Sue them for lost profits? Hah. All we can possibly get is getting back the bill for 30 days, and it would take a 5-10 years long lawsuit that would cost plenty.
  And, the guy who does the real work for them said it's a matter of flipping a switch (as the cabling already existed), but he was not allowed to do it without clearance from the bureaucracy.
• the best connection we could get were "consumer-level" 128/512kbit ADSL for 160zl/month and "business" 512kbit DSL for 250zl. The sales rep claimed it's full, symmetric DSL. As you can guess, it's in reality just 128kbit upstream, same as the consumer version, with no value added but a different price tag.
• at home, I had a 3-week outage just because they had some "internal repairs". Sweet.
• at work, over half a year later, we still keep getting invoices for the old line. The customer service line just gives us a poor random clerk who doesn't know anything, and can't be told to escalate. To provide us with more entertainment, the clerks are assigned on a random way nation-wide, ensuring no two calls can reach the same representative.
• and oh, Poland has the most expensive phone services in Europe.

This post is pretty grim, indeed. But, as the brighter side, the rumors say there are people who live in Somalia and Sierra Leone...

Re:What's taking so long?

[michaelhood]

If I had been in possession of all the facts I was seeking, I wouldn't have posted a question. My question was prompted by seeing an endless stream of drivel about British broadband problems. I don't see posts about any other countries' broadband. I was looking to know what unique situation in the UK had caused this. I think the other replies to my GP answered this.

Re:What's taking so long?

[ettlz]

I think the trouble was the privatisation was most heinously botched. BT should've been split up into several smaller competing companies, and the lines distributed out to them at random within an exchange, under the purview a body like OFCOM. It's about time BT was AT&T'd.

Re:What's taking so long?

[LiquidCoooled]

You can get the speed, but a lot of providers are capping them :(

NTL just upgraded all their servers to 1/2/3 mbit.

However, customers using the oldest (bronze) service now have a LOWER cap then their old speed.
It actually makes sense for those customers to NOT take advantage of the speed (300kbit with a 30gb cap), or 1mbit with a 3gb PER MONTH.

The 2 and 3 mbit service has a 30gb per month cap, but thats still pant.

It fucking stinks.

Re:What's taking so long?

[FidelCatsro]

I was more hopping they would be eviscerated ;) literaly but i suppose AT&T'd would do. Just anything to break the monopoly , Though i would like to see the lines state controlled i doubt thats going to happen so something ala the AT&T brakdown would be better than what they have now .
Being in Germany right now , its the same situation . Whatever DSL i have i still must pay the line rental to T-COM (Detusches Telekom , Owners of T-Mobile T-com , T-DSL etc)

Re:What's taking so long?

[badfish99]

I knew someone who got a job with the old (pre-privitised) BT. This was back in the day when modems were an expensive rarity, provided by BT at monopoly prices.
When I asked him what his job was, he said "people send us modems that they want to connect to the telephone line; my job is to discover some reason why they can't do it".
He didn't last long in that job, but I suspect many of the people who were doing that job then are still doing the same sort of thing now.

Re:What's taking so long?

[wsapplegate]

> Most of these problems would likely not of occured if they hadn't privatised BT .

I agree _in part_ with you. I've witnessed first hand the result of the deregulation of another telco market (the French one, with France Télécom as the Ugly Monopolist From Hell), and here's what happened :

• You can now transfer your local loop to another provider, either just for ADSL (in which case the signal is split at the exchange between voice--to FT--and DSL--to the competitor's DSLAM) or completely (in which case the entire pair is routed to the competitor's equipment--still not widely practiced). I understand that FT charges the competitors a nominal fee for caring over the physical loop)
• If you've a problem with your DSL (or, in the latter case, your entire line), you need to call your provider (FT won't process your call). This implies calling an overpriced hotline which often won't be open 24/7 (in some cases, it's a far cry from that). In turn, your provider's technical services will call a FT service called the GAMOT. This is a service which *only* deals with operators, not customers. The GAMOT will then dispatch FT techs to the exchange and report the tech's findings to your provider, who will (or not !) tell you what they found. If they weren't able to diagnose the problem, you'll be in for a wild ride, trying to get your operator to call back the GAMOT with more technical details, and hoping nothing will get lost in the process. The situation can even get worse if your provider uses the services of a third-party operator for hauling the traffic to their routers, since you know have *three* levels of indirection. And throughout this, you've no way at all to communicate with the guys who will really act on the field, or even their dispatchers, nor any way to know firsthand what they found
• To add insult to injury, some resellers practice slamming : they will happily sign you up for their provider (even if you said "no thanks"), thus grabbing some affiliate proceeds. Of course, since you aren't that interested in changing providers, you will need to get the slammed provider to retake the line, and make sure the slamming one understands they've acted on a false request and doesn't charge anything. In the end, you're sure to win (provided you weren't dumb enough to sign anything), but it's a time-consuming process
• Finally, there is wide confusion about what services exactly you're eligible to, especially since different providers have different standards, you'll maybe find that your line would support 2 Mbps with $provider_one but your $chosen_provider refuses to give you more than 1 Mbps. At times, the databases are also confused, your provider telling you initially you're eligible, then changing tune when they check with their operator's realtime database. Tiring. There even exists websites dedicated to checking the databases to find out exactly what you can get with whom.

On the other hand, before deregulation you would only get 1024 kbps at cut-throat prices. Now, most providers go up to 8 Mbps, and a few will even provide 20 Mbps ADSL2 with free national long-distance phone calls and TV service. So, I will stop short of saying "there shouldn't have been any deregulation", it was clearly good since it spawned a lot of interesting offers. But the way it has been done is quite stupid, especially the fact that you no longer get a free hotline in touch with the actual people doing the work. The market was stagnant, right. But the way it is now is more like "anarchy in the .FR"... I can see why they did it this way (avoid confusing the users with multiple points of contact) but the end result is that many problems take longer (in some cases *much* longer) to be solved. The most knowledgeable people still have a separate DSL traffic hauling contract with FT and an Internet service contract with a third-party provider that still does it (there aren't many that do anymore) for reliability (yo

Re:What's taking so long?

[ColdGrits]

"Later this year, higher speeds will be available (up to 7.2 Mbps"

Later, you say?

I am currently on 8Mbps broadband already, and have been since the start of this year. In the UK. At £29.99 per month.

UKOnline are the outfit concerned, and so far it's working nicely.

Re:What's taking so long?

[hppacito]

How about getting ARCOS instead of Deutsches Telekom ?... they provide their own "Anschluss" and everything (I hopefully will get this in june...)

Re:What's taking so long?

[sydb]

Seriously, what's wrong with a 30gb cap? I mean, how much time do you spend downloading stuff instead of doing stuff?

I could imagine myself wanting a full set of Debian ISO images now and again. That might take 10Gb of my cap. But why I'd want to do that more than once a month at most I have no idea.

The only scenario I can think of where 30Gb a month might be low is if your downloading a new film (I nearly wrote "movie") every day or two. If you have the time on your hands to watch that much video, then you presumably have the money to afford a leased line.

But in seriousness, I would like to hear what use a private individual - even a geek - would currently have for downloading 30Gb a month.

None of this should be taken to mean that I think broadband shouldn't be faster, cheaper and with fewer limits. I just can't see why you would say 30Gb is "pant".

Re:What's taking so long?

[FidelCatsro]

Ah thank you , i was unaware that they did that ,? do you have a link ..
After all i am an auslander ;) .
I am rather fed up with T-online right now it took me a while to get info out of them as to how to set up my router properly to conect and they are terrible with billing . Hopefully ARCOS will be in my area (Mecklenburg-vorpommer in der nah vom Neubrandenburg )

Re:What's taking so long?

[MuMart]

Indeed, in the good old days Post Office Telecom may have been an evil socialist monopoly, but at least the phone lines ran on time.

Anyone else find the parent's sig ironic :)

Re:What's taking so long?

[mangu]

If only they had just privatised the telephone service alone and kept the lines state owned

And how do you propose to do that? "Telephone service" is lines+exchanges. Do you think if feasible to have a state owned company just to maintain the wires that connect your house to the exchange? And who would do upgrades? Suppose you wanted DSL and the cables had to be replaced. Should the state owned company be responsible for installing any infrastructure you wanted?

i don't like infrastructes such as water ,power , telephone lines and hospitals privatised . It has never reduced costs as they had said

I believe you are confusing costs with prices. Perhaps the true costs were subsidized in the state monopoly days.

Re:What's taking so long?

[MoonBuggy]

If you're interested in any of the deeper techie/political details that other users haven't mentioned, I can reccomend the ADSLGuide Q&A - the first few pages are newbie oriented but the later parts helped me alot when I was working out the quirks with various provider's services.

The other notable fact is the recent (as in last 6 months) change in how BT wholesale deal with ADSL provision - essentially it encourages resellers to offer much faster speeds (previously 512kbps was standard, now it's about 1-3mbps) but also encourages bandwidth caps.

As a result, you can now pay £29.99/month for capped 8mbps DSL (currently a very nice 500GB cap, but I don't trust that to last) or roughly the same for uncapped 2mbps with no port blocking or anything nasty like that. Personally I'm out of range for 8mbps, so that kinda made the decision for me, but many users are picking up on 1mbps for very little cash and then finding themselves subject to caps as low as 5GB with various nasty locks on what you can and can't do on the network, and that's roughly the same for cable AFAIK.

To summarise: we have fast, affordable broadband with crap service and crap TOS or we have to pay disproportionately for quality service. And God forbid you want anything not specified by BT Wholesale, you'll be paying 10x over the odds for that.

Re:What's taking so long?

[kyojin the clown]

This is not because the British have worse broadband than everyone else, its because we delight in moaning about it more than anyone else. as you can see, by simply moving to Britain, you are swiftly caught up in this, and start to moan just like everyone else. We will tolerate just about anything, as long as we are able to complain impotently.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Dr.Opveter]

Quality internet radio shows, movie trailers, game demos ( >500MB demos are not rare these days..), linux iso's, mp3 (legal).

Anyway, you're probably right thinking most people who use more than 30GB bandwidth per month on their private connection are downloading films or whatever but where do you draw the line. Just like software is increasingly taking up more size because HDD space is so cheap, so is content on the internet because broadband enables us to get it. Linux iso's are getting dvd size, game demos get bigger and bigger...
When i just had broadband i'd download whatever (just because i could, and if it wasn't worth my diskspace i would just delete and download some more) and i must say it was pretty easy coming up with 150GB/month.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, how much time do you spend downloading stuff instead of doing stuff?

I don't spend any time donwloading stuff; I have a cpomputer to do that for me while I get on with doing stuff. If you're spending much of your time downloading stuff then you're doing something wrong.

Re:What's taking so long?

[ynohoo]

but i don't like infrastructes such as water ,power , telephone lines and hospitals privatised

I can't speak for the last two, but I do know that with water, power and the railways, before they were privatised, sucessive governments regarded skipping on infrastructure investment as an easy way to save money. Sure the regulators could tell them off, but if the investment wasn't forthcoming, there was nothing being done. By removing these industries from the government teat, and by enforcing the regulations on the new private owners, the infrastructure is only now beginning to come up to the required standards. Sure it may end up costing more, but its a far better situation than waiting for unmaintained infrastructure the collapse.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been living in Toulouse for the last year or so and although it took a while to set up a phone line & ADSL, the service seems much better than I experienced in the UK. ADSL deals are amazing in France: 14.99 Euro p/m for 8mbit ADSL with neuf telecom + 13 Euro p/m France Telecom line rental.

I havn't had any problems yet with the connection so I can't comment on their customer service though

Re:What's taking so long?

[FidelCatsro]

The exchange should be privatised the lines state owned , the company instead of paying the cash to BT a private company for line rental would pay it to the national coughers . So instead of one company benefiting ,everyone would
upgrades would be then be made into a policy hopefully this policy would be to make them regular and to the benifit of the people , well atleast the people.

The state would not fund this , the private exchange holders would . it would just be fully under state controll .
Perhaps they were subsidised , but either way we have to pay the same ammount or more , it just changes how we pay it

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these problems would likely not of occured if they hadn't privatised BT . Well the lines atleast , it gave the private BT a near unbreakable telephone monopoly outside of state controll due to the rather pathetic regulators.

Indeed these wouldn't have occurred. Because there'd be no broadband service. I'm old enough to remember before privatisation. A months-long waiting list to get a single line installed. With a hardwired phone that had to be rented from them. They were not a good advertisement for state control.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

For those (like me) wondering:
1zl = 0.24 EUR or $0.31

Re:What's taking so long?

[aussie_a]

After all i am an auslander ;) .

No you're not! You're Cuban.

Re:What's taking so long?

[mattyrobinson69]

reloading slashdot repeatedly

Re:What's taking so long?

[gnalre]

I agree in a way. But I think it should of all been privatised, but the hardware bit made a separate company in which anyone company could use.

At moment the relationship between the BT hardware and sales is to cosy

Re:What's taking so long?

[FidelCatsro]

I would also be happy with that , it wouldnt be the way i see as ideal . alot better than what we have now though.
The commen sentiment does seem to be that the monopoly needs split somehow , its just going to be hard to push that issue onto Tory Blair .Nothing has been done to strengthen oftel and nothing seems to get done with these monopolys .
So whether it be partialy state owned or owned by private firms something just needs to be done , otherwise everyone will continue to get screwed over.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Goth Biker Babe]

You've got cable. Cable never really took off, except for a few small areas, in the UK until relatively recently. When we did start adopting cable it was straight in to fully digital cable. The problem was that it meant the cable Cos investing in an awful lot of infrastructure. Just how easy is it to add cable to millenia old cities? So it's basically been slowly and steadily and expensively.

Anyone living out side of the cities isn't going to get cable anyway. It's not worth the cable Cos to pay for the infrastructure. We do have big cities but most of our cities are small compared to US ones so generally you don't get competition as the cable Cos have neatly divided the country up between them. So you'll either get Telewest or you'll get NTL but not both in your area. A lot of the population doesn't live in cities anyway. You'll find a lot of small satelite towns and villages around cities here none of which will probably get cable again because of the costs.

Take my parents for example, they live ten miles from a city. There are two villages between them and the city. Total population around 3000 for all three locations (where my parents live and the two villages). Is a cable Co really going to spend money for a maximum of 3000 subscribers.

So the alternatives are popular. If you want digital television there's both subscriber satelite (Sky) and digital terrestrial which is free. And for broadband, it's ADSL either directly or indirectly via BT.

Personally, I get my television via Sky (~300 channels) and my broadband indirectly from BT (2Mb). Broadband for me was relatively simple. I used an online form to check my line. Phoned the ISP and they arranged the connection. Upgrading to 2Mb actually took about an hour from the phone call to the increased bandwidth.

Re:What's taking so long?

[loopkin]

The thing is that when it works, it works. But when you start to have problems, for one reason or another, it goes quickly straight to hell.

One thing the grandparent forgot to tell, is that GAMOT calls by other operators to FT are charged by FT, unless FT proves it's FT fault (yes, you read well). So of course, when you have a problem, the operators aren't very keen on calling GAMOT, they prefer to do a lot of tests before, and it takes a lot of time.

But since "when it works, it works well", and that for about 97,5% of people it's the case, it allows France to have a very much growing market on boradband.

Now, i think most european goverments made mistakes when they deregulated and sold their telecoms administrations. The old state monopolies should have been splitted in two: one side for the "operator" business, and one side for the "network" business. And probably, they shouldn't have sold completely the "netowrk" business part (after all, roads aren't privately owned as well, are they ?). I think most of the problem everybody encounters in various EU countries with the telecoms have their roots there, and then the final result vary, depending on the clueness and power of the various "[de]regulation" bodies.

Re:What's taking so long?

[smittyoneeach]

Yes, but we must admit that Fidel's Cubist period has been very important to his body of work in particular, and art in general.

Re:What's taking so long?

[fLameDogg]

FidelCatsro, Cuban? Naw, he must be Cbuan.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Somato_gastric]

Yes but if they had never privatised BT I doubt we would even *have* broadband. We would probably have resorted to binary semaphore, or perhaps smoke signals on a still day.

Cos the socialist state that preceeded Thatcher was perfect wasn't it?

(Also, personally speaking, my broadband expereinces with BT have been perfectly adequate)

Re:What's taking so long?

[sbryant]

Whatever DSL i have i still must pay the line rental to T-COM

That's not necessarily true - it depends where you live.

Go here and see if they are available in your area (or call them on 0800 1070220). An ISDN connection (dual line) plus 1000 kilobit DSL (max. 1Gb transfer per month) costs 30 Euros/month. Add an extra 10 Euros for flat rate internet. Actually, they're currently doing an offer where you get the 2000 kilobit connection for the same price. You can pay more, and get 3000 kilobit, but that's the most you'll get out of either them or the Deutsche Telekom.

I changed recently, and I've been very happy with their service so far. A number of friends have changed too, so it seems to be quite popular. The service isn't limited to big cities anymore either - I live in a small village (about 4500 people). I've no idea how what availability there is in Meck-Pom though.

-- Steve

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for one major problems with public owned utility companies, investment.

Before BT was privatised the GPO, as it was then, was limited on how much it could borrow and who from, to invest in network upgrades. That was a serious problem which kept running costs high and was solved by privatisation.

Nor are prices allowed to pile on since privatisation as Ofcom controls what BT can charge at all stages of the network. This is regularly reassessed to squeeze BT's margins. The only way BT can keep its margins over time is to keep reducing the running costs of its network.

If you're interested you can check this at http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/charge/#co ntent/. You will note that the costs of running BT's network go down year on year.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Nasher]

Another issue is that the resulting companies, in many countries were or are substantially state owned.

Re:What's taking so long?

[crabpeople]

"The only scenario I can think of where 30Gb a month might be low is if your downloading a new film (I nearly wrote "movie") every day or two. If you have the time on your hands to watch that much video, then you presumably have the money to afford a leased line."

last month my totals were 40.9gb down 33.9gb up. This was mostly comprised of pr0n, feature films, tv shows and warez. It should also be noted that i can barely afford my rent and do not have a TV.

I know in your world downloaders are high class money laden captains of industry who while not sitting in their yacths in tahiti, usually can be found flying between cities in their private jets. However, it might actually be the case that im one of those rare people not in the millionaires club who can find an hour or 2 a day to spend on my computer.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but a) You're the 1% of the population who can currently get an 8Mb ADSL service & b) What's the upstream? I'd love a 1Mb up stream service but everyone seems to take the 'A' in ADSL a little too literally for my needs.

Re:What's taking so long?

[taobill]

Later, you say?

I am currently on 8Mbps broadband already, and have been since the start of this year. In the UK. At £29.99 per month.

UKOnline are the outfit concerned, and so far it's working nicely.

I don't believe that service is generally available. My point was about services which are generally available, which is what they would need to be to make a valid rebuttal to the original comment.

Re:What's taking so long?

[cagliost]

What's taking so long? Two words: British Telecom Yep. BT own the lines, and so can offer expensive line rental. Companies like NTL can install their own lines, but it costs them money, whereas BT have the infrastructure in place already. If the regulator simply forced BT to offer cheaper wholesale broadband to ISPs, then everything would be fine. At the moment, BT charge ISPs £13 a month for a broadband line (up to 2Mb) (about $25). In France, you can get 2Mb for about 5 Euros/month (about $5). In. BT's service itself is okay. NTL's is very poor.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

The connection between the BT owned DSLAM at your local exchange and the ISP is currently a 2mbit ATM pipe. This is what prevents more than 2mbit being used.

Providers such as UKOnline get around this by installing their own DSLAM with a faster ATM pipe.

BT will be upgrading the DSLAMs soon to have a larger bandwidth at this point, at which point the higher speeds will become available to everyone.

Even then, you'll only be able to get the fastest speeds near the exchange. (as is already the case)
If you're too far away the resistance and capacitance of the twisted pair is too high and you get lots of noise... the only way to get around this is to slow the data down so it has more of a chance to get through without any noise.
Unfortunately large parts of the UK fit into this category.

Re:What's taking so long?

[sydb]

I should have said "what legitimate use", sorry. I like the other reply about your hairy palms, too.

Or maybe your post was satire. It would certainly serve as such!

Re:What's taking so long?

[op00to]

What if you share your internet access with a roommate? Or two? Or three? All of a sudden, that cap looks a whole lot lower.

Re:What's taking so long?

[ColdGrits]

I don't believe that service is generally available

's claimed to be available to around 4.4 million homes, I call that pretty available!

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

and the reason for this? the electorate were too stupid to push the politicians into not skipping on investment, because it may cost them a little bit more in taxes in return for a better service. All necessary country infrastructure should be government controled, as then it is controlled by the people who use it via their voting power, rather than a company who's primary interest is profit rather than providing the best possible service.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Lord_Dweomer]

" Seriously, what's wrong with a 30gb cap? I mean, how much time do you spend downloading stuff instead of doing stuff?"

The answer of course is that its none of your damn business how much time I spend downloading stuff, or what I am downloading.

If I use the bandwidth, that is enough for me to bitch out it being capped.

The real answer though is that I queue up many movies and episodes of television shows and anime and programs, and leave them on while I am at work, or out, or sleeping. Remember, most of the big downloads people do are done during off-time from their computer so that they don't suck away bandwidth from the download.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

I sincerely doubt that you had much experiance of the original GPO monopoly.

I, unfortunately, have had significant such experiance, and can confirm that the present BT while far from perfect, is but a pale shadow of their pre selloff ineptitude and obnoxiosness.

Pesonally, I believe that the connection charge that the GPO charged, more than covered the cost of the installation of the local loop.

I see no reason therefore why what was essentially my asset was gratuitusly handed out to a private company. I regarded it as theft then, and do still.

Had the local loop remained the proprty of the party that funded it, I would regard the sell off of BT as an unmitigated blessing.

Shoka

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

its to catch out the cloners.

the cloners are causing single cloned accounts to have extremely high bandwidth.
by making the legitimate customer agree to these caps and knowuing the cutomermmight not go over it. its gives the ntl isp a legal frameowrk to investigate and a procdure to do this as the porblem is widespread. esp because of profiteers who selled slones modems. in my extremely impoverished area mostly ntl is used and its prbably clonedby the looks of it. as the [its all rented / council slum] previous
residents had it and now the new residents wnat it and want it cheap. ive seen teh guy he even loks like ntl with the white corsa!

i myslef refuse to fiund the BT monopoly indirectly and feel that all braodband is a rip off.
until we get ipv6 and static ip and norway / japn style speeds i aint paying.

so i am on dialup,. and i use wi fi broadband when i am desperate.
i think bt offer a 6 pound anywhere service dont know - never paid.
i feel like browsing is not any faster than 56k at all.
although my squid cache helps!

Re:What's taking so long?

[DaisyTheCow]

Would you like to name this wonderful company?

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, at my house we seem to be paying for a service that AT&T never called us about, or got any kind of permission to authorize on our line. We cant even call them to get them to stop selling us the service. The really sad part is, we cant even use the service that AT&T is charging us for. Bunch of bastards, that company is.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should really try taking it up to the next level, if you haven't already. I had a similar situation with some call forwarding service that got attached to my AT&T Wireless account, but I didn't notice for a long time because I never went over my plan minutes (and thus never checked the bill closely). When I called to ask about it, the customer service rep confirmed that they had no order for the service on file for me, and not only did she cancel it but immediately arranged a refund for all the months I'd already paid (worked out to about $174). I was a happy camper, believe me. I'm not so sure Cingular would give me the benefit of the doubt, these days...

Re:What's taking so long?

[whoever57]

Have to agree with you -- here in CA, I tried to get iDSL installed at my company's office. Thank goodness it was only for backup.

The problem is that there were 3 companies involved:

The retailer: Verio

The wholesale DSL provider (can't remember their name -- but they were the first to go bust)

The telephone company.

So, in my case, the telephone company botched the installation/configuration of the line (an ISDN line). The wholesaler did not seem to be able to get the telephone company to fix this, but they kept sending techs out to "install" my service. Some of these techs were good, some clueless. One pair of techs told me that when they had installed the magic socket (just a socket with their name on it), everything would work -- they blamed the problems on the prior techs who had kindly wired up the incoming line to the rack at the office. They shuffled off without saying anything after failing to get it to work.

Eventually, it worked, then the DSL wholesaler went bust and to really finish off the issue, we got a past due notice from Verio for service after they had terminated it (due to the wholesaler's BK).

Been there, done that

[treff89]

I have been to the UK, and must concur: BT is the pits! They are comparable to Australia's Telstra in many ways. One thing that BT has done right, though, is the O2 mobile company. Brilliant! http://o2.co.uk/

Re:Been there, done that

[norfolkboy]

BT do not own o2.

BT used to own a company called Cellnet, that later became o2. o2 is owned by mmo2, which does not belong to BT.

mmo2 are not another name or brand of BT. mmo2 operate several mobile and communication networks of their own (the new police network, manx telecom, o2, etc)

Re:Been there, done that

[treff89]

Point taken, but I was just trying to simplify the process. For example, it is as a direct result of BT's decisions that O2 came about, regardless of ownership. I still get free GPRS here in Australia, and they work on 3 base carrier GSM networks.

Re:Been there, done that

[petermgreen]

iirc mmo2 demerged from bt and when they did so bt cellnet became o2

i've no idea how much of thier stock still has common owners though.

Re:Been there, done that

[Anonymous Coward]

You are saying O2 is brilliant? You really must be from Britain then... I've been living in UK now for 1 year and using O2 mobile. It really sucks if you compare to Finnish mobile operators. Price of the calls and text messages is high and it is not working very well. Some times text messages arrive out of order and hours after you've sent them. Many times you cannot even send a SMS. Phone calls rattle and sometimes you can't get through. The coverage of the network is bad outside cities, and so on...

Re:Been there, done that

[treff89]

Mate, if you had read the post, you would quickly come to the (correct) realisation that I am Australian. I don't use O2 to make calls, although it is apparently good for that as well. It's things like free GPRS which allow me to love 'em! As well, they are continually supporting the latest and greatest of mobile phones. (Can't wait for the XDAIII, it may cause me to ditch my Sony Clie.)

Re:Been there, done that

[HaydnH]

Can't wait for the XDAIII, it may cause me to ditch my Sony Clie.

If you like your clie you should try a Treo 650 - very cool phone & it runs palm OS so you should get used to it really easily.

Re:Been there, done that

[Anonymous Coward]

BT has nothing to do with O2, they sold the BT cellnet contract to them a few years back

Re:Been there, done that

[leathered]

Brilliant my arse.

I moved to O2 late last year after a number of happy years with Vodafone and all I can say is that they suck donkey ballz. Coverage is poorer, with Voda I used to get a signal virtually everywhere. Also voicemail and text messages now often arrive anything up to three days after they were sent. Having no timestamps on the messages or the option to return the call doesn't help either. Even one2one (RIP) eight years ago was better than this.

I'm just waiting for my contract to expire then it's back to Vodafone for me.

Re:Been there, done that

[Alioth]

Grrr.

mmo2 own Manx Telecom, yet I *still* get charged exhorbitant roaming charges when in the UK and using the O2 network. Then Manx Telecom ass rapes us hard at home - our 512 down/256 up costs more than 2Mbit does in the UK because MT have a total monopoly.

Re:Been there, done that

[Anonymous Coward]

Bing! you lose. o2 are the most despicable of mobile companies. their incompentance knows no bounds, and you will realise this as soon as you try to free yourself from their icy grasp.

when i cancelled my phone, they just left the contract running, and running and running, despite weekly reminders from me that the phone had not been cut off, and weekly affirmations from them that yes it had. eventually the enormous 'bill' collapsed under its own weight, and despite repeated assurances that it was their error and they would fix it, i now have a default on my credit record. genuinely, people who work for o2's billing department deserve to die in fire, and i dont care how un-PC you might find that.

Re:Been there, done that

[countincognito]

I think the article is right on the money: BT sucks donkey sausage! But it's more than that, more of a tragic snap-shot of how things are at the moment in Britain (and yes I do live there). This is a problem rife in the UK at the moment, with privatised ex-national services acting like they still have a god-given right to exist and provide piss-poor quality service as a result. They can't seem to fathom the idea of free markets - hence why a lot of them are making losses rather than profits and probably won't be around for very long. Any well-informed Britisher could easily rant for hours on the subject of trains/phones/broadband/BA/tube (delete as appropriate). Some of them (e.g. BA) are starting to learn (slowly) after being pinched in the arse by superior competition, but BT is still, for want of a better phrase, a monopoly. Until the fixed line services are opened up to other companies this sort of crap will keep on happening to us poor Brits! Case in point from treff89; BT's mobile service O2 provides good service, but that's only because it's up against dozens of other service providers. Thankfully, us lot in the UK are starting to learn that we are allowed to complain about shoddy services when we've paid good money for them. Personally, I've found that a bit of patient persistence is the best way to deal with British companies - ranting off like a bull in a china shop rarely gets you anywhere. If you express your displeasure calmly but firmly you'll usually get the help you need. And maybe even an emolument for your troubles :-)

Re:Been there, done that

[Dilaudid]

Hmm. O2 is probably good because BT had to sell them, after burdening themselves with so much debt they nearly went bankrupt - the shareholders were also forced into a rights issue which effectively blackmailed them into paying an extra £5.9 billion ($11 bn) into the business.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1347025.stm

We have a saying in the UK which you may find appropriate - "They couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery"

But maybe I'm just bitter having suffered their customer service too ...

Re:Been there, done that

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck did you leave Voda if they were giving you such a good service?

I've used Cellnet (atrocious) Orange (excellent) and Vodafone (very good). Frankly, I won't use O2 because of my experiences with Cellnet and BT.

Re:Been there, done that

[Malc]

Maybe that's because they had competition from day one (Vodaphone???). The Thatcher government ensured that. Unfortunately it didn't pan out the way they expected, so rather than compete price (which stayed ridiculously high), they competed on service and coverage.

Re:Been there, done that

[aamcf]

My dad had a BT Cellnet mobile when he died. They refused to believe that he was dead, and kept sending him bills demanding payment for line rental *months* after he died. They also kept phoning our house to speak to him. They had noticed that he wasn't using his phone any more.

Eventually they sent him a final demand, saying their next step would be to take him to court. We rang them to say that court would indeed be an acceptable solution. They backed down very quickly.

BT or TA?

[dark grep]

An interesting read, but there are plenty of stories like that here: http://www.whirlpool.net.au/ - the Britts are not alone.

Re:BT or TA?

[treff89]

Yes, Whirlpool is a terrific read for Australian providers and worldwide issues. Great for hardware support, and some nice reading of chronical stories. You guys in the US have sure got it lucky in terms of cheap broadband; 1534/512 aDSL here costs about $50US/mo.

Re:BT or TA?

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys in the US have sure got it lucky in terms of cheap broadband; 1534/512 aDSL here costs about $50US/mo

Huh? Pick up a copy of the weekend Sydney Morning Herald, or Australian Personal Computer, or just about any big circulation news/technololgy publication and you'll see full-page advertisements for TPG Internet. 1.5MBit ADSL with 30GB/month allowance (shaped to 64Kbps after that). AU $49.95/month. That's only approximately US $38/month, and it's without spending any time whatsoever shopping around or trying to find a cheap deal on Whirlpool...this is the deal that the 'mums and dads' will be noticing and signing up for. Not a real difficult deal to find...

BT

[nagora]

I've not read the article yet, but I have dealt with BT on many occasions. They are without a doubt the worst company in the world. Totally disorganised, uninterested in their customers, and years behind the rest of the world. What does BT stand for? Bloody Terrible? Bag o' Tripe, Bunch of Tossers? Take your pick. Whatever it stands for, they're shit.

Now that I've vented, I'll go and read the article. After which I'll probably need to vent again.

TWW

Re:BT

[Anonymous Coward]

The only good thing I can say about BT is that they're better than NTL. Saying that, I'm hard pressed to think of anything worse than NTL, so being better is not an achievement to be proud of.

Re:BT

[aussie_a]

I thought it stood for "Black Television", I guess you could say "Black Television" is also "Bloody Terrible."

Re:BT

[arivanov]

This means that you have not dealt with Telewest, Homechoice, Bulldog or any of the other "alternatives".

First, lets be clear. BT are in this for the money, not for the coolness. They have no intention on offering cool products dot-bomb style that do not bring profits.

Second, they may seem technologically backwater, but they are obliged by the UK regulatory regime to offer their products on a national basis. As a result if it takes to limit DSL to 512 (old Fujitsu linecards) or 1M (new linecards) to offer it for the coverage defined in the approved wholesale product they will do so without any regrets.

If you want BT to offer better products they happily will, provided that they can charge you for it and that the product can get regulatory approval. The fact is that so far all ideas about wholesale products with sliding or flexible billing scale have gone fubar in the very early stage of negotiating with Oftel/Ofcom and the blame for this is clearly with Oftel (now Ofcom).

To add to that, it is clearly the better company as far as customer service and reliability is concerned compared to any alternative in the UK. DSL outages in most areas are usually under 20-30 minutes per year which for example is clearly above the US average. Compare this to NTL or BullDog which happily has them in the days or even weeks range (speaking from experience). If you line is broken they fix it in usually less then 4h. Compare to NTLs 3-7 days. If you have a billing complaint they fix it within 20-30 minutes. Compare this to NTLs "NEVER". The only way to get misbilled money from them is though a lawsuit.

Yes, BT is bad, but a large chunk of its badness is due to the regulatory regime and the alternatives are much worse.

Re:BT

[davidfsmith]

Actually having just spent the last 2 months trying to sort out a DSl for a small office in Dublin, there exists a company worse than BT...

Eircom

Re:BT

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience has been the opposite. I moved to NTL from BT and have had a MUCH better service since, and at a more reasonable price. Both are administratively incompetent, but BT are aggressively anti-customer with it. Most of my emails to them ended up with their "abusive communications team".

It says a lot about a company's customer service when the need to set up an entire department to deal with "abusive" customers...

I now pay £24.99pcm for NTL's Silver (2000/200) standalone product, and have yet to experience a service outage in 3 years - but I don't use their email or DNS.

Re:BT

[nagora]

To add to that, it is clearly the better company as far as customer service and reliability is concerned compared to any alternative in the UK.

Total crap. On three different occassions BT has failed to even install their products and have given up. I have lost my own Internet connection, a large contract in the City of London (hardly a backwater) and in a smaller Woking office because, in each case, after literally weeks of talking to BT and reporting fault after fault with the work done by their so-called engineers, BT have simply said that they were unable to find what was causing the problem and that they simply were not going to try to fix it anymore. Note that there was no dispute about the existance of the faults, quite the opposite as some of the staff seemed to find the whole process facinating.

BT are fucking useless and it's not squat to do with regulation. Regulation is the only thing that stops them, from trippling their prices again.

I would be very happy to hear that BT had gone bust and all the bastards that work for them are unemployed; as far as I can see none of them, from the board down to tele-sales, are actually in useful employ now anyway.

NTL are bad but at least they've never told me that they won't bother fixing a fault because they can't find it.

TWW

Re:BT

[nagora]

Actually having just spent the last 2 months trying to sort out a DSl for a small office in Dublin

That's just peanuts to BT: they'd spend 2 months on it and then tell you that you can't have it.

TWW

Re:BT

[DirtyAlex]

I'm with Telewest, I have been since September 2002. In those two and a half years, I have had my internet connection die twice.

Once was because of a line fault which they fixed within hours, and once because they changed the MAC Address policy (changing it from a maximum of 5 MACs per account to 3 MACs, and in doing so removed the MAC I was using at the time), and so I phoned them up and they changed the MAC for me.

I also originally paid for a 512k/128k line, and now it's a 1024k/128k line without me paying any extra at all.

The price is fine, I have no bandwidth cap, and my line always operates at full speed - While my friend on BT (who has their 576k package (what a silly number)) rarely gets above 50k/s, when he should be getting 72k/s max.

Telewest have their faults (the Tech support are mostly incompetent I believe from the two times I've contacted them), but you rarely have to contact them.


NTL do suck though. And nearly all the ADSL (as opposed to cable) ISPs in the UK suck. Zen are quite cool, and A&A are fantastic - although expensive.

Re:BT

[truespin]

NTL make BT look professional :(

Re:BT

[rogerzilla]

I've not read the article yet, but I have dealt with BT on many occasions. They are without a doubt the worst company in the world. Totally disorganised, uninterested in their customers, and years behind the rest of the world.

There speaks a man who has never experienced NTL's call centre.

Re:BT

[Anonymous Coward]

BT the worst company in the world? You haven't tangled with Deutsche Telekom.

Re:BT

[rylin]

Actually, BT seem to care about their customers... a bit, at least.
A few years ago, I ran a semi-large gaming-forum (it was considered a bad day if we had less than 6k new posts). If I recall correctly we had about 5000 users coming from BT.

We had a regular Troll lurking around (Hi Alpha5!), but one day we got bored of just banning him, his accounts and so on, so we contacted BT's abuse-desk to see if they could cut off his access.

Nothing happened... ... until we blocked anyone with an IP-address belonging to BT from accessing the site, with a nice error message, stating that if they wanted to have access to the site again, they would do well to contact BT customer-support and mention their problem.

Two hours later, I had some upper-level abuse contact at BT calling me in the afternoon, asking me to please remove the block.

After mentioning the problem, he said he would immediately have a look at the problematic user's account and see what he could do.

We had a blissful month of the troll not showing up after that :)

Re:BT

[Anonymous Coward]

I was on hold for a while with BT. Once I got through to an agent, he sorted out my main problem OK. No complaints, other than 1/2 an hour on hold. However, I do have a BT ADSL modem, whose web interface doesn't work with Mozilla based browsers - dodgy javascript required to set up WEP. I told him this, he was like, what's Mozilla? I then suggested he start a new folder on his desk labelled "someone else's problem", place that folder near the trash, and file my problem there. He did.

Nothing against the poor bastards who work there, but the management of that company really deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered in the best British tradition. Then we could impale their heads on stakes outside their offices as a warning to other overpaid underperforming senior executives.

Re:BT

[Anonymous Coward]

British Toilet, innit.

Re:BT

[nagora]

Then we could impale their heads on stakes outside their offices as a warning to other overpaid underperforming senior executives.

I used to have a good deal of respect for BT engineers but having watched them work over the last few years I've come to the conclusion that, like Microsoft, BT is no longer a company where people with pride in their work want to be. Consequently, those that do work there are very clearly second-rate.

TWW

Re:BT

[kyojin the clown]

i have had experience with alpha5, way back in the past on the MGON StrikeForce forums. he can actually be a decent bloke, just has a hankering for stirring up trouble.

i can tell you where he lives if you want to put a, errr, permanent ban on him..

Re:BT

[rylin]

Those are indeed the forums I'm talking about ;)
<-- oscar the ban-happy swede
I only found him annoying when I was the one having to clean up his shit..
These days, I'm hoping to catch glimpses of him online.. that little guy sure knew how to troll.. and god bless him for hours of entertainment ;P

Re:BT

[de Siem]

BT I always thought stood for: Bastard Thieves.

Re:BT

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. I was living in Westminster, about 500 metres from the BT tower (which sits on top of a big BT exchange) and I was repeatedly told by BT that I was "too far from the exchange" to get ADSL (after not being able to decipher my postcode because they didn't actually have access to a current postcode database).

They are useless, useless twats who regard their customer's money as rightfully theirs, and will obstruct your attempts to BUY SERVICES FROM THEM at every turn. I really fucking hate them.

Re:BT

[rbbs]

BT are generally regarded as being crap, but i think the truth of the matter is rather more complicated.

BT is not just BT, it consists of a number of 'arms' that just don't talk to each other. That is fundamentally the problem and that is what was forced on them by regulators.

Their ISDN services are, for example, excellent.
I had to order an ISDN30 line in feb and the location had cable and wireless already providing the isdn30 line so i called them up. They assigned me an account manager and said they would get back to me. I stressed i needed it asap (ideally in 30 days) and they said no prob. no mention of prices or anything, my account manager would manage that.
I waited a few days, and finally called BT for the same thing. BT were able to give me a price and a target install date immediately over the phone so i went with them. They arrived 3 days ahead of the install date and the isdn worked first time. I was installing asterisk and had a couple of config problems so I phoned them up and spoke for half an hour on an 0800 no with an engineer who (although he had never even heard of asterisk) was able to guide me through all the correct settings and we got it running first time.
We also had to have adsl put in and had only one analogue line in the building but (believe it or not) we couldn't find the socket for it. (there were 3 comms rooms and overlapping numbering for sockets) so i phoned up BT. That same day, an engineer came round and took me for a tour. He said he had worked in the area for 20 years and even remembered the layout of the building from when he had been there last. He took me to the frame relay room (of the neighbouring building) and we 'toned' out the socket till we eventually found it terminating in a mess of (disused) cables downstairs. He knocked up a quick patch cable and within minutes we were up and running. The charge for this hour of investigation? £50.

I think the thing is that BT consists of a lot of very good people who are encumbered by a real communications issue through management. They provide excellent support and good SLA's.
What's more, their new pure IP backbone will make them a world leader in comms.

Hate to say it though i do, if BT had not been broken up, all the problems we are having now would not be an issue...

For what it's worth, my account manager at Cable and Wireless phoned me back last week about getting a new line in...3 months after the BT install had gone though.

Re:BT

[demented]

They are without a doubt the worst company in the world.

Oh, yeah? Well, check this out, then:

• The company in charge is Telekom Srbija, state monopolist in telecommunications in Serbia, 80% owned by Serbian Post (which is, in turn, 100% state owned), 20% by OTE, a Greek telecomm company. Italian company STET owned some 28-29% but sold it to the Serbian Post (effectively, the state)
• Getting a plain phone line here is an enterprise of biblical proportions - if you're lucky enough to meet technical conditions (there is a wire from LLE to your building and there are free slots at the LLE) you'll need to pay about 100 EUR and to wait for up to several months. If you are in rural areas, you probably have to shell out some 1000-1500 EUR for a line. Even if you buy and put the wire yourself (areal or underground), you have to pay a lot and the wire becomes the property of Telekom Srbija (according to the Telecommunications law)!
• Recently, Telekom Serbia started offering ADSL service thru ISPs. Lots of people applied for it at their ISP of choice only to find out that only a handfull of local loop exchange points are equiped with DSLAMs and only in the state capital, Belgrade - out of 20 or so LLEs only 8 were equiped with DSLAMs, others are in process of being upgraded. The test project lasted for over a year, and at the beginning even Telekom Srbija didn't know which LLE's had DSLAMs!!! The process of getting an ADSL service here is that you contact your ISP who will in your name check with the Telekom's technicall support do you meet technical conditions, and if you do you can sign a contract with your ISP for the ADSL service - there is a setup fee (some 50+ EUR) and you'll have to wait up to two weeks before ISP's technician comes and installs the splitter and ADSL modem. However, when the service first started a couple of months ago, Telekom Srbija responded positively to most inquieries for tecnical conditions and people signed contracts and payed for the setup fees only to be informed two week after that there was a misunderstanding in Telekom's technical service and that unfortunately you do not meet technical conditions for ADSL service, could you, please, come to the ISP HQ to terminate the contract and be refunded?
• Current price range for ADSL for the few lucky ones are in range of 20 - 60 EUR for 256-768Kbps.
• Internet link (for ISPs) can only be licenced from Telekom Srbija and price range is 2.000 - 100.000 EUR/month (2 - 155 Mbps).
• Since Telekom is officialy monopolistic in the area of fixed telephony (that is, excluding mobile telephony), each and every company that sells VoIP to customers violates the Telecomunnications law (Telekom's monopoly expires in June 2005 but noone knows will it will be terminated or prolonged for some time).

Re:BT

[mikael]

They are without a doubt the worst company in the world. Totally disorganised, uninterested in their customers, and years behind the rest of the world

The saddest thing I ever saw, was when their research labs were presenting a paper. All the other research teams had migrated to using Powerpoint presentations using laptops. They were the only team still using overhead projection slides.

If you ever see an low-rise building with great big blisters of flaking paint, you can be guaranteed it's a BT exchange.

Re:BT

[nagora]

The saddest thing I ever saw, was when their research labs were presenting a paper.

A somewhat sad thing I experienced was when they were running those ads with the people in the beanbags and saying they were more into serious work than silly fads. I had a meeting at BT HQ in London in connection with the floating-off of O2 and when we got there, surprise, surprise! we were all seated in beanbags. Dickheads.

On the way into the meeting we also passed large notices telling staff not to use their email until the current virus was delt with.

TWW

Poor article

[norfolkboy]

A very poor article.

Sure, I can appreciate the guy is pissed off, but there is no need to get to low-level xenophobia.

The article is xenophobic and patronising to the British. Please don't call our institutions quaint, it's not funny, it's patronising.

To quote the author: "(Do we even have "faults" on the line in the U.S.?)". Don't be so daft. Of course you have phone line faults.

Was there any point in this article other than to create tension on Slashdot?

Even the article summary is filled with needless opinion and laced with xenophobia (the tone being: the British have falled off a pedestal)

Not impressed.

Re:Poor article

[Herbster]

Personally I couldn't agree more with all the BT bashing.

HOWEVER, you Yanks better not forget that your "cellphone", or as we backward Brits like to call it, "mobile" service is years behind ours.

I hear you could only recently send cross-network texts (SMS)? too bad, too bad!

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

The important thing is that you're not getting defensive. That's good.

Re:Poor article

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

well...I've never had a phone line fault...

Besides the whole BT system sounds not so much quaint as uselessly fucked up. Why are you choosing to read criticism of such an assbackwards system as xenophobia against the brittish? If he wanted to do that, he could have just refered to the people he dealt with at the various isp's as being limp-wristed tea-sucking limeys--but he didnt. In fact there were no negative imprecations against britain at all apart from what he saw as the rather neolitic broadband situation, which seemed pretty well justified. In fact he started out by making sure that it was understood that he happened to like the place and that his was not a typical UglyAmerican tirade against a foreign country for not being america.
I think you're reaching a bit
chill

Re:Poor article

[sheriff_p]

Being British, and having had the drama of getting broadband installed recently, I can completely see the author's point here -

To label a self-deprecating piece by an American who has moved to the UK, and has a lot of positive things to say about the UK as 'xenophobic' is ... well, you voted Tory right?

+Pete

Re:Poor article

[stoolpigeon]

The line fault bit was stupid, but it is just a funny story. I think xenophobic and patronizing is a bit strong.

It is a timeless kind of story - helpless man stuck in beaurocracy. I don't think anyone makes any kind of real judgement on a nation based on this kind of thing, because we know it happens everywhere.

I think I can honestly say, though I may be wrong, that if this were told with the same tone but the situation reversed (English person in the U.S.) I would still find it to be just as funny and not get upset.

I would be dissapointed if any person moved to live in another culture and couldn't write a funny letter or two home about the differences. No harm, just humour. I am sure he is just as impressed with other things, and has found much to love about England.

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

well...I've never had a phone line fault

Meaning what? They don't exist? You have clearly never taken Stats 101.

Re:Poor article

[daern]

BT terrible? It's an outrage!!

Just try NTL, then you'd know what terrible service really feels like...

Re:Poor article

[Darren Winsper]

In capitalist America, faults are features!

Re:Poor article

[Threni]

The worst crime is the poor attempt at humour. You need to be more subtle, unless you're very, very funny, otherwise it looks like you're really proud of your own jokes, and frankly, there's nothing very much there to be very proud of.

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

And you Brits, better remember that you're guests here on Slashdot, on the internet, and probably whenever you're using "mobile" phones, too. That shit was invented here, and you guys are lucky we're letting you use it. That goes for all of you other whiny europeans, too. Your welcome.

Re:Poor article

[Teun]

The article is xenophobic and patronising to the British.

Bull, you are way too touchy

It's you that makes the connection of British = bad service.
The OP says British Telecom = bad service.

Yes he compares with the US, that's only logic as it is his natural benchmark

In The Netherlands we've seen similar problems when switching ISP's.
But the OPTA, the independent regulator, has been able to set some strict quality criteria and the phone company that owns the lines has lately become a lot more respondent.

Of course it did take some moaning by consumer groups to make it happen.

Was there any point in this article other than to create tension on Slashdot?

Ignoring your ID I'm tempted to ask how new you are around here :-)

Re:Poor article

[Placido]

Oh yeah. I still remember that warm feeling of pain when I used to subscribe to NTL broadband. Eventually you learn to just relax.... lubricants help as well. http://www.thehumorarchives.com/humor/0000872.html

Re:Poor article

[simonwalton]

I agree. I can't really take the comments of someone who lives in England and clearly doesn't understand the difference between "Britain" and "England" seriously though. :)

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

BT are porbably better at testing the lines than their US counterparts and hence why more line faults are found.

Re:Poor article

[Darren Winsper]

Asking an American to be subtle is akin to trying to fit an elephant through the eye of a needle. /me sits back and watches his karma burn.

Re:Poor article

[otter42]

Yeah, poor us yanks. We only get 3500min/mo for $30.

While it's really cool that the 3G networks can do so much, it doesn't make me feel any better about paying $70/mo in France for 2 hours of talk time. Because, you know, a cell phone is, like, for talkin' and stuff. I could easily do without that extra network capability that no one ever uses in exchange for 50% off my bill.

Re:Poor article

[Unique2]

Your trolling I know, but you really should investigate a little deeper, you'd find your world isn't so US centric as you think, for example Tim Berners-Lee was born and educated in Britain.

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true that the British are past masters at subtlety. Your own post is a shining example thereof. Thank you for showing us how it's done! The clear, incisive wit, the delicate interplay of carefully-chosen words and analogies; why, it's simply brilliant!

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

All he did was pussify the 'net by adding pretty pictures thereby enabling all you morons to get on.

Re:Poor article

[David Horn]

Also British, and had broadband installed when I switched telephone lines. I had to cancel the existing contract and renew it on the new line, but my ISP (Pipex) kindly swallowed all the fees.

At my home they're renting out a number of holiday cottages as full term lets now so there aren't enough phone lines serving the place. Next week, rather than install a splitter and cause us to lose our ADSL, BT are going to replace six miles of cable to our house, as we live out in the sticks.

Please note that this cable is of sufficiently high quality to sustain a 2Mbit ADSL connection over a loop distance of 12 miles.

And a final comment to the author - you NEVER get anything out of a company by bitching on at their telephone staff. You think they've never heard it before, cause they have. If you're polite and hit it off they'll try to move heaven and earth for you... or at least that's been my experience.

Re:Poor article

[BinaryCodedDecimal]

well...I've never had a phone line fault...

Neither have I. That must mean that phone line faults are impossible.

I have lived in 8 different houses, all with BT lines and have never experienced a single fault on any of them.

Yep, phone line faults must be a figment of someone's imagination. They don't happen to me, therefore they cannot happen at all.

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

Son of a telephone engineer here:

That's just simply not the case. In the US, a line fault will be found, but they won't tell you "we can't connect you"

What will happen is, they will hook it all up, and then send a tech. If it works, fine, if not, the tech fixes it. If you talk to somoene on the phone, they may say "your line may not work, we're detecting a fault" but not "we can't even turn your account on until we fix this fault"

Re:Poor article

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

perhaps i should have been more specific, rather than offhand and silly.

i've never had a "fault" with my phone line.
I've never know anyone who has had a fault with a phone line.
i've never heard faults with phone lines discussed as if they were a matter of course.

When my phone company has fucked things up in the past it usually involved them screwing me out of money, rather than the fairly simple task of doing their fucking job and running the telephones well.

btw, nice job on the condescension, but I was merely trying to point out that to one who has never experienced a given situation, said situation is sure to be a novel experience.
do feel free to continue mindlessly blathering sarcastic insults regarding my maturity and intelligence, however.

Re:Poor article

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

"You have clearly never taken Stats 101" indeed I havent. could you possibly explain what the hell you're talking about in single syllable words and as simple sentence structure as you can manage? "Meaning what? They don't exist?" meaning that I've never had a phone line fault. meaning that if I was in the middle of an administrative snafu with my broadband, learning that there was a physical problem with my phone line would piss me the fuck off. Meaning that the author of the parent comment was WAAAYYY out of line calling the author of a xenophobe for being surprised at having a messed up phone line at the same time as his trials with the broadband. maybe if you'd taken the time to read the parent and the rest of my comment this would have sunken in, but then again, maybe you just wanted a cheap zing bashing on someone as an anonymous coward, you anonymous coward.

Re:Poor article

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

*snort* cellphone culture in North America is pitiful at best.

people here seem content if they're able to download the latest Crap-Ass top 40 ring-tone mp3 and take grainy pictures of themselves to pester everyone else with.

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

What low-level xenophobia? He's pointing out the truth. I'm from the UK and I don't think this truth hurts (well I hope it hurts BT).

It's worse when you live with your parents and your father won't let you get broadband. Although what is quite funny is that my dad saw an ad for a _BT_ anti-rogue dialler service. I told him it wouldn't matter if we got DSL.

Re:Poor article

[akadruid]

It's just another guy who has made the mistake of being unlucky with a big service provider. ADSL changeover is always pretty painful but its no exception.

You try doing anything with your local council, water, electricity or gas suppliers (in any country) beyond passively transferring money to them and receiving their service.

As soon as anything goes wrong, book yourself in for weeks of service downtime, telephone calls and hassle.

I know someone who works for a TRANSCO contractor that actually blew up someones house on a routine call. No exaggeration. If there had been anyone inside, people would have gone down for manslaughter.

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

NTL: Don't Press the Red Button!!

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

The author was not picking on the British people, rather he was just having a little fun with wordplay.

In America there are "problems with" the line, never "faults on" the line.

Re:Poor article

[radish]

Well I'm British, and unlike the fairly smooth sailing I experienced in the UK, when I moved to New York it took me over 2 weeks and 3 or 4 aborted attempts to get a working phone line in my apartment. Note that this was an apartment in a luxury high rise building, and the previous tenant had no phone problems at all. Go figure - I still don't understand the problem to this day. Verizon. however, will never again have me as a customer.

Big utility companies screw up. It happens everywhere. As for the broadband systems being "uselessly fucked up" - I really didn't notice much difference.

Re:Poor article

[0WaitState]

Just wait until the poor guy discovers the wonders of British plumbing...

Re:Poor article

[Darren Winsper]

I thought so.

Re:Poor article

[glesga_kiss]

All the net is is basically a military implementation of packet switching, INVENTED BY BRITISH TELECOM, the subject of this article. Methinks he misses the point of international community. Are we going to ask for refridgeration, the steam engine and the wheel back just because we get all snotty now and then?

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Newton.

For the record, very little has been invented in the USA, unless it has a direct military application. That's a fact that CANNOT be disputed.

Re:Poor article

[glesga_kiss]

The article is xenophobic and patronising to the British.

Bull, you are way too touchy

It's all in the wording. If I were to desribe your country using derogatory words, you'd fell the same way. It's surprising how many people don't realise that the content of an article is often less important that the tone. This is especially true in propaganda, have you been watching internatial news lately? Language is specifically choosen to get a point across. Replace "assasination" with "targeted killing" and you are good to go...

Re:Poor article

[bombadillo]

Agreed. I had no problems getting DSL in the UK almost 4 years ago. As I seem to remember we had all sorts of problems with DSL a few years ago in the US. The telco's over in the US have pretty much sorted everything out by now. This guy needs to get over himself. When I first started living in England I had problems finding a jar of peanut butter and figuring out public transit. Both topics would have made a far more interesting article than this guys.

Re:Poor article

[pklong]

That would be the Red ON button I'm assuming?

Re:Poor article

[rjhall]

yes... but you have to remember that outside the US nobody pays (even in minutes) for incoming calls.
and to get on a proper network with decent coverage (and intl support) that 3500 minutes will cost you $150-$200. (from Cingular's website).

For 75gbp you'll get 1000 minutes on vodafone (with free incoming) - so it's not so far out.

Oh - and that black anodized moto RAZR phone you've been lusting over? $50 when you go with Vodafone (cf. about $500 with cingular - if you can even find it)!

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you trying to prove his point or something? All this subtlety has me confused. Can't we just be sarcastic instead?

Re:Poor article

[Distinguished Hero]

If I were to desribe your country using derogatory words, you'd fell the same way.

Whenever someone on Slashdot bitches about America, the vast majority of the Americans are more than willing to join in. So, perhaps your statement is correct only as long as the country in question isn't the USA.

Re:Poor article

[Geoff NoNick]

It bears pointing out that the only reason that mobile networks are so relatively less evolved in North America is because of the vast area of coverage required and the high level of landline service quality over there.

When I lived in Canada I could get a landline in my home (with unlimited free local calling) for less than 10 pounds a month. I could call long-distance from Halifax to Vancouver for less than I'd pay to call locally with a landline here in Exeter. And the call quality is certainly better with a landline.

The fact is that mobile phones are seen as an unnecessary luxury in NA, and nobody gives much thought to the extra gadgets.

Re:Poor article

[glesga_kiss]

Whenever someone on Slashdot bitches about America, the vast majority of the Americans are more than willing to join in. So, perhaps your statement is correct only as long as the country in question isn't the USA.

Hey, check my posting history, I slag the UK quite a lot as well. I'd completely disagree with what you are saying about "majority", that is just not the case. Even if you suggest in a very slight way that the US is not #1 for whatever metric, you'll get your balls toasted instantly. Much like your response to mine, Americans usual seem to take things personally. Just because someone criticises your country on one small respect, it doesn't mean they want to fly a jet into a building. It's all down to that wankers "with us or against us crap" that was deliberately used to polarise any issue that got in the way of their goals.

Re:Poor article

[op00to]

Free? It's only free to you. Your poor friend who's calling your 'mobile' (god, when limeys say MOW-BYE-EL, it makes me want to smack them in their filthy, crooked teeth) has to pay 3x the normal cost of a phone call, just because he's calling a 'mobile'. Yeah, real free.

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah, the article was about DSL, which was invented at Bell Labs , as you can learn from Jimmy Wales who's from Alabama. I understand that Euros would have trouble with this technology from the 80s. Rather than inventing cool stuff they're better at killing each other, and then maybe eating one another. Well, at least I just got to celebrate V-E day. That stands for Victory in Europe, but it could mean Victory over Europe just as well. Losers. Here's looking forward to V-J Day.

Re:Poor article

[gibson_81]

well, here in Sweden the cell phone operators have figured out that it's a good idea to let people talk for free within their own net - so, if all your friends have the same operator, you all call each other for free. I guess it's more expensive to call from a landline, but who has them now except companies?

Re:Poor article

[mcpheat]

I can't really take the comments of someone who lives in England and clearly doesn't understand the difference between "Britain" and "England" seriously though.

Why? most of the English have problems with this point too. It's only recently the English football hooligans stopped waving the Union Jack.

Re:Poor article

[otter42]

yes... but you have to remember that outside the US nobody pays (even in minutes) for incoming calls.
and to get on a proper network with decent coverage (and intl support) that 3500 minutes will cost you $150-$200. (from Cingular's website).

I won't argue that number, because I'm too lazy to check it out, but my mom is with Cingular, and she has 3500min/mo for $30 or so. I should know, I'm the one who signed her up a year ago January.

So I don't know exactly what you're talking about, but it sounds like premium services, and those are always super-duper expensive. My two hours are just that. Two hours. Nothing more. No special services, no cool intl support, no data, just talk time.

And, yeah, the incoming is only free for YOU. Pity the foo' who calls you (25c-45c/min).

I mean, in the long run, there was no way to know which system of billing for cell calls was better, but clearly America has the better system. I pay more in Europe for an SMS than I do for a minute in America. Puh-lease.

Re:Poor article

[DrSank]

What the heck is a phone line fault? No, we don't get them.

Welcome to the UK...

[carbon116]

...nothing's easy over here.

Re:Welcome to the UK...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right - I find doing nothing EXTREMELY easy.

Re:Welcome to the UK...

[leathered]

..except the women.

Re:Welcome to the UK...

[AngryScot]

well some things are, like getting thrown in jail for smacking your child or being labeled a pedophile because you have photos of your own childen

Seconded

[gowen]

I'm trying to get broadband to my house, which is in a pleasant little Staffordshire village, but can't because BT can't be bothered to upgrade the exchange to have sufficient capacity. So my friend down the road has broadband (albeit only 512k) and all I've got is a BT dialup li@$@%"£"%((%NO CARRIER

Re:Seconded

[Kinky Bass Junk]

So? Most of the Blue Mts. in Australia can't get broadband at all - it's only the selected few at the bottom of the mountains that get it, even then the max speed we'd ever get is 1Mb/s.

That's until Telstra actually installs the new ADSL2 exchanges (or whatever they have to do - i can't remember).

Re:Seconded

[Anonymous Coward]

But you must accept that being in rural Staffordshire places you on the long tail of people wanting DSL. At least BT have now committed to upgrading all exchanges (making DSL available to everyone) within 2 years. This is one advantage of the "monopoly" - the USA can never have any similar committment for those on the long tail.

Anyway, how far "down the road" is your friend? Can't you use Pringle cans? :)

(A friend in rural Shropshire who, believe it or not, *does* get DSL.)

Re:Seconded

[hattig]

I wonder if Broadband is available to over 90% of Americans, like it is in the UK ...

And for me, NTL was a case of Ring and Order Broadband, Get It Installed. Yeah, customer service sucks a lot, but installation was a breeze. Maybe the guy who wrote this article should have researched whether he could get cable or not.

Alternatives...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least thanks to some of the deregulation and anti-monopoly stuff, we have alternatives to BT, like NTL... oh wait... they're just as bad.

Re:Alternatives...

[I confirm I'm not a]

At least thanks to some of the deregulation and anti-monopoly stuff, we have alternatives to BT, like NTL... oh wait... they're just as bad.

...and as bad as NTL (and Telewest) may be [1], they're still only available in selected areas. There's no cable down my street, nor the street I lived in before (though going back 5 years, I did have cable). And this is inner-city Glasgow, lest I be accused of living in Little-Rural-by-the-Mold. Or Stonybridge ;-)

Wandering OT slightly, a friend used to work for one of the cable cos, and he said that both companies had stopped laying new conenctions, in order to concentrate on converting existing analogue lines to digital. Anyone know if that was/is still the case?

[1] BT really, really is the pits - I escaped once to CableTel (now NTL), but was forced back to BT by a house-move that brought me to a cable-free street. On NTL's worst days, they weren't half as bad as BT on a good day.

Re:Alternatives...

[Mr Smidge]

Speaking of alternatives, here's a few positive words about my ISP, Blueyonder (which I think is Telewest in disguise).

We've had our cable modem for almost 4 years now, and in that entire time, we have only ever lost the connection twice. Twice, in four years. Once was from network problems about 2 years ago, and the most recent was last month when heavy rain caused the street amplifier to blow a fuse.

Each time, the phone line support was excellent, was charged at the local rate, and the technician came out exactly when they said. There wasn't too much of a waiting list either - I'm just a home user, and we got appointments for the next day.

I think that we're also a bit lucky in that there is only one other person in our road connected, but it really has been good service.

I thought I was chancing it when choosing cable a few years ago, but it's turned out alright.

But I do agree about BT being shite - we're not going anywhere near ADSL unless we have to.

Not news

[cortana]

Saying that British Telecom is pants isn't really news. Moaning about them has been part of life in Britain for the last twenty five years, and frankly if this even changed many of us would no longer know what to do all day.

"Damn and blast British Telecom" exclaimed Dirk, the words coming easily from force of habit.

Re:Not news

[Herbster]

yeah.

El Reg has enough, um, 'commentary' on BT to keep everyone amused.

Re:Not news

[Malc]

So you must young whipper-snapper then: just had your 25th birthday?

Re:Not news

[SimonJW]

My thoughts exactly. You're not truly, TRULY British unless you've had a four-page rant on a website about a utilities company. Someone should tell this guy that he's turning into a Brit... Welcome, brother!

Let's review...

[MaestroSartori]

"...let's review the procedure for obtaining broadband in the U.S. Step #1: Call up your cable or DSL provider, walk through the options, and decide what you want. Step #2: Receive and install the modem, or have an installer do it for you. Step #3: There is no Step #3!"

So, let's review the procedure for obtaining broadband in the UK:

Step #1: Call up BT, to make sure you have a line capable of receiving broadband. (Apparently everyone in the US can receive a broadband connection. That's what this guy says, anyway!)

Step #2: l up your cable or DSL provider, walk through the options, and decide what you want.

Step #3: Receive and install the modem, or have an installer do it for you.

Step #4: There is no Step 4! Unless there's a problem, in which case the useless bureaucracy of BT kicks in!

Seriously though, this guy's problem with "The Horror of BT" is just him making a lot of noise about nothing. There's plenty of room for more legitimate gripes about how BT run things - for instance, if you have a fault with a line, their engineers will only come out between 9am-5pm Mon-Fri. Absolutely useless for 99% of the working population! :/

Re:Let's review...

[Anonymous Coward]

And step #1 isn't needed on yours as most ISPs can check the phoneline for you.

Re:Let's review...

[PowerBert]

Actually I had a fault with my BT line a litle over a month ago. I called BT on Friday evening (from my mobile) and a BT engineer was at my house on Saturday afternoon. BT kept me informed throughout the process. At around 4:30 Saturday afternoon I asked the engineer what time he clocked off and he replied "When the lines fixed, I can't leave a customer without service."

BT's not all bad.

Re:Let's review...

[HaydnH]

...for instance, if you have a fault with a line, their engineers will only come out between 9am-5pm Mon-Fri. Absolutely useless for 99% of the working population! :/

True, but a lot of the time BT don't actually require your presence to resolve a technical fault, we recently had a fault and BT happily came out and fixed it the next working day while we were at work, apparently a squirrel had chewed through our telephone cable - remind me to put nuts out for them in future!

Haydn

p.s: If you're looking for a great ISP, Zen are very good although they are a little pricey - but their services aren't capped which is nice!

Re:Let's review...

[NetNifty]

Well for me it was (I'm in the UK):

Step 1: Go to providers web site, order broadband and modem.
Step 2: Recieve and install modem


But that's because everything went well for me (exchange was only recently activated for broadband, and phone line was only installed 15 years ago). I think the problem he's pointing out is when it goes wrong, it usually goes horribly horribly wrong.

I haven't really had massive problems with BT myself - but at the end of last year I had a problem with my broadband connection dying in the evening so I phoned BT (who provide my phone line). They ran line checks at their end and found nothing wrong, even though the connection was down at the time, so told me to contact Eclipse (who provide my broadband).

So I contacted Eclipse and they ran line checks, which also returned fine, and they could see no reason for the line being down! They told me they would contact BT and about three days later they sent an engineer round who managed to fix the problem.

Re:Let's review...

[rsidd]

Apparently everyone in the US can receive a broadband connection.

Two years ago, I happened to live in the heart of Manhattan. I got a phone connection with Verizon. Did they supply broadband? Nope. However, Time Warner supplied cable internet, and I went for that.

Some months later, Verizon called and said they now offer DSL. I said no thanks, I'm not interested. But they called again. And again. And again. Meanwhile, I've been told by many people in suburban America that they still can't get anything better than dialup. It's not cost-effective for the phone company to provide it. So, no, not everyone in the US can receive a broadband connection.

for instance, if you have a fault with a line, their engineers will only come out between 9am-5pm Mon-Fri.

Wow, exactly like Time Warner's engineers in New York. And not even at a fixed time. They'll show up at your home sometime between 9 am and 1 pm; they can't give you a more exact time.

By the way, broadband internet was the least of my issues in my first couple of months in the US. I have a mild amount of sympathy with this yank in Britain, but not much, really.

Re:Let's review...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. BT is great when there are no problems. I had a fault with my line a couple of weeks ago - went to there web site to report it, got free SMS messages to my phone to tell me how the work was coming along and then got a call the next day saying the fault had been fixed and they were just checking I was happy. Great!

However - when I got ADSL I didn't use the standard BT frog modem - which caused all sorts of problems with there helpdesk (and I was using linux which also didn't help). I called up the support line of my ADSL modem - gave them the error codes and they said that the line card in the exchange simply needed to be reset. Called back BT and they wouldn't because only an engineer can request that. Found an engineer who said that we couldn't request that without a site visit .... but he then said "answer the helpdesk questions like this and the software will suggest a card reset". I did and within 10 minutes ADSL started working.

Re:Let's review...

[Anonymous Coward]

When I moved to Boston, my first year there I could not get broadband at all.

The second apartment came cable ready but still took over 1 month to get it enabled.

Re:Let's review...

[Toy G]

That's not true either. I used to live in godforsaken Preston (North-West England), and when I experienced a faulty telephone line on a sunday morning it was fixed by 4 PM; they even updated me every two hours via text-messages on my mobile phone. Outstanding service, if you ask me. But alas, I'm from Italy, and Telecom Italia used to be the worst possible Old Telco in western Europe for landline services, so maybe it's just me.

Re:Let's review...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a fault on my BT line last month, on a weekend. I called the automated line, went through 3 or so menus and then BT did a line test while I waited (I was on my mobile).

The system allocated an engineer and forwarded all my calls to my mobile. I got called up by the engineer at the exchange at about 7pm to check that my phone line was working, then he noticed I had broadband so got me to check that
as well.

At 8pm I got another call to check that I was happy with the service and my problem was resolved.

I've had problems with BT in the past, they do have a lot of red tape (they could gift wrap the moon quite easily) but sometimes they do shine!

Now if I would have needed the engineer to visit the house......

Re:Let's review...

[kahei]

their engineers will only come out between 9am-5pm Mon-Fri.

Technically not true. They have early-shift and late-shift engineers, and the former can work pretty early in the morning. But you have to find your way through the incredible, Byzantine, almost unreal tangle of red tape and tradition until you gradually come to understand and use (but not control! You never truly control british bureaucracy) the dispatching system.

I should know about this -- I have had no phone in my new flat for a month. I estimate I will have the UK's overpriced and inflexible Broadband, now with not-letting-you-cancel goodness, in about another six weeks.

Re:Let's review...

[RodgerDodger]

Hah! In Australia, I reported a problem with Hellstra BigPond about my cable modem not being able to get an ethernet address via DHCP between 6pm and 10pm (peak usage hours, naturally). Obvious problem, right? They'd oversubscribed their local gear and needed to put in more hardware to get more connections (and thus more addresses) available.

But before they do anything... they want to send a technican out, between 9am and 2pm, to check out a problem that only occurs in the evening.

I said fuck that, and simply left my computer on during the day (thus not giving up the IP address when I did get it).

Re:Let's review...

[fishbot]

It seems to vary wildly, though. For instance, my parent's BT line has been off for 3 weeks now (only for voice, DSL still works!?!). The problem is related to some recent work carried out under the road. On no less than 5 occassions a BT engineer has arrived, run the SAME SET of tests and 'discovered' the problem (my dad tells them what it is every time, they believe him when the leave). Two of them tried to sign the job off as done, despite only having diagnosed, not fixed, the problem.

After 2 weeks and 3 visits, my dad phoned BT. They told him that they had no record of the problem and that it must be the first time he was reporting it, therefore they could not help him. Two phone calls later, one member of the call centre actually bothered to run a search instead of just reading the first screen that appeared. Found the problem, confirmed that it was not fixed. Did nothing else.

It's still not fixed. They're sending an engineer round to 'try and find the fault' (again). My dad has refused to pay for the past quarter's line rental and has queried Citizen's Advice for possible solutions.

Re:Let's review...

[biglig2]

Be fair though, PowerBert, you are a junior minister in the Department for Productivity,
Energy and Industry.

That joke scanned better when they were called the DTi. Damn you, Blair! Blaaaaaiiiiiiiirrrrr!

Re:Let's review...

[thatjavaguy]

A number of years ago I had to move house in the period between christmas and new year. I expected BT to refuse to put a line.

Not only did the engineer turn up at 8:00am on New Years Eve, he even put in 2 extra wall sockets for us.

Re:Let's review...

[Anonymous Coward]

Step #4: There is no Step 4! Unless there's a problem, in which case the useless bureaucracy of BT kicks in!

But man, oh, man, when that kicks in, it kicks you in the teeth.

I'm had pretty good luck with BT. I mean, our phone has gone out three times since we moved into our flat eight months ago, but they've been quick (by UK standards) to fix it. (Although they keep wiring it up in a way that it will go out again in a few months...)

But the guy who sits next to me - he just needed to get the name on the bill changed (flat mate moved out). After days of talking to people at BT, it was finally determined that there was no way of doing this without disconnecting his service. And it wouldn't be back on for *two months*. We have no idea how this could be the case.

But outside of the bureaucracy, yeah, pretty okay service.

Now Citibank UK, on the other hand.... ::shudder::

Re:Let's review...

[fcw]

Much as I hate to agree with anything that sounds like praise for BT, I too have had BT provide service support in the middle of the night (used to be the way to get the best network support), and have had them come on-site on a Saturday afternoon to fix problems. (Sometimes it's been a contractor, though, rather than BT staff -- one of the guys who came was a laid-off BT engineer who told me he now earns much more on contract to them than he ever did on staff.)

One BT guy even identified a problem with our local wiring before it failed just by looking at it, and replaced the whole lot as part of attending to another problem.

It's just a pity that, as an organization, they're often horrible to deal with; my company's official stance on BT is that they are "hateful bastards", and we do whatever we can to avoid using them for things that are important. However, for things like DSL it's hard to get them out of the loop (sic).

Re:Let's review...

[Linker3000]

So let's review the procedure for BT upgrading my HQ's business service to 2MBit:

#1: Request upgrade
#2: Upgrade confirmed and upgrade date provided
#3: BB phone line goes dead - call BT to find out why
#4: BT cuts off *ALL* phone lines to building
#5: 5 hours later BT restores phone services
#6: 2 days later broadband speed jumps to 2Mbit
#7: 1 day later broadband goes dead - phone BT to find out why - discover BT were supposed to 'cease' 512K service and then instantly 'provide' 2Mbit but THEY DID THIS THE WRONG WAY ROUND - ie: PROVIDED 2Mbit and then CEASED it!!!
#8: Receive extreme apologies from BT but they cannot (won't?) do anything for another 10 days as they have to put another order on the system.
#9: 10 days later 2Mbit broadband up and running.

Now, how about when they upgraded one of my offices to 1Mbit...

#1: Request upgrade
#2: Upgrade confirmed and upgrade date provided
#3: On the appointed day, broadband speed jumps to 1Mbit
#4: All overnight database replication stops - phone BT to find out why - 'fixed' IP address has changed but they never told us this would happen
#5: Change IP addresses on 5 remote servers so they can 'see' the site.
#6: 2 months later, all replication stops again. Check IP address - changed AGAIN - call BT
#7 BT have no record of the account number I quote and give me the 'correct' one. BT state that they also changed our account from having a fixed IP address to a non-fixed one without telling us (or us requesting it). BT put an order through to setup a fixed IP address.
#8 10 days later NEW (fixed) IP address goes live - change all other servers referencing the site again.

Now, how about when BT cock up phone line billing:

#1 Move premises and have BT change all numbers over to new site/address.
#2 About 2 months later, broadband line goes dead.
#3 Check with BT - line has been disconnected for non-payment of bill. Discover that when accounts details were updated to our new site address, the BB line somehow became 'unbundled' from our 'all-in-one' billing arrangement and so the direct debit being taken wasn't covering this line. BT had been sending reminders to OLD address and for some reason they were not being forwarded to us.
#4 Sort out billing with BT - but broadband has been terminated because BT told the supplier (Zen) that the line was now disconnected.
#5 Zen say we will need to re-apply for a BB service as the old contract was expired on BTs authority and so no longer exists. This means we will have to pay a new install charge as BT will charge Zen to re-enable the line again.
#6 Tell BT to sort it out as it was their cock-up. BT say they cannot as they have no authority to order a BB line on someone's behalf (even though they can arrange to have them terminated!!).
#7 Reluctantly agree to order a new BB service in order to not waste any more time.
#8 Zen's line check fails because BT records still show a BB service on the line and you can't have 'two' BB services on the same line!!
#9 Speak to BT..wait...wait...wait...wait
#10 Cancel order with Zen and put through new order against another phone line.
#11 5 days later, broadband service goes live.
#12 About 60 days later BT confirms records updated and original line should now be OK for broadband!!

In a nutshell: when BT cock up they have no mechanism to escalate the issue for a speedy response - they just put you through the regular order process as if you were a new customer rather than a severly pi**ed off current customer spending a fortune with them every month - they really give the impression of not caring jack sh*t about the problems they cause.

Need you wonder why all new ADSL installs since I took over have been done through Zen - I'd move our other 20-off sites to Zen too but I'm just sooo afraid of what BT might do to screw it up!!!

Re:Let's review...

[Dave2 Wickham]

I guess it must vary. We (in Bath) were without ADSL for a few days, IIRC, then they managed to somehow cut voice as well. This lasted for a few weeks, with them claiming that it was a problem on our end. Eventually they realised that it WAS actually their problem, and fixed it.

Re:Let's review...

[mike2R]

There are two types of BT engineer. Those with grey hair (who are fantastic, and could probably get 1Mbit down two tin cans and a piece of string), and the younger ones (who it sounds like you have had the pleasure of dealing with).

There must be good, young, telephone engineers in this country. Does anyone know where they work?

Re:Let's review...

[__aaercy5451]

DSL is a distance-sensitive technology: as the connection's length increases, the signal quality decreases and the connection speed goes down. So for most Americans, especially in rural areas, you have to live within a mile of your TelCo's central office to even get 'premium' 256 kbps service. Then you have to deal with the jerkoff's at the once-private monopoly (a couple of years ago it took two months to provision a T-1 from QWorst,... so no difference from BT then).

QWorst's customer service still sucks, just that now they don't rape you with a US$900/month bill, it's a little bit cheaper.

The premise in #1 above ("everyone in the US can receive a broadband connection") is totally false. The population density in the UK is much higher, making ADSL more viable for BT.

Of course, calling 256 or 512 kbps 'broadband' is laughable anyway, especially from the perspective of South Koreans, who regularly surf the 'net with a 20 Mbps pipe.

I used to work for a cable Internet provider which, a year ago, capped their service at 1.5 Mbps (for US$46/month). Then they doubled the speed (at no extra cost to the customer) to 3.0 Mbps. Technically, of course, they could have not capped it at all, and customers would have seen speeds of 20 Mbps or more.

Re:Let's review...

[fishbot]

(who it sounds like you have had the pleasure of dealing with)

Worse, they were contracted in from Liverpool (I'm in Sheffield) because of a lack of engineers in Sheffield, so they didn't even want to be down here in the first place. Those were the ones who tried to sign the job off without doing anything.

Re:Let's review...

[DigitalWar]

Not here. I fail to see how the first engineer that came out managed to miss the frayed decaying section of phone line that the second engineer pointed out (and yes, the second one was gray haired).

Re:Let's review...

[BJH]

NEVER let any telco know you're using Linux until you have one of their engineers trapped on your premises.

NTT (in Japan) is just such a telco, and while they used to semi-support Linux for their broadband service a few years ago, since everybody and their dog started getting ADSL, they've dumped any mention of it from their support literature, and raising the fact of your use of Linux when you have issues with your line will get an immediate response of "it must be your PC that's the problem - try using Windows".

Re:Let's review...

[MaestroSartori]

From the sounds of things, the BT fault line lied when they dealt with me about 12 months ago. Unless its a change in policy, of course! My line died completely one afternoon, called the fault number, they said they could only come out and fix it mon-fri 9-5. I was commuting to work, so was out of the house from 7-7 :/

Re:Let's review...

[HermanAB]

"9am-5pm Mon-Fri"

Well, since only 1% of Brits actually are working, those hours work perfectly for the 99% of the population that are on the dole...

Re:Let's review...

[snookerdoodle]

Speaking as a Native Texan who has never set foot in England (i.e.: it wasn't me in Harrod's), I agree with you. Frankly, he lost me when he confessed to the "...bit of good-natured joshing from British colleagues who politely inquired if our flat came with running water."

We just had articles a couple of months ago about towns in northern Louisiana who still had no POTS.

No, I'm not comparing where he lived to a small remote village in northern Louisiana, but you do expect to have less in less developed areas. I'm currently staying with a friend inside the Albuquerque city limits and DSL is unavailable (although Comcast will gladly give us a cable modem).

So, he moves to a less developed area (basing this on the "joshing" he got) and, essentially, complains that it is less developed. No pity from me here...

Mark

Re:Let's review...

[greggman]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha....2MBit for your business ha ha ha. You call that "upgrading"? And how much does that 2MBit cost you? Here in Japan, 100MBit is $40 U.S. a month. 24MBit is $20 a month.

(sorry, I'm not ragging on you, I'm ragging on BT. 2MBit is a joke)

Re:Let's review...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

There's nowhere in the South of England that can reasonably be described as "less developed." The "running water" crack was a reflection of the stereotypical Londoner's attitude toward anything south of the Thames.

Re:Let's review...

[mcpheat]

Step #1 isn't needed, the DSL provider will do it.

Learn some f***ing geography

[HogynCymraeg]

British Telecom is a UK company. UK != England
England is a subset of UK
UK = Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland
Each country has it's own race. Calling the UK "England" is both offensive and ignorant.

Please learn some geography and manners.
Thank you.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Herbster]

Cymru am Byth!

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

Couldn't agree more , if you call a Scotsman english its rather not in the intrest of your health ;) heh.
Actualy calling alot of Us Scotts brittish is pretty offensive for some of us , we are rather proud of being scottish

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Those people over there in the United States of Texas are really ignorant...

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually British Telecom is a British company. Britain != UK. Britain is a subset of the UK. Britain = Wales, Scotland, England. NI have their own phone service. Calling Britan "the UK" is both offensive and ignorant. Please learn some geography and manners.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to learn some tolerance.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Unique2]

NI have their own phone service.

Nope, we have to suffer BT's customer dis-service also. The situation is worse as we have fewer alternatives, I can only think of one, NTL, and they are unavailable where I live.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Viol8]

Actualy calling alot of Us Scotts brittish is pretty offensive for some of us , we are rather proud of being scottish

You might want to learn how to spelt "scots" and "brittish" before you pretend to be something you're not. And if you really are an example of scottish education it explains a lot.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[nmg196]

The article was written by an American. The whole world knows what the geography of the average American is like. If they're not bombing it, they probably have no idea where it is. Apparently most of them don't even have a passport. How arrogant is it to think that it's not worth leaving your own country?

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

"'Cuz if it's not Scottish, it's CRAP!"

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

I have a learning disability which has impared my spelling .I apoligise if i offended you or something , but lay off your hounds .
I would suggest you learn a little tollerance

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

and even when they are bombing it they often don't have any idea where it is!

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[HogynCymraeg]

Ah! Fwy o cymro ar /.! :)

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the original poster is trying to prove that we in the so-called United Kingdom are not all English, by choosing to use poor grammar. Of course NI does not "have their own phone service", any more than it *has its own phone service*. Eejit.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Llthygh, bldddthly bedgagpf!

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I agree my former countrymen are arrogant, and insular, you can't really criticize them for the whole passport thing. I mean it's not like Europe where you can go to another country any time you like. The US is a very big place which isn't really very near to anything.

There's really only Canada and Mexico over there and so long as you've got valid proof of ID you don't need a passport to travel to either.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

what the hell are you talking about?

BTW - outside of the USA, the original poster was using correct grammar, as NI (Northern Ireland) is a country with people in it, and as such is considered to be plural.
Afterall, it's the people that have the phone service, the lump of rock doesn't give a shit.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

And while you're at it....the same applies for the Netherlands.
No, it's NOT "Holland" or whatever you English people/Brits call it.

FYI: The Netherlands consists of 12 provinces, only 2 of which have "Holland" in them.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

give you a little background into scottish national pride , dont equate it to other nationalist movments , it is rather for globalism and pro EU .
this has just been about being recognised

many people naturaly equate national pride to hatred of other nations or Belife in superiorty .
This is in no way true for the SNP and like movements in Scotland such as the SSP
Being a Scottish nationalist is not about your hatred of the rest its about your love for your land and the people who live there .This includes any people who live there of whatever religion , Creed or nationality.

To be recognised as our own country through the will of the people so we can fully join the EU and progress and be allowed to make decision which benifit us and the world and have our voices heard.

Its about independance and Freedom .
http:///http://www.snp.org/> something of which i am sure many americans can relate to through their history , Remember America was in the same situation at one point.

the SNPs position on idependance is this

The primary aim of the SNP is to take Scotland forward to Independence. Independence means the Scottish Parliament having full control over Scottish affairs, and the right to decide when to share power with others. Devolution is not enough for Scotland. Independence would give us the same rights and the same responsibilities as other nations. It would give us a voice on the world stage and a say in international bodies like the UN and EU. And Independence would bring greater freedom for individuals, families and communities, within a society built on common interests.

Commen intrests not commen heritage . an important differance .

I like Dave Thompsons view on the subject

"We are a small and diverse nation but our diversity is our strength. My Independent Scotland will be a shining beacon in a darkened world, a force for good and a caring community, where all are valued."

This is a commen sentiment ,to quote a piece from the manifesto of views of the snp

Our values
These are the values which have shaped and influenced the development of SNP
policies, and which would guide us in government.
1. No one country and no one human being is worth more or less than any
other.
We believe in the right of sovereign peoples to self-determination. We believe that
Scotland should be an independent country, equal with other countries in Europe
and the world.
We are committed to co-operation amongst nations in pursuit of peaceful co-
existence and the creation of a stable international community. We believe nations
must be free to decide how they co-operate to create economic prosperity, deliver
social justice and protect the environment.
We affirm our commitment to the Charter of the United Nations, and its demand
that all nations protect and assert the human rights of the individual.
The SNP is committed to the principle of equality of opportunity. That means the
prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, age, sexuality, faith,
belief, ability, status or social background in the exercise of constitutional rights.
The SNP's commitment to equality of opportunity demands an end to poverty and
in particular to child poverty, which blights the life-chances of so many young
people of Scotland.

Its about equality mate not hatred.

What this has to with BT and the topic is simply this , Because of the conservitive majority(now new labour otherwise known as old conservative our views were erroded and simply we had to sit there and take it , so many of these state monoplys have been turned from a monopoly we can influence to something we have little choise over but is still a monopoly. We are forced to pay out the nose as more and mor

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Viol8]

I should learn tolerance? Says the man who says being called british is offensive? Sorry , I just get sick you lot north of the border whinging. I bet you're not offended to be british when the government hands you those fat subsidies paid for by the english & welsh taxpayers.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling the UK "England" is both offensive and ignorant.

Waaaaaaaaa!
He made a mistake; lighten up, jerk.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[stienman]

Those people over there in the United States of Texas are really ignorant...

What, you want us to go back to being The United States of Arkansas?

-Adam

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

If Scotland became independent of the UK, would you then move to reunify with Ireland as a gaelic nation? (yes, REunify: Scotland was once "Scotia Minor" and Ireland "Scotia Major", check dark ages history!)

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is it racist to not want to be identified as a member of one the nations most associated with bringing colonial misery to the world?

As a non-British anglophone, it's a constant embarassment to me to travel the world and be assumed to be English because of the language my ancestors were forced to use by the English colonisers. I'm not fond of what the English did to my people and don't appreciate them for it. This doesn't make me racist and if an Englishman is offended by my opinion he needs to learn what was done in his name to understand the non-English world's view of him.

Isn't that the same critisim the English anti-Iraq War movement made of Americans?

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[moonbender]

I'd wager that many residents in the EU don't have a passport either, considering that you can travel freely between many of the continental countries. I didn't have one until earlier this year, and I'm not sure why the cruise I'm going on necessitated one - all the ports are either Italian or Greek. Maybe Schengen doesn't cover Greece, hmm.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

The only reuninting we would hope for , was to join Eire as a free nation within the EU and the UN .
A large part of my family is from Eire ,on my grandfathers side(he was born there). I have a good background knowlidge in the historys of the celtic ,pictish and Scotts from school.It would be nice to think we could have good trade relations , like with all other nations .
Though i wouldnt see a uninting of these nations other than within the EU as being benifical . The EU is the way forward for now , and hopefully soon we will joing with the other nations of the world and realise there is no point in war . Yes i am a bit of a dreamer but i belive it will happen eventualy.
Good to see not all anon cowards use it for trolling though.
I have moved the discusion to my journal as this is really going to get offtopic.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[tyresyas]

Not to tamper with national pride, but last I checked Scotland may not be England or Wales, but it certainly is on the Isle of Great Britain, so one might wonder why calling you British is an insult, and if it is please enlighten me. (If this is the case with Welsh persons, feel free to respond.)

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Psychotext]

Welsh response - British is fine, English is NOT! I'll always say Welsh rather than British if asked my nationality though.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

that was a joke , its not really an insult we just dislike it(some of us) .
Wales also has a strong sense of national pride (not that i am welsh but i have freinds from wales who are in clyde cumri) If you ask them where they are from they will say Wales and i know the sentiment is also strong in wales.
Eire is also part of the brittish isle but you wouldnt call them Brittish .

Its about our national identiy really. when i say brittish you may instantly think of the English culture which is in many ways difrent . this is what we want to move away from that identifier by identifying ourselves as Scottish

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

If the UK is a set of countries, then England is an element of that set. As, alas, is Wales.

Please learn some mathematical terminlogy.
Thank you.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[nickco3]

Fi, hefyd!

(Moderation guidance: this is a very funny joke in Welsh :-)

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[zootm]

Actualy calling alot of Us Scotts brittish is pretty offensive for some of us , we are rather proud of being scottish

To be fair, we are British, regardless of what we think of it. It's not really offensive at all.

(And yes I'm Scottish. Doesn't mean I'm not British and European as well.)

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

um... well, you've been given a wildly inacurate appelation in a different language, welcome to the club. other members include virtually every other country in the world. Isnt is silly that we call Germany Germany instead of Deutschland?

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[zootm]

Now if only the SNP had some sensible policies, we'd be in business!

My personal view is that the union is mutually beneficial, and that devolved power to Holyrood in a number of areas is all that we really need. Although admittedly the current areas of devolved power are not necessarily the ones which would most benefit us.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[mattyrobinson69]

im english and i hate being called british - im english. How come its politically correct for somebody to be scottish but not so for english?

ARGH!!

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL Each country has its own race?

Losers! Here, we have a whole selection of races all living in one country. My own town is a regular UN in the small.

BTW, the author of the article was renting a flat south of London. I do believe that qualifies as England.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[mattyrobinson69]

come to think of it, i actually hate being classes as the same as a poncey girly southerner

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

each country has its own race.

Learn some grammar

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

I guess i am a bit of an idealist , many of the SNPs policys i like though they are very Idealistic which kind of works for me as they are rather infitting with my idium.

MY view on the union is why does it need to end after independance , we could still have strong trade and cooperation on many things , also independance would give us a stronger voice in the EU.We would still be commenwealth and have alot of the benefits and we could cooperate on crime and have a very open border.

Personaly after independance i would most likely vote SSP , or a new scottish labour(hopefully it would be labour unlike new labour) and there is also the lib dems .
right now i see the snp as a means to an end .
The devolved power was always just a token to keep the snp hopefully quiet and the independance movment down.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

Unfortunatly the English national pride thing got hijacked by those bast*rds in the BNP and such like .
I am fine with English-men and women being proud to hhave their national identity as English, its quite a shame the racists hijacked much of the sentiment .
Many of my freinds from down south , or up in the north of England(well since im in germany its all kind of north west to me now but nevermind)
call themselves English , it does really get to them that it got hijacked aswell .

You lot down south need to start to reclaim it from the likes of the BNP

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

i more ment that one as a bit of a joke .. it kind of got lost though.
infact the whole post was ment not to be taken to heart .
Just alot of folks have such strong feelings on the subject , They see scotish independance sentiment as if we hate the english or something and get pissed off .
Its not about that atall as i am sure you understand even if your not for the SNP independance movment.

So just to clarify , people should not of taken that remark to heart , it was ment as a freindly joke

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[mattyrobinson69]

although i dont agree with the BNP's policies, it would be nice for them to get an occasional seat. it would make the other party's get the act together and take a stand on some issues to stop people voting BNP next time.

I voted ukip, they didn't get a single seat afaik. also, what happened to the national front? ive not heard of them for years.

*NOTE* i do not support the BNP or the National Front, but i do believe a few seats in parliament would get labour/tory to do something about actual issues.

again, i am not a supporter of the BNP or the NF

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

I understand your sentiment , though i would be loath for those Racist scum to actualy get any seats ,it may actualy help get some policys against their Jingoistic xenophoboia.
The national front are getting stamped on wherever they move , check out the Anti-nazi leauge uk page http://www.anl.org.uk/campaigns.htm they ussualy keep a whatch on the BNP and the likes .
Unfortunatly the ANL have no real sway atall , but they do help us keep tracks on the racists and know what they are up to .
The sooner this crap is stamped out the better.
I am all fro freedoms of belifes and such like , but when it threatens to destroy the freedom of others then i get peeved

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[zootm]

Yeah, I just meet too many people who believe that saying that they're "Scottish not British" is some incredible revelation, and that they're being incredible nationalists by saying so. I'm sure you know the kind of person I mean.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[zootm]

I just don't see independance having any real benefits. We neither need, nor would really recieve, a stronger voice in the EU, and the SNP have been spreading crass lies about a lot of our supposed economic prosperity. There's not a strong enough argument for breaking from the rest of the UK, in my opinion - it's largely based on a misplaced sense of nationalism. Just because we're not an independant country doesn't make us any less of an independant race.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

Some of us do take it a bit far .Infact thats what i really making a joke about .
Personaly i dont see myself as brittish never have . I dont get angry about it though when someone say it . It dosn't even come close to defining my pro SNP sentiment.
My nationalism stems from wanting to have our voices heard more clearly within Europe and the world , I am very much pro-EU and i dont see us moving forward into the EU as much of England i belive is not so much for the single currency and many other issues , and i have a great deal of respect for their views .
I would be loath us forcing something on england , northern irland and wales as much as much as i dislike policy that is against the views we have as a people.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[mattyrobinson69]

i dont mean BNP getting seats would get the BNP policies outlawed, i mean if the BNP got seats it would cause labour/tory to get some policies. here's some policies i think the BNP could have positive *indirect* influence over:

benifits (too leanient, most people on disability are perfectly healthy)

immigration (fine for real assylum seakers but not ones who just want to live off benifits)

europe (blair seems to want the rest of the world to run the country for him)

bush/blairs unhealthy relationship (another case of see above)

once they have served their purpose and scared labour/tory into doing the above, i would like to see then BNP abolished, but they could serve a purpose.

again, *NOTE* i am not racist, i dont support the BNP or the NF but i do think the BNP could scare other 'real' politicians into be proactive about some real issues.

also, sorry for my endless disclaimers - i want to be 100% sure nobody gets the wrong end of the stick

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Flibberdy]

AFAIK Schengen doesn't cover Greece. So your passport should serve a purpose

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Scottish national pride?

a) Sean Connery (the "voice" of the SNP) DOESN'T ACTUALLY LIVE IN SCOTLAND.

b) Scotland is, and has been for many years, depopulating. Where are the Scots going? England.

c) The best Scottish football teams WANT TO JOIN THE ENGLAND AND WALES PREMIER LEAGUE.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

Indeed i have much respect for that view , But as you can probably see im on the other side of the coin .
I do infact belive we could have a strong economy as an EU nation state , a member of the commenwealth , and what i would like to think we could still keep many of the benifits of the Union just less of the disadvantages .

Its all as i see it just a step in the develoution to independant state nations withing the EU and eventualy the UN as a proper gouverning body representing faily all peoples of the world .Yep im pretty much a globalist at heart

As im sure you can recognise the SNP are very much still in heady days of idealism .The reality will hit and i know some of them have clearly defined policys for after independance but others are just still dreamy .

I do strongly belive it could work and that we would benifit , but this will have to wait till later to either prove or disprove .

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Dogtanian]

My personal view is that the union is mutually beneficial, and that devolved power to Holyrood in a number of areas is all that we really need.

Didn't it strike you as ironic that half the General Election campaigning in Scotland was on issues that were the responsibility of Holyrood, not Westminster?

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

As you should - Wales IS a country in its own right, as are Scotland and England. I don't know WHAT NI is and, frankly, the sooner the place sinks into the sea the better for all of us.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Dogtanian]

Fi, hefyd!

(Moderation guidance: this is a very funny joke in Welsh :-)

Araf!... pobol y cwm.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the great empires, the British was the most benign.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[zootm]

I don't really agree, but as you say it's not really something we can say at this point!

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

I differ on a few things to you , i am very much an idealist and a globalist.
So i strongly belive in EU integration ;) i dislike blair for the Bush relation , but i difer on your reasons for Disliking him on europe .I think he is far far too anti europe hee

for me it would work like this

Benefits , too often people who really need help dont recive it and those with real problems get no help , though i agree others get too much.

Imigration , The more the merryer .they should be treated as equal members of our society and not given any special dispensation either postive or negative.

Europe , I am a globalist ;) i live in germany right now and am very much strong european integration and a single european currency.

Bush/blair ... Shudder ..blair should have been impeached for some of the stuff he did

It takes difrent folks to make up a parlimentery system. The oposing view points help to secure the will of the people so long as it dosn't turn partiasan and voting on the company/party line (remove party whips for example would help)

The pro EU sentiment is one of the things i see as a reason for scottish independance , as i know alot of you folks down south(well north west hee of me)
are less pro EU I wouldnt like us forcing our pro-EU sentiment upon you as im sure you feel the same in the reverse.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[zootm]

As a matter of fact, it did. I live in Edinburgh and got an awful lot of the election nonsense -- it makes the mind boggle.

Ah well, if it works, it works -- and preying on the ignorance of your voting demographic works more often than it really should...

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe (Germany has a large scottish population), Canda ,the USA, Australia .Thats where were going .
Perhaps it could be due to the fact we dont want to live under the Rule of the union , one of the reasons Mr Connery stated for not living in Scottland Aside from the issue of for work.
This is why you find alot of scottish national pride from Scotts who live around the world .
Plus historicaly we have been sea fairing folk

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Dogtanian]

c) The best Scottish football teams WANT TO JOIN THE ENGLAND AND WALES PREMIER LEAGUE.

That's because they want more money.

The Old Firm (Celtic and Rangers), coffers bloated by the money of their sectarian bigot fans ("please buy another Rangers strip so we can afford to pay another hugely expensive foreign player") have bought their way to the top of the league. There is nowhere for them to go. Scottish football is totally dominated by them.

Personally, I'd love to see them getting their asses kicked on a regular basis by English teams, and not win every damn thing going.

It probably wouldn't do Scottish football any good; but it's not like it's any good anyway.

Look; I'm not really even into football, and yet I find the declining performance of the Scotland team an embarassment to the name of the country. Why are they so crap?

Simple. The two biggest teams, who in other countries would nurture the best native talent around, buy expensive foreign players in preference to Scots.

Not that Celtic or Rangers deserve to be called Scottish anyway.

Celtic are an 'Irish' team, and Rangers are a 'British' team. And that's just a tie to their religious bigotries.

Don't believe me? Look at the flags their fans carry. I don't hear much talk about 'Scotland'. These aren't Scottish teams. They may as well fuck off to the English or Irish leagues if those are where their loyalties lie.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[mattyrobinson69]

benifits: yes, your right, some people do get too little as well

imigration: it bothers me mainly because of the political correctness. its not proper to call an indian 'indian' or a chineese 'chineese', you have to call them 'asians'. i would take great offence at being labeled a european and the chineese are very different to indians. A lot of assylum seakers come to this country to live off benifits, if they want to come here to live and work as the english people do then fair enough.

europe: the european union is a non-democratic beurocracy. i hate beurocracy. as an example of the bad reasons for the EU is the mess with software patents (non elected officials forcing the bill through the argriculture ministers!). i also believe britain is very different to the rest of europe and what may be good for france and germany may not be good for england (or britain as a whole).

euro: im against the euro as it takes the power to stabalise the economy away from us. if the french and german economies were doing well and the british enconomy wasn't, there would be little to no chance of getting brussels to change the interest rates in our favour.

bush/blair - yep, impeached.

parliement: yes, that would help, as would locking up PC activists such as cherie(?) blair.

i think hadrians wall was actually an attempt to chop scotland off and make it float away.

i would like scotland to get their own parliament, afaik[*] (i may be wrong), the english pay taxes to keep the scottish from having to pay as much.

[*] - i may have read that in the Sun newspaper, so please forgive me if its inaccurate.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Dogtanian]

im english and i hate being called british - im english. How come its politically correct for somebody to be scottish but not so for english?

It's not. Actually, I don't mind the English saying "British" when they mean "British" and not "English".

I much prefer them to say "English" when they mean "English", and I'm glad that the cross of St.George has mostly replaced the Union Flag as a representation of "England" at sporting events.

And if you want to consider yourself English first, that's okay.

That having been said, you used the phrase "politically correct"; that's a pretty common label used by those on the right against anything they don't like. And in your other post, you say " i am not racist". Flag two.

In your other post, you say that "i am not racist, i dont support the BNP or the NF but i do think the BNP could scare other 'real' politicians into be proactive about some real issues."

So you think the BNP could be a useful tool to get the government to adopt some "more BNP-ish" policies? Personally, I think that Labour and the Tories (especially the Tories) attempted to do this already, in trying to swing floating voters at the election.

Fuck floating voters. Those undecided little gets have a disproportinately large effect on election results, and I'm sick of seeing parties pandering to their every little whine and prejudice.

The best thing to do with the BNP is not to allow them to have an effect on the mainstream parties; unless you agree with their policies. You seem to want a watered-down BNP. I don't know you personally, so I can't say if you're a racist; but I certainly wouldn't bet against it.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

Imigration always will be an eggshell issue .

Europe:Having lived in germany for a few years now , in the north east i see many simmilar needs to the needs i see in Scottland though truthfully not the UK as a hole so you may have a point there when you say the rest of the UK may not benifit .Though i belive that within the EU we have more power to influence and turn it away from the beurocratic ways and start to make it mroe democratic

the Euro: well the inflation rate and infact world currencys have always been a total mess , Infact the gold standerd is insanely corupt and speculation is a mena ce .though this is why i want a single world currency i see the euro as a good way towards that , and why shouldnt we give it a try . If in the end your right there is not much stopping us from voting it out or renmaing it the UKEU and spliting it from the rest of the Euro ;) yeah the thing about hadrians wall was , we wernt actualy trying to scare the romans , all we were doing was shouting after them "DE YE WANT SOME HAGIS" , unfortunatly they took this to mean that we had dragons and were going to lob their heads off and so they made hadrians wall

The whole scottish parlimentry thing is a mess right now ,it devolves hardly any of the things that should have been devolved , there is no doubt we have a strong economy inn the end (may be dodgy at first but will grow), The sun is full of tripe so honestly dont hold too much ground in it .

We do get subsidised but then we do provide alot of oil money which gets moved away from the areas it should benifit not to mention the research institutes.so it works both ways .That and blair wouldnt grant us those reforms to start building the wind and tidal generators which could be an emmense revenue source as well as a way to help the enviroment

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[mattyrobinson69]

ok, i'l rephrase: i want labour or tory to take up some very watered down BNP policies. such as being tougher on immigration, fix benifits, etc.

being tougher on immigration and benifits is not a BNP like policy, its just more BNP like than labours current policy of unlimited immigration and massive benifits for those who cant be arsed working, not enough benifits for those who cant get by.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[FidelCatsro]

Im not a football fan either , but dammed if its hard not to have an opinion on the old firm , you know i think it probably may benefit scottish football as a sport to get rid of those two .
Encourage growth in the littler teams and have more intresting competition.
It would become less bussines like and more about the game(my granda is a hugh football fan , i am a geek and thus hate it ;) , though i did play rugby ) Maybe more scottish players would get recognition and it would become less distrubingly hollwoodised as it is now with stupid multi million contracts for a bunch of men playing wie their balls

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[jimmyfergus]

If you separate politics to fiscal and social realms, there's reason to see the BNP as left-wing fiscally, but highly and offensively authoritarian-right socially. See http://www.politicalcompass.org/ UK Election 2005 link on the left. Though it sounds to me that it's not the fiscal policies that appeal to you.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[mattyrobinson69]

i dont know their fiscal policies, their social policies are well publicised.

the BNP dont appeal to me, but them scaring the other parties into doing what the public wants does apeal to me.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny? This should be fucking Informative!

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Dogtanian]

You didn't think the Conservative policy on asylum was bad/stupid enough then?

Let me refresh your memory; they intend having a fixed quota for genuine asylum seekers.

Let's clarify this. If, for whatever reason, the number of genuine asylum seekers hits the quota by September (say there was a mass *genocide* in another country), if you want in to the country after that, it's "Tough luck. Please try again next year." (*)

And try not to get killed if you have to return to your own country.

Howard actually weaseled an attack on Blair out of this. The interviewer made the above (before (*)) point and Howard confirmed that this was indeed the case. He then said that they could wait abroad in another country, and was asked "Where?". He said something about them staying in another country, the interviewer said "But wasn't that what Blair did?", and Howard replied along the lines of "Yes, and he didn't do very well at it either."

So; what he's saying is that his 'idea' was the same as Blair's, which he's also saying wasn't any good?

This is the most damn reprehensible policy ever; placing a limit on *genuine* asylum seekers because they come up against some arbitrarily imposed limit.

And this is *not* the same as not being able to support refugees. If it was necessary, Britain could support a lot more, for a limited term; it might be necessary to take drastic steps, but it would be do-able. (Though if that many people are coming in, we should be considering doing something about the root cause). Only if Britaini was in genuine danger of being unable to support the number of people coming in would this be acceptable. That's "unable to support" as in the African countries who receive *many times* more refugees from neighbouring countries but can barely support themselves. Think Britain's doing the majority of refugee support? No. African countries are doing way more.

This policy is about imposing some stupid, arbitrary limit on people who have a genuine reason to seek asylum; not economic migrants. If Howards thinks he can't tell the difference, he should be setting up a better system.

But he's not. He's playing the BNP vote.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Suck my oil. Oh and don't talk about Wales supporting anyone because that's 100% bullshit and you know it.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[mattyrobinson69]

when did i say howards proposal was a good one?

i want stricter immigration laws, eg you have to be a real, bloody genuine asylum seaker or you have to possess a skill which is in shortage.

i dont think arbitrary limits are a good idea, far from it.

I think the tories are a complete mess and have been for a long time now, its very suprising they gained ~70 seats on labour compared to the last election.

Braindead policies like that will get them nowhere (hopefully).

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[gedhrel]

Perhaps. I'm a scot who's proud of being British, however. Are you familiar with the period of history surrounding the Act of Union?

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually British Telecom is a British company. Britain != UK.

Actually "British" refers to somebody/something of the UK, not merely somebody/something of Great Britain. Granted, people in Northern Ireland probably prefer to call themselves Irish rather than British, but they are actually British as well. Even though Northern Ireland isn't in Great Britain. Direct your attention to "Nationality".

The UK actually includes a little more than Great Britain & Northern Ireland as well, IIRC.

Boodly hell our country is complicated.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

NI (Northern Ireland) is a country with people in it

No it isn't. It's a province of the UK. Ireland (Eire) is a country, Northern Ireland is not.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[WIAKywbfatw]

Actually, I'm British (English, if you want to be even more precise) and I always call your country (I am assuming that you are Dutch) The Netherlands.

But when even the few Dutch people I know say they're from Holland rather than they're from The Netherlands it doesn't exactly help spread the right word, does it?

On a related note, the country of Iraq's name is not pronounced "I-rack" but rather "Ir-rark". And it's neighbour Iran's name is not pronounced "I-ran" but rather "Ir-ran". It amazes me that people can't get small details like that right.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Wales IS a country in its own right, as are Scotland and England. I don't know WHAT NI is

Wales is a principality. Scotland and England are kingdoms. Northern Ireland is a province. None of them are countries, although some used to be hundreds of years ago. They are all regions inside the country known as the UK, and the nationality of UK citizens (including people from Northern Ireland) is British.

If you are Welsh and somebody asks you your nationality, then it is wrong to say Welsh. Your nationality is British. If somebody asks you where you are from, then by all means say Wales. Nationality is a precise term, it doesn't just mean "where you are from".

The same applies to people from Northern Ireland. Even though they don't come from Great Britain, their nationality is British, because that is the nationality of people from the UK. It's a historical artifact, but it's the truth. And yes, I am well aware of the difference between Great Britain and the UK, and no, I'm not confusing them.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[The Woodworker]

Each country has it's own race. Calling the UK "England" is both offensive and ignorant.

You're starting to sound like those cheese-eating surrender monkeys (the French)

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

As a non-British anglophone, it's a constant embarassment to me to travel the world and be assumed to be English because of the language my ancestors were forced to use by the English colonisers.

An embarrassment? I'm British, and I'm not embarrassed about what my nation did at all. It happened well before I was born, and I can't travel back in time to change those events, can I? So what does anybody being identified (rightly or wrongly) as British have to feel embarrassed about?

I'm not fond of what the English did to my people and don't appreciate them for it.

I'm English. Do you hold a grudge against me? It sounds like it. "The English" is a term that includes me.

if an Englishman is offended by my opinion he needs to learn what was done in his name to understand the non-English world's view of him.

Nothing was done in my name. I wasn't even born.

And no, I'm not offended, just confused at a nonsensical opinion.

Isn't that the same critisim the English anti-Iraq War movement made of Americans?

No, because that is the present, and that war is being carried out in both our names. We (supposedly) have control over our governments, and (supposedly) could stop them if we wanted. 1/60th of our population marched to our capital on a single day to protest the war, but it fell on deaf ears.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I rented a movie this weekend called "Ae Fond Kiss."

The movie starts with a girl giving a speech, in what appears to be a debate class/competition, in which she says the following while removing her uniform and revealing a blue and red football jersey: "I'm a Glaswegian Pakistani teenage woman of Muslim descent who supports Glasgow Rangers in a Catholic school."

I think her point was about being a mix and being proud of it, but it led to a bit of an uproar.

Can you explain what the uproar was about? I'm an American (also of Muslim, Pakistani, blah-blah) so I didn't really understand why what she said would be viewed as offensive.

tanks

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be because all of the rioting morons you see on TV every summer are wearing England tops?

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[kfg]

Obviously his mistake was in not calling English Telecom and EnglandOnline, the ignorant colonial.

Please, for my own information, point out where he called the UK England. I can find no reference in the article to the UK at all, only the company UKOnline.

For that matter, despite your protest and that of others, I can find no single instance where he used the terms "Britain" or "England" inappropriately. In fact he seems quite careful about refering to his place of residence as England and BT's service as British, never English.

I may have missed some instance or other, however.

He infers in his opening statement that England is British, which, as it happens, it is. It's not like he's living in Wales and calling it "England."

KFG

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Mike1024]

Calling the UK "England" is both offensive and ignorant.

I'm Welsh, and I'd jsut like to say I disagree with the parent; it's ignorant, sure, but it's not offensive. It's just ignorant.

Michael

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, for my own information, point out where he called the UK England. I can find no reference in the article to the UK at all, only the company UKOnline.

Will this do?

"..as the foundation of English society..."

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you explain what the uproar was about?

She supports Glasgow Rangers. They're shite.

(Just kidding, I didn't hear about any uproar and can't see what the problem is either).

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that is bad, I live in NEW ENGLAND and it's on the other side of the Atlantic and is decidely not English.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[kfg]

Will this do?

"..as the foundation of English society..."

No, because you have completely stripped the supplied quote of its contextual meaning. You aren't a tabloid journalist by any chance?

What is he claiming to be the foundation of English society, and is it, indeed, said foundation, or, at least, arguably a part of said foundation.

If he's talking about the wearing of the Great Kilt he is in error. That was the foundation (forcably wiped out by the English to break Scottish society) of Scottish society and has no counterpart in England. If he's talking about afternoon tea he is not in error, even if the afternoon tea is now also the foundation of Scottish society.

Just as drilling for oil and the rodeo are foundations of Texan society, but not foundations of American society, but the Constitution is the foundation of both American society and Texan society, even though Texas did not even exist at the time of Constitutional ratification by the states.

I have visually rescanned the article, but did not find the quote. I could take steps to grep for it, but since you already know where it is I would be greatful if you could either point me to it more explicitly or provide a meaningful quote.

KFG

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[arwel]

Scotland and England are kingdoms.

No they aren't. The Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were abolished in 1707.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[moonbender]

That's good then. As an added benefit, I still got a non-biometric passports valid for another 10 years.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Nick_dm]

> its not proper to call an indian 'indian' or a chineese 'chineese', you have to call them 'asians'.

The standard policy appears to have Chinese seperate from Asians when giving information on one's ethnicity (eg. when applying for jobs/places at school, so they have information for use on diversity and such, this is certainly the case at the college I'm working at which does things according to government specifications).

This is a little odd in itself, the sub-catagories of Asian are Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Other. Chinese is normally just a choice between Chinese or Other, by which they mean Chinse American, Chinese British, Chinese Welsh, Chinese English, perhaps Cantonese or Hakka etc. but not other East Asian nationalities/races. So perhaps you should call Japanese and Koreans "Asian" but Chinese people are just Chinese :)

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Their parliaments were abolished in 1707.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh. Thanks for the pointer. I looked it up and apparently there are two teams in Glasgow and historically Catholics have supported "Celtic."

I didn't realize that religion would apply to athletic teams in the UK outside of Northern Ireland. The scene makes a lot more sense now.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

He refered to English *society* and called BT British, correctly. Limey twat.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

because of the language my ancestors were forced to use by the English colonisers

Honestly, I couldn't imagine some British colonists threatening to kill your ancestors because they weren't speaking English all the time

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we are Irish or British or both, depending on our choice. See the Good Friday Agreement for more details.

The rule of thumb is that (UK) Unionists call themselves British and (Irish) Nationalists call themselves Irish.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree. NI is a single entity, so its services should be referred to singularly.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you need to read some history.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[raju1kabir]

AFAIK Schengen doesn't cover Greece. So your passport should serve a purpose

Schengen covers Greece.

In a nutshell, it's the pre-expansion countries plus Iceland and Norway, minus the UK.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[kfg]

Ok, found it, in the first friggin' sentence no less. Sheesh!

As it turns out he is talking about afternoon tea, so his usage is not in error. In fact it is so correct that he gives the impression of having a finer understanding of the difference between English, British and UKish than yourself.

KFG

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the kingdoms were abolished and replaced by the Kingdom of Great Britain, which was subsequently replaced in 1801 by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and officially in 1927 (finally recognising what had happened 5 years earlier) by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

PLAID CYMRU!

We're the Bloc Quebecios of the U.K.!

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[Feztaa]

You Earthians crack me up.

Re:Learn some f***ing geography

[zootm]

*rimshot*

Yea, verily...

[Anonymous Coward]

... does BT suck. The only company worse in the UK is NTL.

My exchange was finally upgraded last month. Having dealt with BT at work, there was no way I was going with them at home, so I picked Vispa, who actually answer their phones using people who know an IP from a tea-tray. The extra £10 a month it costs me is well worth it.

TFA Books I-IX

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, for those that haven't RTFA, the entire thing can be summed up with this quote:

But I just moved in, I said. I barely had a telephone line, let alone broadband. My landlord had broadband, but he moved.

"Well, what you need to do is contact your ISP--"

I don't have an ISP, I said.

"Then you need to have your landlord contact his ISP and have him free the line."

And this is in no way exclusive to Britian, I had to do this exact same thing in the US of A, but I didn't write a novel about it. Sheesh.

Re:TFA Books I-IX

[Frequanaut]

Seriously, I have had almost the exact same issues with Verizon in Boston, Mass.

They still don't offer DSL throughout the city.

This happens in the US too

[chandip]

There are many US cities and towns outside the Eastern and Western sea board that do not have broadband or only have a single monopoly provider. Same applies to lots of towns in continental Europe and Australia.
I would guess the percentage of the first world population who can access "real" broad band (1M+) is a small fraction of the overall population.
You should try getting broadband in Crete Nebraska or Wyndham Vale near Melbourne Australia.

Re:This happens in the US too

[Anonymous Coward]

Or fucking anywhere in New Zealand, land of the 2m connection with the 1gb monthly data cap (I kid you not). That's the fastest we can get here, by the way.

The alternatives are basically all either 256kbps uncapped or 512kbps with a cap of 3-10gb depending on price. Many people have only recently made the move from 128kbps to 256.

Why's this? Because, like the fucking UK, we have another private company that has been handed a total monopoly on the local loop and only has to provide DSL services to other providers as a government-mandated favour. They're also forced to offer them to other providers at a discounted price, however they cripple the service with horribly high latency to make sure it doesn't threaten their telephone monopoly with VoIP services.

Bizarrely, Telecom's CEO still wins various awards for her amazing management. How the hell could she manage it badly? There's no bloody competition!

Re:This happens in the US too

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many US cities and towns outside the Eastern and Western sea board that do not have broadband or only have a single monopoly provider.

And most of the rest of us get a couple of chummy, non-competing oligarchs to choose from with a slew of pointless federal taxes and surcharges tacked onto the bill.

NTL *ARE* worse

[rishistar]

Strangely I get this as a forward just before reading the slashdot article...

Below is a copy of a letter that won a competition in UK as complaint letter of the year.

A real-life customer complaint letter sent to NTL (to their complaints dept....)

Dear Cretins,

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions. Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office:

My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website....HOW?

I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept. The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks my modem arrived... six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it.

I estimate your internet server's downtime is roughly 35%... hours between about 6pm -midnight, Mon-Fri, and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers.

I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone
will call me back); that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman...and several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care; it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought BT were shit, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum incompetents of the highest order.

British Telecom - wankers though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy. Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[Herbster]

See also: NTL Hell

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Well from my limited time in Wales so far, I agree whole heartedly with the sentiments condemning NTL and BT.

And unfortunately, I am moving to another location within wales in a few months, and this gives me GREAT joy to look foward to.

However I would like to thank NTL for preventing me from spending money on them, as the system that is used (campus housing) has prevented me from using their landlines, as their rechargable phonecard does not allow one to recharge the phone card itself.(Don't ask why, Apparently the problem is unique to me, and they did not want to replace the card), and indeed obtaining a broadband connection to where I was living. (Even though they had a contract to manage the IT structure specifically at the location I was living....they just did not want to do the work).

But at least I have saved money by not being able to use their services, for which they were contracted to provide.

Its all fun and games until you get to the UK, and you realize how screwed up their business sense is.

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this "bollock juggler?" Are they some kind of circus act?

--American and Confused

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[conteXXt]

bollocks = testicles (balls)

It was a recurring theme throughout the piece

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[sffubs]

YES!

Although I have no complaints with my actual connection to NTL, I have never dealt with a company that is more useless at looking after customers.

It took 4 attempts to get them to connect me (for the first 3, nobody turned up to do the job), and after that they charged me the wrong amount for the line.

(On the plus side, they also managed to get the connection date wrong on my bill by three weeks in my favour!)

BT might be bad, but if you value your time, never, EVER, deal with NTL.

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this "bollock juggler?" Are they some kind of circus act?

Yes. If you ever visit Europe, be sure to ask the first friendly policeman on the street if he is a bollock juggler, or can teach you to juggle yours.

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, Swansea University.

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[lpontiac]

My favourite complaint letter is this one.

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[darkitecture]

HOLY SHIT!

My father is one of the undersigned! (One of the Monadelphous undersigned)

I just confirmed the story with him a minute ago. He's sitting here with me, just as amazed at how he's become part of internet legend :)

The story is about ten years old though. He held the position with Monadelphous back in 1995.

Amazing!

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to get connected to NTL before. They sold me a cable modem connection at half price (25 pounds for connection). After the guy turned up and told me he couldnt connect me (problems with apartment and not owning ground they wanted to dig up) ... I noticed they charged me 50 pounds! When I tried to get my money back they transfer 0.50 pounds into my account. Of course the girl on the NTL helpline thought this was the funniest thing she has ever heard.

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought BT were shit, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations...
This guy obviously never experienced a problem with the Student Loans Company.

Re:NTL *ARE* worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my, I can't believe they actually have a competition for the complaint letter of the year in the UK. Anyone know if we have a similar one here in the States? There must be tough competition out there!

Can't complain :)

I know the horror

[Mr_Silver]

My parents got broadband last week. So far:

• Connecting fails 9 times out of 10 with errors messages such as "no response from the server"
• If I phone them on the landline, the connection invariably drops.
• Even if I don't phone them, the connection will, without warning and randomly, drop.

I don't have broadband myself, I'm trying to troubleshoot over the phone with no real idea what is going on and getting very little help ("an error has occurred" is all very fine and well but getting specific details out of someone who is barely computer literate such as what the specific error message and code is trying to say the least).

Phoning BT technical support has been a disaster, so far I gave up after sitting for 25 minutes in a queue and being told for the 100th time that my call is "important to them".

Whatever happened to just plugging it in, installing the software and it just working(tm)?

Re:I know the horror

[Herbster]

Are you sure you installed microfilters on EVERY device connected to the phone line?

Re:I know the horror

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is a DSL line either they have a short (likely a tip to ring aka a bad phone cord) or they didn't put filters on everything plugged into the phone line. That means filter everything. Telephones, sat/cable boxes, fax machines, alarm systems, everything.

Re:I know the horror

[Mr_Silver]

Are you sure you installed microfilters on EVERY device connected to the phone line?

Nope, only the one which they use broadband. Is that right? The reason they did that was because the BT website said the following:

Included are 2 microfilters - you'll need a microfilter plugged in to each phone line or extension that you want to use with broadband.

Since they only want to use one phone extension with broadband, they just got the two.

Why do I get the sinking feeling that BT's wording isn't very good?

Re:I know the horror

[Herbster]

Heh.

by "you'll need a microfilter plugged in to each phone line or extension that you want to use with broadband."

they really mean "With the broadband service you must have a microfilter for EACH device which you want to connect to the line on which broadband is enabled."

Good luck!

Re:I know the horror

[Mr_Silver]

Great, thanks for the advice!

If I could be arsed to sit on hold for 25 minutes I'd bitch at them for their crummy wording on the website :)

Re:I know the horror

[nmg196]

That's because you haven't plugged the microfilters in in the correct places.

Re:I know the horror

[tim_mcc]

Indeed, I also know this horror.

One my first foolhardy venture into broadband, I was forced to use BT as my ISP.

I had countless problems with both their service, and their inept staff. However, my fraying patience finally snapped when one of their 'Technical Staff' asked me to explain the complicated networking Jargon I had used. The particular piece of jargon in question was:

Upload

Unsuprisingly I terminated my service the same day. Much happier now with a *real* ISP, but it doesn't stop me having to deal with BT once in a while.

Re:I know the horror

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically speaking you only need them for phones or devices with handsets as they stop the noises caused by things like putting the handset down from interfering with the dsl.

Should have checked his facts...

[taobill]

Which means that almost all of the ISPs simply resell the same BT service

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Check your freakin' facts before you go slagging off the rather elegant BT system.

The bit that is the same is the DSL connection between your house and the exchange, and the virtual circuit over BT's ATM network to the ISP.

It is then up to the ISP in question as to how they link you (the customer) to the Internet.

You can pay a pittance and get a shitty connection with a dynamic IP address, through a transparent web proxy and have your web surfing go down every few weeks (or whenever it gets really busy).

Or you can pay a few pounds more and get a static IP address (or even a range) and no transparent proxy, and loads of back-end bandwidth so that you get a very reliable service.

Although I am not surprised that a foreigner wouldn't know this because very few Brits are aware of these facts either.

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[Herbster]

For an illustration of this check out Zen's ADSL service. 8 static IPs for no extra charge, up to 2mbps at 20:1 contention, no caps... not bad eh.

At the other end you get something horrible like "BT Yahoo! Broadband". bleccch.

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[taobill]

Or you can pay a few pounds more and get a static IP address (or even a range) and no transparent proxy, and loads of back-end bandwidth so that you get a very reliable service.

AAISP http://aa.nu/ offer a very fine ADSL service wherein you can get an IP address range if any size (provided you can justify it to RIPE of course) regardless of the service package ordered.

They offer static IP addresses as standard. If I understand correctly they don't even do dynamic IP addresses on ADSL.

AAISP provide the highest data rate your line that can be achieved on your line (currently 2Mbps with more coming this year), at no extra cost.

They also have no transparent web proxy, guaranteed, cannot be changed - it is an intrinsic part of their service that they just carry IP packets between you and the rest of the Internet.

With AAISP there is absolutely no filtering whatsoever. With AAISP you are considered to be part of the Internet, rather than a "client" or "user" of the Internet.

There are no mysterious or unstated bandwidth caps. Each service package has a clearly stated data allowance, which is more than any reasonable user might need. More data can be transferred at extra cost. Demand during the night time and at weekends is so low that data transferred during those times is not metered.

(Please no babbling about wanting uncapped services at no extra cost -- it is simply not economic to have people saturating a 2 megabit pipe 24/7 for £20 per month. So-called "uncapped" services will always be subject to increased service charges, unstated limits, highly variable performance, ... or a pack of lies.)

I have no connection with AAISP other than as a satisfied customer! They just happen to offer a service which I find to be most agreeable.

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[Mr_Silver]

For an illustration of this check out Zen's ADSL service. 8 static IPs for no extra charge, up to 2mbps at 20:1 contention, no caps... not bad eh.

Not bad, however for 17.99 BT gives you 1 mbs, but Zen charges you 15.31 for only get a quarter of that speed. To match your speed on Zen with BT you'd have to part with just under 30 quid a month.

Also, you only get the 20:1 contention at 38 quid a month. The lower packages are 50:1 (I don't know what BT's contention is).

Thats not to say that BT's is good (or Zen's is bad), after all, the no cap is nice but it's offset by the slower speeds.

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[Herbster]

It's the 8 static IPs and the rest of the value added services that make it worthwhile. Their tech support is fantastic, and I have had 3 days downtime in 2 years (tree fell on the phone line). I can't deny that 2mbps would be nice though ;)

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[SteveAstro]

BT is capped. Zen is not, at any download speed. Top flight service all the time with Zen.

Steve

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[pavera]

right right right.
BT owns the EQ from your house to their CO, and the CO is what houses the dslam, and the dslam is what determines your connection speed (regardless of the ISPs backbone, you are plugged into a port on a DSLAM that only supports 2mb/sec). Out of the CO accross the atm network to the ISP is faster than 2mb/sec, and any decent ISP will have an OC3 at least going out the the internet, probably multiple redundant OC3s.. But the thing that determines *your* connection speed, the speed at which your DSL modem communicates is the DSLAM.

I have 3 DSL providers at my house, they each own equipment in the qwest co, Qwest can give me 1.5mbps, the other two providers who are local clecs can provide 5mbps and 7mbps dsl. This is because they own their DSLAMs and set the rates higher than Qwest will. There are alot of ISPs that resell Qwests DSL, and they are all capped at 1.5mbps, because that is what Qwests DSLAM is set to.

Please learn how a DSL network operates before spouting off.

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[taobill]

Out of the CO accross the atm network to the ISP is faster than 2mb/sec.

Sort of, but in essence wrong. The peak data rate across the ATM network is higher, but circuits are placed into pools where the sum of the DSL bandwidths connected is some multiple (50 for IPStream Home, 20 for IPStream Business) of the pool bandwidth. It's called contention. So the committed data rate available to any one DSL connection is only 1/50 or 1/20 of the DSL data rate.

So if everyone tried to flat-out their connection simultaneously the ATM network could well be the bottleneck.

So your point here was at best misleading, at worst wrong.

any decent ISP will have an OC3 at least going out the the internet, probably multiple redundant OC3s

Yes, any *decent* ISP will have decent back-end connectivity. What I am saying is that shitty ISPs won't have decent back-end connectivity and will try to get away with less.

But the thing that determines *your* connection speed, the speed at which your DSL modem communicates is the DSLAM.

Sort of. What you are saying is technically true. But most services are based on BT wholesale services, and those currently go up to 2Mbps max. Assuming the same DSL rate, things are the same across any ISP based on BT wholesale services until the point where the circuit gets into the ISP.

I have 3 DSL providers at my house, they each own equipment in the qwest co

Therein lies the difference. Most DSL lines in the UK are based on BT wholesale product where BT owns and operates the DSLAM. LLU products with third-party DSLAMs are in the minority. Whilst they are available to a few people, BT wholesale based products are prevalent and available in far more places. Therefore most of the time it makes sense to refer to the BT wholesale based products first, with other products mentioned in the provisos.

Please learn how a DSL network operates before spouting off.

No. I know what I'm talking about. From what you say, it appears that in your locality third-party DSLAMs are more common than in the UK. You appear to have assumed that third-party DSLAMs are more common in the UK than they actually are.

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[pavera]

What you are saying is exactly what the article said, that *most* ISPs in UK resell BT wholesale, but from the article there are 2 ISPs at least that the article mentions that do not resell BT wholesale but own their own DSLAM, and provide 4 and 8 mbps DSL service. He chose UK Online which provides 8mbps and has their own DSLAM.

All of the BT wholesale resellers can only *AT MOST* provide 2mbps, because BT controls the dslam and that is what you get. With UK Online, he can get at best 8mbps. That is the point I was making, that the maximum speed (not the minimum) is controlled by the DSLAM, not the ISPs backbone. Sure if oversubscription on the BT atm network is high, he won't get 8mbps very often, but he will routinely get better than 2mbps I bet, and that is because he isn't using a BT wholesaler, which is exactly the point he was trying to make.

You just completely contradicted yourself, in one post you said the article was wrong to state that most ISPs resell BT service and then in this post you said most ISPs do resell BT service... so which is it?

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[Anonymous Coward]

with uk online you can get 8mbps in some very limited locations, otherwise they can only offer the BT wholesale based service. the cost for the BT based service is considerably more than their own DSLAM as well (based off 1mbps service) £10 compared to £20

Re:Should have checked his facts...

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't entirely get the point of the original post. The original poster was stating that the service is not provided by BT in most cases.

BT service is only provided on ADSL from BT Retail. This includes (I think?) 3 different brands and service levels. Remember that BT Wholesale and BT Retail are separate companies, overseen by OFCOM to (attempt to) ensure that there is no preferential treatment given to BT Retail.

The point is that the connection to the exchange is separate from the connection to the internet and is supplied by BT Wholesale. Since unbundling is rare in the UK (only available in I think 250 exchanges), the only option for most ISPs is to use an endpoint provided by BT Wholesale.

In my experience the network after that point is where your choice of ISP makes a huge difference. For instance, my line is provided by Nildram. I have 2 hops between myself and the internet, and ping times to most servers are sub 25ms. My father's account is provided by BT (they called him up and he agreed...) and he has 13 hops to get to an internet backbone. His ping time averages 100ms. 100ms latency makes web browsing a much worse experience than 25ms.

Anyway, since most ISPs now use BT Wholesale's usage-based charging option, you will see that most home accounts are now advertised as usage-limited in some way and able to run up to 2Mbit if your line will support it. What happens when you exceed your included usage limit varies greatly depending upon your ISP. Mine caps the connection to 64KB, but since my monthly cap is around 10x the amount I have ever managed to download in a month I'm not worried. Monthly caps on some services are as low as 1GB - people with those services need to watch out.

Whippersnappers expect the world now

[Anonymous Coward]

You see, back in my day they didn't have 56k. We had 300 baud acoustic that used a couple of phone-rubbers. And we were grateful.

Re:Whippersnappers expect the world now

[mcsporran]

Luxury.......we had to make our own bits out of pieces of gravel we had left over from dinner.

Re:Whippersnappers expect the world now

[Anonymous Coward]

UPHILL both ways! In a BLIZZARD!

And that was BEFORE we had to milk the cows!

Re:Whippersnappers expect the world now

[trmcdougle]

And in my case wrote my own software to talk to it! (Hand complied assembly language on an Osbourne 1)

Public sector companies usually suck...

[Gopal.V]

It's not really due to the fact that they are public sector companies - the reason is more to do with what happens when they run at a loss. Usually the government just subsidises them with increased taxes. In the long run, they diverge from being profit oriented to survival oriented , in other words making manageable losses.

In India we saw an about-turn in service quality when BSNL became a for-profit company. After all telecom is not for Future Good like Education or something... it's for now and today.

Re:Public sector companies usually suck...

[deaddrunk]

Except that BT always made huge profits, even when it was a state monopoly. Privatising it hasn't improved the service at all. The evil state monopolies of Germany and Luxembourg were offering DSL a couple of years before BT, since BT wanted to protect its ISDN monopoly and was forced in the end to move on by the rather crappy regulator.

Re:Public sector companies usually suck...

[trash eighty]

what have public sector companies got to do with a story about how useless BT is?

Re:Public sector companies usually suck...

[Smiffa2001]

Most probably because:

a) BT was a state-owned, public sector organisation.
b) Certain parts of BT are still run by empire-builders that think they're still working for a public sector organisation.
c) The original poster might not be aware that BT were privatised.

Article text in case of slashdotting

[smallfries]

Whine whine whine bitch bitch whine moan bitch
whine whine bitch moan moan bitch whine whine
moan bitch moan moan moan Whine whine whine bitch
bitch whine moan bitch whine whine bitch moan
moan bitch whine whine moan bitch Whine whine
whine bitch bitch whine moan bitch whine bitch
bitch whine bitch moan moan bitch whine whine moan
bitch bitch bitch Whine whine whine bitch bitch
whine moan bitch whine whine bitch moan moan bitch
whine whine moan bitch god I had the brits moan
moan bitch whine moan bitch those bloody brits
moan bitch whine

And then I had to actually call up and ask about the line! The nerve of it...

whine moan bitch moan bitch whine whine moan bitch

Re:Article text in case of slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

see, he's British already!

Re:Article text in case of slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahah, no, you really DO have it bad. Flagged lines?! What?!

Over here, I call the ISP and tell them that I don't have DSL and I'd like a subscription.

Then once it's my turn to get installed, either:
- if I have a landline, they add my line to the dslam and I plug in my modem + telephone filters and start surfing
- if I don't have a landline (never had one after I moved from home, cellphones rule), someone comes over and screws in the wire pair to my terminals at the house switchboard, I plug in my modem and start surfing.

No back and forth with numerous agencies or what ever.. If something was still connected to my terminals, what I ordered overrides what some previous resident might have ordered.

Re:Article text in case of slashdotting

[ynohoo]

hehe, reminds me of my favourite Aussie joke about Brits (I'm a Brit btw):

Q: how can you tell when a plane full of Brits has just landed ay Sydney airport?
A: you can still hear the whine after the engines have stopped...

sounds like this guy has settled in nicely ;)

Welcome to Britain

[madaxe42]

Would you like some red tape with that?

What's that, you need a glass of water? Not without getting for 867-334-B. You get that from the Post Office, but they're only open during office hours. So you'll have to take time off work to go there.

Actually, this started as a piss take, but mentioning the post office just got me riled. I shipped a laptop in January. Parcelfarce (equivalent of USPS parcels service) dropped a fridge or something on it, as it turned up in Ireland utterly mashed (it was in the original apple box, and wrapped in bubblewrap, then in another box.

I filed a claim with them on *checks receipt* January 12th. 3 days ago they called me (first I'd heard from them, 4 months is pretty swift in this country), to tell me that they couldn't pay up because it is an item which is made of or contains glass. I politely explained that the display was made from a polycarbonate composite, and was, in fact, pretty much the only undamaged part of the machine regardless. Trisha, or Trini, or Crystal, or whateverthefuck they call those callcenter peons then politely explained I'd have to enter the disputed claims process. Which has an expected waiting time of... wait for it wait for it.... 200 (two hundred) business days!

This country is so arse about tit it makes me sick. I'm £1500 out of pocket pretty much indefinitely due to the incompetence of some cretinous handler who saw 'fragile' and read it as 'place fridge here', and nobody gives a shit.

Being born and bred british, however having lived around the world (Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Paris, Chicago, New York, Auckland), I can happily say I detest this country. I hate it with a venegance. I spit on the anglo-saxon pig dogs.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why I'm still here. Perhaps because I do enjoy sipping pimms on a riverbank, eating strawberries, wearing a silly hat, and lounging in the sunshine with scantily clad english flowers.

The cons are beginning to heavily outweigh the pros however. Particularly now that we have Labour (a farcical excuse for a government) in power again.

I might secede. Who's with me?

Re:Welcome to Britain

[Anonymous Coward]

please leave then you dick wad

Re:Welcome to Britain

[Anonymous Coward]

You've lived in Auckland and you STILL detest Britain?

Geez.

Where were you, Remuera?

Re:Welcome to Britain

[Chicane-UK]

I was going to mod this up, but I wanted to reply to give a whole hearted endorsement to everything you just said.. I think your post pretty much rounds up exactly what is wrong in this country.

Its difficult to trust anyone, or any system in this country any more because it seems like anyone who works for any public facing company or department just couldn't give a shit. There are rare occasions where you deal with a company who are fast, efficient and courteous - but its so few and far between, it almost bowls you over when it happens. It should be the fucking norm, not the exception!

You're totally right.. I often think its time to desert this place, before it gets to late and the lazy chav breeding population have totally taken over.

Re:Welcome to Britain

[dabigpaybackski]

Well, there are worse places than Ireland to turn up smashed in. I hear the domestic Guinness is quite good there.

Re:Welcome to Britain

[Anonymous Coward]

You MUST have known that it was a stuid idea to send something valuable via a cheap carrier - there are hundreds (if not thousands) of courier companies that you could have used, yet you decided to entrust your precious articles to the Royal Mail.

I blame you and your small brain, frankly.

If you want some fucked up bureaucrazy, try living in France. I did, and I still resent the idle fuckers.

Re:Welcome to Britain

[madaxe42]

*Drinks to that*

Re:Welcome to Britain

[madaxe42]

Yeah, securicor managed to drop everything as well. At least a claim with them only took 3 months.

Re:Welcome to Britain

[Makarakalax]

My girlfriend always is telling me "Britain's alright, look at all this great stuff!" and she then shows me some great stuff. But frankly I agree with you, it sucks here.

I was going to move to Australia, but then they started acting really funny about Immaterial Rights Laws. So prolly Canada. I'd move to America but I don't want to get shot.

Step 3...

[otter42]

(For reference, let's review the procedure for obtaining broadband in the U.S. Step #1: Call up your cable or DSL provider, walk through the options, and decide what you want. Step #2: Receive and install the modem, or have an installer do it for you. Step #3: There is no Step #3!)

Oh, yes there is. Pay, pay, pay, and pay some more. 512kbps/256kbps broadband for my parents in KY? $45/mo. In France, I get 8Mbps/512Mbps ADSL for 15Euro/mo ($20/mo) or 20Mbps/1Mbps ADSL2 for 30Euro/mo.

Sometimes you get bad luck, and that's all there is to it. But I'd rather have a run of bad luck, and pay next to nothing, then have it instantly work, at miserable bandwidths, for gobs of money. It's amazing what a little bit of competition combined with a sensible urban growth policy (basically NOBODY lives more than a few km away from a DSLAM) gives.

Re:Step 3...

[infolation]

Surely step one is to learn from other people's experience and mistakes. By going to one of the many UK ADSL help sites (e.g. http://www.adslguide.org/) and reading about other people's user experiences, he could have learnt about the procedure for installation of UK broadband.

There's no point trying to re-invent the anti-customer-service-aggravation wheel. Other people have been there, done that, and got annoyed. Use their experiences to your advantage.

Yes, BT require that their customers jump through hoops. Yes, BT probably seems arcane to an American. But by checking online first and discovering which hoops need to be jumped through in advance, he'd have saved himself a lot of aggravation.

If his number-one priority was speed of installation, any Brit could have told him that obtaining both his phone line and his broadband connection from BT would be the quickest way to get broadband installed.

Took me 9 weeks to change UK ISP's

[TAZ6416]

I used to be with http://www.tiscali.co.uk/, who are one of the worst ISP's in the UK. I decided to move to another ISP and rang Tiscali to get a MAC code. With a MAC code the old ISP talks to the new ISP and they arrange a changeover, usually takes 2 weeks and you are down for a day at most. Turns out Tiscali don't do MAC codes, probably because they are one of the worst ISP's in the UK and every bugger would leave if it was that easy ;)

So, I had to leave Tiscali and they wanted one months notice, which they got and after a month, my broadband stopped working. It then took many calls to Tiscali chasing them up to get BT to cease the line, what should have taken a week took three weeks. Then it took a another 2 weeks for BT to cease the line after Tiscali finally got off their butts and told BT to cease the line, that again should have taken 3 or 4 days. In that time Tiscali and BT constantly blamed each other for the delay.

I'm now with http://www.demon.net/ who I'm very happy with, but if they ever go downhill at least they support MAC codes so I never have to go through anything like that again.

Jonathan

Re:Took me 9 weeks to change UK ISP's

[I confirm I'm not a]

...So, I had to leave Tiscali and they wanted one months notice, which they got and after a month, my broadband stopped working. It then took many calls to Tiscali chasing them up to get BT to cease the line...

Sadly, that's my experience too (though with fairadsl, not Tiscali). I'll never go with an ISP who (a) is cheap-as-chips, and (b) isn't part of the MAC system. The whole MAC thing annoyed me; basically OFCOM (OFTEL?) don't really seem to regulate the non-MAC ISPs, which mean that the ISPs have you over a barrel. Some advice I was given at the time was: call BT and claim you want to switch broadband provider to BT, but you can't do it online "because there's a problem". Let BT sort out the problem (ie. put a rocket up the backside of your old ISP), then walk away - and to your chosen ISP. Worked for me ;-)

I'm now with http://www.demon.net/ who I'm very happy with...

Equally happy! Though if that ever changes I'll give Demon a try.

Dirk Gently's holistic... telephone

[Gopal.V]

> "Damn and blast British Telecom" exclaimed Dirk, the words coming easily from force of habit.

But you have to admit that they only charge local rates for calls to Bermuda from London, even back through time to the beginning of life on earth (which is either a few million or exactly 6000 years). What other company can promise good reception while using a time machine.

Here's another nice one: Use BS&S and Die

Re:Dirk Gently's holistic... telephone

[Anonymous Coward]

or a couple of thousand million years...

Where's the news here?

[d60b9y]

If you surf the internet, you can find a story like this about how somebody had difficulties dealing with a any large company of your choice. Although I'm not defending BT, no customer service system in history has every got it 100% perfect.

As a counter example to this story, I bought a house last year and the previous owner used NTL as their telco. I didn't want to use NTL (incidentally due to their poor customer service record.) To paraphrase the article, I went through the following process:

Stage 1, call BT asking for a line
Stage 2, Start using my new BT as it was connected exactly when they said it would be (7am on the morning after stage 1), even sending me a text message to let me know that it'd been done.

Seemed pretty good service to me.

Re:Where's the news here?

[matthew.thompson]

Ditto - My DSL on a new line was connected 4 days earlier than they said it would be and there were no issues with BT's service. The ISP however was shocking :)

My Sympathies...

[gnalre]

Ignoring the condecending USA's great, UK backwards attitude(At least our mobiles work everywhere...) the author has my sympathy

I ordered broadband from a company (lets call it pipex). Unfortunately abut 20 minutes after I ordered it I realised that they did not provide everything I required, and another one did. So I went to website and cancelled. Then came 4 weeks of hell.

You see pipex had been a little too efficient. Even though I had paid no money, cancelled in the cooling off period, the order had gone to BT. So I found when joined my provider of choice, they could not connect me since BT said I already had broadband.

After that came a succession of calls to pipex to cancel( Including one to a very surly representative who would not believe I had cancelled before being connected), BT to ask them to intervene(Not our problem sir, talk to your ISP. Aaaagh) My new provider, who were sympathetic, but not much use. They suggested if I transferred my phone account to my wife, the pipex broadband would be removed. WRONG.

In the end it took 4 weeks and threats to refer them to OfTel(The Telephone monopoly ombudsman) before pipex finally removed the service and I could join the new service.

Obviously there is a weakness in the system that only a ISP can remove the broadband, which can be severly abused if they want. BT wholesale cannot be contacted in any way to plead your case. Actually I became convinced they have no telephones.

On the other hand I did get a nice free USB modem from pipex....

Re:My Sympathies...

[smellystudent]

BT wholesale cannot be contacted in any way to plead your case. Actually I became convinced they have no telephones.

*Shudders* Last time I had a problem with BT messing up my ADSL, I discovered that not even BT Retail can talk to BT Wholesale. The message had to go BT Retail -> Me -> ISP -> BT Wholesale -> ISP -> Me -> BT Retail. Hopeless.

Coupled with the fact that the people who answer the phones can't cope with the concept of ADSL which isn't provided by BT OpenWorld (or whatever they're called this week), it normally takes solid weeks of phone calls to sort simple problems out.

Re:My Sympathies...

[Anonymous Coward]

(At least our mobiles work everywhere...)

This country is the size of a peanut.

Re:My Sympathies...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure? In my experience of peanuts they seem to be between 10 and 20mm in length, yet it takes 8 hours or so to drive up to Scotland.

I got DSL in 7 days in Cumbria

[jdcook]

I recently moved to Cumbria in the UK and signed up for DSL. I went to the library for some slightly overpriced (2 quid per hour) net access and checked that my exchange was supported by BT for DSL. It was. I went to virgin.net and signed up because, although not the cheapest, they were reasonable and have no minimum contract. They provided a free modem that came about 5 days after I placed the order and two days before it was scheduled to be turned on. Morning of, I hooked it up and it worked. I'm paying for 512K but (for now anyway) getting 2Mb. I had a technical glitch with a Win2K installation, I sent them an email, and they sent me an accurate helpful answer in 4 hours.

In short, while there may barely be indoor plumbing in Cumbria, broadband is no big deal. OTOH, getting a bank account was a pain in the ass.

I had the same problem

[Darren Winsper]

When I moved into my new place last summer, the previous residents had failed to cancel the BT phone line along with their broadband. Not only that, they had run up a debt with BT and in order to get a phone line put in my name, I had to prove I wasn't them. Far, far too many faxes later, we had a phone line. Great, time to order tasty, tasty 2Mb ADSL from none other than the same Metronet in the article. Alas, 'twas not to be, for the line already had ADSL on it. "But, but..." I cried. "Sorry sir, you need to get BT to put a cease order on the line."

Before I continue, I should point out that Metronet did nothing wrong, it was BT messing both myself and Metronet around.

I phoned up BT and complained. "Sir, you need to call the ISP and tell them to put a cease on the line." "But Mr. ignorant sales support, I don't know the ISP because I've just taken over the line and want to get broadband on it." "Ah, well, sir, then a cease order will have automatically been made." "OK, cool. How long will it take, out of interest?" "Forever. Sometimes longer, depending on how long the engineer takes on his tea break." "But, but..."

Eventually, I got a date for the cease, which came and went. The next day, I tried to order ADSL, but alas no! "Sorry sir, BT say you already have broadband on the line" "But, but..." Time for more angry calls to BT. "Sir, the cease has gone through." "But, but..." "Oh, wait, sir, it turns out that the broadband has been ceased, but there was an error or something updating the line's status." "Then why didn't the 'engineer' try again later or something?" "He was probably on his tea break, sir."

All in all, it took over a month to get something that really should have taken about a week, all because the previous tennents were complete shits and BT's engineers spend too long on their tea breaks*.

* Some of the tea breaks may be slightly exagerated or made up, depending on the whims of the author.

It's a shame that it should come to this.

[matthew.thompson]

The UK has approaching 98% ADSL penetration, far higher than the US.

The reason for this is British Telecom. Despite their faults they have created a stable package that for the bulk of connections just works.

And it works a damn sight better than the nasty connection I set up in our Miami office 5 years ago which was so poor it had to be downgraded to IDSL.

One of the reasons costs are higher is because ISPs in the UK have the burden of paying to connect to networks in the US - so our bandwidth is pricier. BT also have to provide a fixed set of costs onto ISPs which bumps the price slightly higher.

Unfortunately the "journalist" in the article had fallen into the trap of having a shitty landlord who hadn';t done things properly.

I've had this with our electricity bill - despite paying all the bills it too 9 months for the account to be transfered over to our name at which point the electricity company refunded everything we'd paid to an account in our landlord's name and demanded we pay everything again. A bit of talking and looking at the names the cheques were from sorted that out in the end.

I just wish that people would understand what they're writing about before starting off on a rante - but in this age of publish and be damned internet journalism this is getting more and more rare.

Most of the comments in this article were ill thought out and based on misunderstandings, from the understanding of how BT's ATM network works to the statement that HomeChoice doesn't play well with networks. IT does, I have it at home.

The UK is broken... patches welcome

[Anonymous Coward]

I moved to London about a year ago, and have had similar problems to this guy with nearly every service (Water excluded, but they've only just started charging for that so give them time to fsck it up). I simply can't get a power bill for my flat even though I've been trying to get one ever since I've been here. And we still get bills for the guy who had the flat before us. AND HE OWES £1400!! But no one cares.... sigh.

I have come to the conclusion that the UK is fundamentally broken in every way.

Re:The UK is broken... patches welcome

[91degrees]

Stop opening other peoples mail. Return to sender with "No longer at this address" on it.

Try NZ Telecom

[astromog]

The article's author should come to New Zealand and see what we have, namely a monopoly worse than most slashdotters think Microsoft is. Want broadband? The standard is 256Kbps DSL ($NZ50/month), usually without a monthly traffic limit of something like 10GB. This is still better than just 6 months ago where the standard was 128Kbps with a 10GB traffic limit ($NZ60/month), which doesn't even qualify as broadband. You can now get (as in in the last few months) 2Mbps (also at $NZ50/month), but that'll definitely have a monthly traffic limit of 10GB (including national traffic and dropping to 64Kbps when you reach the limit), which you could burn through in no time at 2Mbps. Here are the common plans of today from Xtra, Telecom's ISP branch.
Because the local loop is still virtually all Telecom (only a relatively few lucky people in Wellington can get a physical line that isn't owned by Telecom) there's no real competition for internet access. Ultimately almost all ISPs have to go through Telecom's service and just resell that, and Telecom does not play fair. The only possible exception is paradise.net/Telstra Clear, and I'm not entirely sure if they go through Telecom's system or not. The Kiwi Share, which is supposed to protect us against this sort of thing, is bogged down in beauracracy and failing miserably. All this while we hear about how great broadband is in places like Europe and Asia, HK gets 1Gbps broadband, and even Australia has a 20Mbps service.
An interesting recent take on the telecommunications situation here.

On the plus side, at least Telecom is generally fairly good at setting up your connection quickly.

Re:Try NZ Telecom

[mcsporran]

Telstra-Clear are in the same boat: reselling a horribly expensive product. I've worked for both these companies, Telecom was better, as I got free 2 MB unlimited broadband, and you didn't have to worry too much about your annual bonus, as they do predict their profits at the begining of the year, and adjust their price accordingly. Leaving the local loop with a privatised telco, is STILL a monolopy.

They took the british outta BT

[djsmiley]

They took the british outta BT,

They were left with tea, which also comes from china =]

Think thats bad

[Pablo El Vagabundo]

Try getting BB in the republic of Ireland.. Check out Ireland offline (www.irelandoffline.org) for the true horrors of trying to get BB.

My line in my new house was contineously failing I was fighting with Eircom (our national carrier) for ages.

Finally, I disconnected a load of old internal lines and suddenly I passed the line tests. I got BB, reconnected the internal lines and now happliy use BB, while on the online checker I fail the test.. Crazy!

Our national infrastructure has been sucked dry by vulture capitalists. The copper is falling apart.

We have recent gotten 1-3MB connections and the last year or two has been better, but it is estimated that only about 40-50% of the lines are capable of using ADSL.

With UGC( bigest euro cable company) having just bought NTL (our bigest cable company) maybe the future will be rosier..

PAblo

Note: Recently most of the BB connection were upgraded from 512 down to 1024 down for free, which was cool, but the up was kept as 128 for some crazy irish only reason.

I sympathise about the bank problem

[GauteL]

All of his problems with the bank comes from the fact that he is not a UK citizen with a history in the UK. If you are, your parents will have sorted you out with a bank account and you will have no problems getting a new one with a different bank.

When you are new in a country, getting a bank account isn't necessarily all that easy, though.

It might have been easier before, but certainly after the 9/11, the government put in much stricter regulations for obtaining a bank account.

By regulation, in the UK, you need TWO forms of proof of address and proof of identity.

No amounts of passports or identity cards is going to help you get by the demand for proof of address. If the utility bill had his name spelt wrongly, it is the banks duty to deny him an account, because he didn't fulfill the minimum requirements of proof of address. Always make damn sure your name has the correct spelling.

I had horrible problems at first in the UK, and kept on thinking that the whole UK system was pretty shitty. Then I started thinking about how a new resident in my own country (Norway) would be treated, and (surprise, surprise) found out they would have pretty much the exact same problems.

Basically, because of fear of terrorism and money laundering, the system have become much more rigid over the last years, sometimes making things very hard for a law abiding resident.

Re:I sympathise about the bank problem

[Anonymous Coward]

By regulation, in the UK, you need TWO forms of proof of address and proof of identity.

This is a typical EU regulation that has been foisted upon us recently that purports to do one thing, but in practice inconveniences the public , hinders economic growth and centralises power in the beaurocratic Brussels elite. This is not about terrorism or money laundering. It's really about preventing EU residents avoiding punitive tax rates in their home countries by moving their money across borders. This is an ongoing obsession by certain EU member countries to eventually have tax harmonisation across the whole of the EU. You can see this with the continual attacks on so-called "tax havens" and the newly joined Eastern European countries that have low tax rates. Although new to the UK, these kinds of rules have been common in many continental countries for some time.

A very specific problem

[taobill]

What this guy was experiencing was a very specific problem which you would get if you were temporarily borrowing someone else's line.

You are inevitably going to run into problems if you don't have the immediate cooperation of the person who owns the account. (You may have their cooperation, but if they are thousands of miles away then you don't have their immediate cooperation.)

If you own your own phone line, then ordering ADSL services is trivially simple, smooth, painless, and reasonably quick.

I have ordered something like a dozen different ADSL services for various people and it has always been pretty much painless.

I have always put the order through a web ordering system. I am usually advised that the ADSL service will be activated in about 5 working days, and it has always been on or before the quoted time.

Regarding migrating from one provider to another using a MAC (Migration Authorisation Code), I have done one of these as well. It was as smooth as smooth can be. I got a MAC from BT (which was relatively easy to get) and had the service pulled over to AAISP http://aa.nu/. The service was transferred on the specified date. On that day, I got a phone call from my boss saying that his ADSL access had gone down and I talked him through reconfiguring the router which involved changing the username and password. Job done.

As I see it the major problem we have in the UK is that there are a few shitty ISPs pushing bargain basement ADSL services with saturation advertising (mentioning no names Tiscali) which give a poor service to the end user who then gets cheesed off with ADSL and it ends up with ADSL getting a bad name.

Also it is unfortunate that these services have been sold under the name "Broadband", which is of couse a bunch of crap.

It seems that the average Brit is considered to be not very technical and not able to comprehend "jargon" abbreviations, so we are given nice friendly names instead:

DSL -> broadband
ATM -> cashpoint / cash machine
VCR -> video (recorder)

Re:A very specific problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because AAISP (Andrews & Arnold) are a VERY good ISP and know what they are doing. I've supported lots of friends with their Broadband over the last 5 years and they have all had problems apart from me. Why ? Because I went with AAISP. When BT swapped their modems in the DSLAM causing my modem to lose connections regularly, AAISP diagnosed the problem in under 2 minutes and then sent me a new modem FOC.

Unfortunately, that kind of customer service and ability is VERY rare in the UK. When you find a company that does it, you grab it with both hands.

MAC code?

[bcmm]

What is this MAC code he talks about? Is it the same thing as a network MAC address, or is it some BT related thing that identifies the line?

BTW, cable might be a bit less troublesome, as it doesn't involve BT. Might.

Re:MAC code?

[TAZ6416]

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/telecoms_ifc/codes/ bbm_cop/bbmcop.pdf/

Jonathan

Re:MAC code?

[DeadChobi]

According to a different post, MAC stands for Migration Authorisation Code.

I see his problem...

[91degrees]

But really it's that BT has a glitch in its processes that mean that if you move to a home that has had broadband before, it may be difficult to get them to switch it over to you.

I can see how it's irritating, but as nightmare stories go, I've seen a lot worse.

Thing aren't REALLY that different here

[Mythicman]

I assure you that, despite what the author implies, there are certainly issues with DSL over on the Yankee side of the pond.

All of this article reads like any of the fiascos that can occur here if a phone # wasn't transfered properly (especially with rental properties, as the author illustrates), if the person who PREVIOUSLY HAD the number you've been given for your new line had DSL and never, officially, had is disconnected, heck, if the freaking install tech hooked your copper up to a DSLAM in the CO instead of the remote he was SUPPOSED to tie to (this happened to me, personally - I screamed at BellSouth people for about 2 weeks before they sent someone competent out, who proceded to fix my issue in about a half hour. Mind you, I used to do DSL installation for a living myself, so this was terribly frustrating. I wound up calling a personal contact within the DSG - the group that the consumer division calls to get lines provisioned - in order to get the situation remedied). If you change your number, they may disconnect your DSL. If you have line trouble, they may disconnect your DSL, and tell you that "I don't see any problem with the DSL" when it hasn't been reconnected. God forbid you have DSL through a reseller, rather than BS FastAccess, and a FA customer needs to get turned on....if they've got a port shortage on the remote, because they WILL forsake you for their "affiliated" ISP (granted, this happened more often early in the days of the remote DSLAMS - when they only had 8 ports). Let there be load coils on your line. My father had to palce a trouble call that his "fax machine wasn't sending faxes properly" to get Bell to do anything about them because they're committed to a QoS for faxing, but they WILL tell you to get lost if you want to get them removed so you can get DSL.

Experience is not uncommon but not indicative

[Lurks]

I've run into the same problem that this guy has with ADSL and BT. Despite disconnecting from an ADSL service for six months, when I came back to it and wanted another provider - I was told I still had ADSL and had to jump through hoops to get things sorted out. It was a right pain.

However this isn't particularly indicative. While the sort of ADSL-wholesale-provider concept does undoubtedly introduce hiccups from time to time, it's also quite cool in a way which Americans might not necessary get.

We can order ADSL pretty much nationally (our coverage is very good) and then get it connected to an ISP of our choice. So your service and support comes from a smaller outfit much more helpful than going to a large ISP, as a rule. On the whole it's working quite well like that.

Yeah BT is the weakest-link again but this guy's problems aren't what everyone can expect and there's plenty of good things about the system too. BT, at present, is trialling an uncapped ADSL service where you get whatever your line is capable of. This is a huge deal for us in the UK because for the very longest time, all the broadband opperators colluded to ensure that 256k upstream was the maximum you could get off anyone.

Fortunately the cable guys broke ranks eventually and this has forced BT into action.

Free Market

[Mark_MF-WN]

Private utilities aren't so bad -- as long as there is competition. Look at the cell phone networks or the North American internet network -- the free market has done a great job with these. It's only when the utility is singular that the free market fails -- just look at places that have privatized their reservoirs or power grid.

Re:Free Market

[otter42]

What about the NA internet market? It's absolutely absurd the prices that we have to pay in America. I agree with your general point, that the competition is essential, and I wholeheartedly agree with the cell phone market example, I completely disagree that internet is competitive. It's anything but, and the current players are doing their best to make it less and less.

Re:Free Market

[Mark_MF-WN]

That's only true in the most backwater parts of the continent. In cities and suburban areas, prices and quality of service are quite good. Our broadband isn't as fast or cheap as in some places, but it's still pretty damn good. My internet connection is actually more reliable than my phone line these days. I, for example, get a 1.5 megabit line for just 25 Canadian dollars a month -- that's like $3.15/mo in US currency. ;)

Naturally though, this only true in places where a cable provider and a DSL provider are at each other's throats, or in one of the rare locales with multiple cable or DSL providers. In towns with just one internet provider, the normal monopoly problems exist.

Re:Free Market

[Darby]

I'm really curious why both you and the parent think that the cell market in the US is any good.

Certainly there are many different players which looks good. I'm in Chicago, and Verizon is ranked number one in satisfaction here. I've been with them for 2 years and I can't stand their service. I've never stayed with one provider past one contract, and nobody I know ever has either. In every case I know of (only several friends admittedly) they are all trying to find a service that isn't complete crap.

So my current contract is up, and I'm checking out my options, and what I am faced with is a huge variety of tradeoffs without any really good choices:

I like that phone and it's features, oh but I can't use that phone unless I have this particular provider. Ok, I picked a phone and a provider I like, so how much is it?
WTF?!? I have to guess how much I'll use it, pay for it whether I use it or not and get fucked hard if I guessed wrong?!?

There is an illusion of real choice, but it's only a choice in how you want to get fucked.

I mean honestly, where is the benefit in having multiple technologies when that has essentially zero basis on how the competition plays out? Does it do anything but make phone service X times as expensive as it would be otherwise where X is the number of competing technologies?

When all players make their money by the same scam of guess how much you'll use it, how does that benefit anybody?

I'm honestly curious what makes you think it's a good thing in this case. It looks to me like a textbook example of one of the few cases where a totally unregulated market is about the worst possible way to go.

Re:Free Market

[otter42]

Well, I would start by arguing that the fact that America has various technologies is EXACTLY what is intended in an unregulated market. Each company is free to go its own way, and the best technology for the money comes out on top.

But, yes, in principle I agree with you about many things. However, lest we forget the purpose of a cell phone, it's to talk. Not to send emails. Not to send SMSs. Not to download web pages. To talk.

America: calling to a cellphone is free.
Europe: calling to a cellphone costs from $0.25 to $0.45/min.

America: 3500 minutes for around $30/mo.
France: 120 minutes for $70. (And England is even more expensive)

So while we do have access to these technologies, no one uses them because no one can afford them. In Europe, we have everyone jumping on the same bandwagon, 3G, and everyone was hemorraging money for a long time because no consumers wanted those services. Don't get me wrong, offer me unlimited surfing on my phone for free, and I *might* consider it. But ask me to pay $15/mo. for that?

They can take their technological advantage and shove it. I just want to pay less to talk.

Re:Free Market

[Darby]

Well, I would start by arguing that the fact that America has various technologies is EXACTLY what is intended in an unregulated market. Each company is free to go its own way, and the best technology for the money comes out on top.

One of my (probably scattered) points was that, while this is indeed supposed to be true, this doesn't really happen most of the time.
I don't know all that much about cell phone technology, but it's entirely possible that there is one technology that is clearly superior to the others. If it's more or less a wash, then the economies of scale etc would seem to make it insanely more expensive to do it the way we do.

America: calling to a cellphone is free.
Europe: calling to a cellphone costs from $0.25 to $0.45/min.

But at least in England, if somebody calls you on your cell phone, you don't pay.

Contrast that with the US where ( assuming you have free local calling and the call is local) if you call somebody on their cell from home, they pay. If you call cell to cell, you both pay.
That's probably more of a 6 of one kind of thing though.

Are you sure about those prices in England though?
I was there in 2001 and my wife bought a prepaid card for her old phone that she hadn't used since she last lived there years before. It worked out to somewhere around 60 minutes for 20 pounds if I remember correctly.

Re:Free Market

[Anonymous Coward]

I like that phone and it's features

"its".

BT and other issues

[McFadden]

As a Brit now living in Japan, I have to say that in many ways our public services do suck. BT are not alone in their criminally poor service. Our public transport system has been gradually slipping further into 3rd world territory for many years now.

Additionally the health service, despite (debatable) minor improvements claimed by the incumbent government has been in serious need of medicine for a long time. However, this is not generally the fault of those who work in it - it's the bastard politicians who would rather waste money on management consultants and disastrously ineffective PPP deals. If you're not sure what PPP means, look it up on Google - it would take another thousand words to even scratch the surface of how it works. In a nutshell though it stands for Public Private Partnership and involves the private sector securing government contracts and raping them for every penny they can get.

The net result of this is one of the major contributing factors to why I know live in the land of the rising sun.

However, every country has bad eggs and I agree with some of the comments from other users who said that they found the article somewhat patronising and condescending. It's one thing to point out a country's flaws, and another thing to simply look down your nose at its culture (particularly when one of the opening paragraphs tried to claim that "I don't intend to play the boorish American" suggesting that somehow this was going to be a fair and balanced piece).

One thing in particular which I would take issue with was the rather snobbish remarks about bringing cats into the country. The author seems to suggest that he has an issue with this, yet I've heard numerous comments from Americans in the past poking fun at the British for some of our recent animal disease outbreaks. Particularly the fairly recent "mad-cow" problem. So what exactly would you like us to do sir? Add rabies or other such diseases to the list, or instead adopt a rigourous and strict set of procedures to ensure that Britain has learned from previous mistakes and is now going to be one of the safest countries in the world when it comes to animal transportation and the prevention of animal epidemics.

Personally I think this was probably on the whole a fairly accurate account of what happened to the writer. It's just a shame he had to colour it with his petty quips and prejudices, which don't add anything to his argument.

Re:BT and other issues

[Makarakalax]

I'm interested by your move to Japan. If you would be so kind, when did you move and how has it gone? Did you know Japanese in advance? I don't know your ethnic origin, but if you are not-Japanese in ethnicity, how are you treated by the Japanese? Hope you answer thanks! :-)

Re:BT and other issues

[McFadden]

If you could provide some kind of contact information (e.g. email address) I'd be delighted. Having said that I owe an email to another Slashdot user along the same lines which I've had sitting in my drafts folder for rather too long now. But I'll do my best.

Re:BT and other issues

[Makarakalax]

Sure:

max.howell + methylblue ! com

But I don't want you to waste time on my request. I am interested in relocation but I don't enjoy abusing other peoples' time :-) Thanks for your offer though, hope to hear from you.

He's an idiot...

[JackJudge]

...the author of the original story I mean. He gets plenty of prior warning he's moving to the UK, he even spends a month or more here in a BB equipped place and does he bother to a single piece of research into how to get BB in his new country of residence ?? The entire story is peppered with remarks along the lines of "it's not like this in the States." Well of course it's not you great wally, it's a foreign country and they do things differently. It's not like we don't have a whole shedload of mags on the newsstands every month that print guides to getting online in the UK, and every month at least one of them will have a step by step guide for non-techies. But no he's just too busy wanking and playing the latest FPS with his existing BB connection in his first flat. Hell even a Google will bring up dozens of forums about BB in the UK, most of them have FAQs, all of them are searchable. This guy has only got himself to blame. If you're gonna live in a foreign country at least take the trouble to learn about it first. Note to Author: we drive on the other side of the road here and use different types of electrical plugs, when you get change from your Big Mac you may just notice it's not dollars and cents you're getting....

Re:He's an idiot...

[Anonymous Coward]

what did you expect, he's an American
they don't sell intelligence in wallmart and school is just a financial transaction

Re:He's an idiot...

[Ahnteis]

Fortunately, they do teach basic capitalization and punctuation.

Re:BT (welcome to Banana Republic)

[Anonymous Coward]

Youre wrong, the worst company is Telefonica( from spain)

they need more banners and adverts on that site

[Anonymous Coward]

less than 1k of each of those 87k (not inc images and js) pages was "content", the rest was advertising and marketing related (i wonder what the ratio would be if we included the images and javascript)

its must be such an inconvience to actually have to give people a reason to be on that site at all, perhaps its like reading a catalog if you are bored in a waiting room

Ain't seen nothing yet: Germany is waiting for DSL

[Anonymous Coward]

Try getting DSL or even ISDN in Berlin and quite possibly you're told to...move! And that's only the capital! The "best" part of Deutsche Telekom's "excuse" is that they "cannot" provide DSL over the (copper, twisted pair) subscriber lines because of fiber-optic connections between their exchanges - and as we all know the latter type of "wiring" is utterly unsuited for networking, or something...

Cannot send mail properly on £1000/quarter B

[Tanami]

We recently 'upgraded' from ADSL to SDSL for our office to cope with the increasing uploads in mail and FTP serves.

Unfortunately, in our area the only provider available is BT (there are others who resell, but were significantly dearer).

You would think, with a £1000/quarter ($7500pa for American friends), that you might get an IP address from a range used solely by businesses (and that hasn't therefore been blacklisted due to residential customers in the same block relaying spam), and that you might get reverse DNS on said IP address to your company name, rather than hostxxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.in-addr.btopenworld.com, which looks like a dynamic address to most anti-spam filters.

You would think, but you'd be wrong. Spent 4 hours on the phone to them trying to find someone who could (a) understand the problem, and (b) have the authority to change the IP and set up reverse DNS properly. I gave up where their supposedly senior expert told me (a) that we couldn't have a residential IP address as home connections don't have IP addresses!? and (b) to ring 152 for further help (152 is the number for reporting normal analogue phoneline faults and is a separate company).

This is my latest involvement with them, but is typical of every time. Tossers all.

Bloody Luxury!

[EkiM in De]

I had the misfortune to actually want to try and get ISDN + DSL in my old flat in Germany through Deutsche Telekom. They far surpassed BT in incompetence and it required 13 trips to a Deutsche Telekom store over a 2 month period to get both ISDN and DSL fully working.

So when I returned to the UK I was pleasently surprised when BT activated the Phoneline in my flat overnight and ADSL was activated one week later.

He hasn't even started yet!

[bodger_uk]

He's still trying to clear the line. Next we get to the part where he requests a service, this gets passed to BT to check his line (again) then back to the ISP with the results, then back to BT with the request for service, then back to the user with the activation date. Then the modem doesn't turn up, then the microfilters don't work.

Finally, he gets a connection. It connects at something completely stupid like 30k over a 2MB line. Fault process gets raised with the ISP, passed to BT, passed to ISP, passed to user for (really stupid) checks over their system. Passed back to BT, closed, opened, closed, re-filed, and finally, one day, it starts working. No explanation will ever be forthcoming. In reality, you don't want to ask.

Then comes the fun of trying to work out what the daft ISP has blocked port wise, and which bloody stupid MTU they are using (sticking to the standard for ethernet would be *WAY* too easy.

After all that, 3 months down the line they start capping your download limits, and charging you for more on a per byte level (slight exaggeration).

And yet, after all that, we thank them and pray to them because they are the gods, and we have no where else to go.

Re:He hasn't even started yet!

[Anonymous Coward]

(sticking to the standard for ethernet would be *WAY* too easy.

Especially when you're running it over a national ATM network.

Burocracy....

[SomethingOrOther]

and kept on thinking that the whole UK system was pretty shitty

Just wait until you fly to the US.
Then you will *truely* have fun in a US airport. A place where "Every ones a superhero, everyones a Captin Kirk" and nail clippers are considered weapons of mass murder :-)

Re:Burocracy....

[vidarh]

Yeah, well, they're not very happy at UK airports if they find you're trying to sneak a pair of tweezers on either. And then they proceed to hand you plastic cutlery that is at least as sharp.

Silliest experience so far though: Munich airport. Not only were their metal detectors the most sensitive I've gone through (the only place, including the US, where my partly metal belt buckle have triggered anything), but we also had to take off our shoes and pass them through the x-ray machine, we were ordered to take our laptops out of our bags and pass them through x-ray separately, and almost everyone got a full pat down...

(Of course, seeing as they were doing all of that with usual German efficiency, it was still easier/quicker to get through security than what I'm used to elsewhere)

What's the big deal?

[Xarius]

The process for me obtaining broadband was a simple matter of:

# call up an ISP.
# Send me a modem.
# online.

This is greatly simplified, but that's the general deal. Sure some people have problems, but no system is perfect. To be honest that article belongs in a personal blog, it's rife with typo's and bad mistakes, and inaccuracies. /. Editors need to stop posting crap like this, and get back to the News For Nerds.

Waiting.....

[Savage-Rabbit]

Phoning BT technical support has been a disaster, so far I gave up after sitting for 25 minutes in a queue and being told for the 100th time that my call is "important to them".

Just be happy you get to wait that long in the first place. I (unfortunately) became a customer of E.ON Energie in Germany when they swallowed up my local energy company. When you called their customer support department they would make you wait for something like 5-10 minutes and then disconnected you with a message that went something like the following:

"We will now disconnect you so as not to cause you discomfort and undue expenses.

Since the queue was usually always longer than10 minutes you never got through. Getting ahold of their billing department was a severe test of patience, especially since they are in the habit of sending you bills and legal threats long after you have ceased to be a customer.

To be fair...

[lxt]

...I pay the rough equivalent of $40 a month for 2mbit cable, which also includes phone and a couple of premium cable TV channels...if you've got a cabl connection serviced by NTL or Telewest, it's not all that hard - or at least, it hasn't been for me (except for my email kind of not working, see previous /. story).

But trying to get BT to get broadband...well, a horror story if ever I heard one.

So what?

[randomtimes]

Talk about whinging over nothing.

I will never, EVER, get broadband where I live. I live too far away from an exchange, even though a 'high speed digital line' runs up the valley I live in. I'm quoting Telecom New Zealand there, who have some twisted logic and try to confuse customers trying to get broadband. In a way it's good that I can't get it, because it's one of the most expensive broadband services in the world and it's pitiful.

Do your research!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the author should have actually bothered to find out how the system worked before trying to circumvent it? What he should have done was request the landlord to disconnect the phone and then request a new line from BT. Since there is copper to the building there is no reconnect fee - he gets a new line and number so no calls for a guy who lived there six months ago and there's no chance he will get chased for someone elses debts and he won't have odd services he doesn't want/need tacked on the line.

When I go to the USA I generally try to learn the things that I need to know, like what the drinking laws are, the fact you can turn right on a red, what kind of gas you need for a car (and that they don't call it petrol), what's needed for a bank account (the reason that it's difficult in the UK is money laundering and that we don't like having our ID stolen - much less prevalent here for the moment). I wish a deal of Americans would do the same here, rather than assume it's the same as the US and then slag it off as being useless when it isn't. Working for a US company here in the UK, I regrettably see a lot of that behaviour.

I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[aluminumcube]

How is it that you people in the UK actually put up with all of the junk I hear about from your government?

- Huge taxation.
- Mandatory, expensive and mediocre health care.
- Cameras everywhere.
- A sensationalistic press that makes Fox look bi-partisan.
- Out of control, bureaucratic utilities (like the article states).
- Television licenses along with warrant-less searches of homes suspected of running an unlicensed television.
- Speed traps everywhere, set to excessively low limits and with giant fines.
- Cameras monitoring every meaningful inch of public space.

Call me crazy but I am a very socially liberal/libertarian US citizen and it shocks me what people in the UK put up with. Sure, you could defend every one of the things I noted above as being beneficial to society but my god, your citizenry sure does take it up the bum as far as personal liberty goes.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[teamonkey]

Maybe what you hear isn't what it's really like to live here.

If there's one thing we British are really good at, it's moaning. About everything. Look! It seems that writer's caught the bug already.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxation is not much higher than the US, all considered.

If you think free healthcare is expensive then I despair.

You think the UK press is sensationalistic? I couldn't stop myself laughing when I saw Fox "news"

No TV licence man can enter without a warrant unless you are fool enough to invite them.

Please, do some research first.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[JimboG1]

Now that's provocative! But I'll leave that for now. I want to address the reasons why BT are so utterly useless at fulfilling the needs of customers or potential customers.

BT is pretty much a wholesale monopoly supplier of telecommunications, although they do have limited competition from NTL/Telewest (cable, 50% coverage), the mobile telecos (although this is in the early stages, 30% odd coverage, not evry fast), and (if we push the concept of competition to its limit) the statelite companies. BT remains the only nationwide telecoms network that is capable, by and large, or supplying broadband to the entire UK population at affordable prices.

This needs to be differentiated from resale competition which is widespread and fairly healthy; this competition comes from the BT selling wholesale packages to ISPs who then tweak them and resell the service; a service for which you pay BT line rental. So, price competition is largely non-existant in this environment as all the prices are set by BT. There is Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), but this is something BT are very keen to stifle as it is eating into their core business. Again, LLU is somewhat dependent on BT for its success as the local lines from the exchanges to residences must be transferred from BT to the LLU supplier (like Bullbog or Easynet), something that doesn't happen too readily.

The only way the benfits of competition will be felt across the UK is through true wholesale competition, a problem that is being felt across many countries.

My point is this; the situation is one that has evolved over a period of years for manifold reasons; political, social, and cultural, and cannot be boiled down to some weak (and excuse my rudeness, but ignorant) generalisations about taxation, TV licensing, mandatory healthcare (whatever that is) and speed cameras. In my opinion, the keys are competition in the wholesale market, sustained retail competition, greater demand through better applications, and better regulation. What is not needed is a complete redrawing of the UK social and political environment. Granted, things need to change, but those you mention, IMHO, are largely irrelevant.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in England - and the difference is reality vs. reputation.

When you see a WTO protest, where MPs actually come out and talk to the protesters, instead of gassing them and setting the dogs on them - where you see all type of political dissent and not one accusation of "hating democracy", and most importantly, England is a country of real opportunity.

You can do whatever you want there, and you start out in the world without a $40k college loan note, and with health insurance.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, you forgot to mention all the cameras!

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[mikeplokta]

Perhaps it's because we don't have most of those things. Overall taxation as a percentage of GDP is one of the lowest rates in Europe (it's higher than the US, but then we actually get some public services). Our health care is optional, cheap, and pretty effective. TV license enforcement officers are not entitled to enter your home without a warrant.

And most of the cameras are privately owned and operated; surely as a libertarian you are in favour of people having the right to set up monitoring cameras if they want to.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[Anonymous Coward]

- Huge taxation.
It's pretty steep but not as high as much of Northern Europe. Typically, people are taxed at about 1/3 of their salary and point of payment. At a rough guess I'd say we pay ~45% tax when everything is taken into account.

- Mandatory, expensive and mediocre health care.
That's fair enough

- Cameras everywhere.
- Cameras monitoring every meaningful inch of public space.
It's really not that bad. As with most things in Britain, things are put in place if there is a (perceived) problem to be addressed. If there is a crime problem in an area cameras might be put up, or there might be local demand for it.

- A sensationalistic press that makes Fox look bi-partisan.
TV wise The BBC provides one of the, if not the best services in the world.
We get Fox in the form of Sky satilite tv and Rupert Murdoch also owns The Sun (red top tabloid, very sensationalistic) and The Times (right wing broadsheet).
As for other channels and papers some are pretty bad that way but generally they seem less low rent than the American popular press.

- Out of control, bureaucratic utilities (like the article states).
I wouldn't say out of control. There is competition in all utilities except water. I've not really come across much bureaucracy other than with BT in the utilitise are.

- Television licenses along with warrant-less searches of homes suspected of running an unlicensed television.
A warrant is required to search homes. They have to have some proof you have a TV too.

- Speed traps everywhere, set to excessively low limits and with giant fines.
£60 fine for minor offense. 10%+2mph over the speed limit. The speed limits are there anyway, the cameras are just enforcing them. Speed on motorways/dual carrageways is 70mph, 60mph for stardard inter-urban roads, urban streets 30mph. 50 and 40 is also used in some situations.
I'm not sure they are excessively low speeds. People don't seem to object enough to lobby parliament seriously about it.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[nmg196]

> - Huge taxation.

Compared to what?! It's lower than most other countries in Europe. Even under Labour! It may be charged in a different way to your country, but I doubt it's any higher.

> - Mandatory, expensive and mediocre health care.

But allegedly better than many US private health care services.

> - Cameras everywhere..

You make that sound like a BAD thing?! What's your point?

> - A sensationalistic press that makes Fox look bi-partisan

Err, you have CNBC. Enough said.

> - Out of control, bureaucratic utilities (like the article states).

It's fully regulated by Oftel and the article quoted a single rare example. 99% of people will have a fast and reliable connection within a few days. This kind of service is not available in countries such as the US where vastly less than 97% are able to get ADSL.

> - Television licenses

At least we get some decent channels and a free 30 channel digital service in almost every house in the country.

> along with warrant-less searches of homes suspected of running an unlicensed television.

You made that up. They are not entitled to enter your home without a warrant.

> - Speed traps everywhere, set to excessively low limits and with giant fines

At least our speed limits are much higher than they are in some other countries (eg the US, where a lot of highways have a stupidly low 55 or 60mph limit). We also have very few police around with radars. It's almost always fixed cameras - so at least you know where they are. They don't try and "catch you out" and all cameras are now positioned in accident blackspots (where a certain number of deaths a year had occured before the camera was installed).

> - Cameras monitoring every meaningful inch of public space.

You've said that already. And again, why is that a BAD thing? Most UK citizens want MORE cameras. I've never heard of anyone complaining about a camera being there! I guess you're a criminal of some sort who has something to fear from the cameras. No law abiding citizen could care less if they were on camera. Maybe in your gun-toting, very high crime society (compare the stats before calling me a liar) cameras are *somehow* regarded as a bad thing?!

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh the old "there's nothing to fear unless you're criminal" line. CCTV is a monstrous intrusion into our right of privacy, and almost completely ineffective at reducing crime. ANPR, SPECS, and they amazingly 1984-esque central London "traffic" camera system are completely outrageous in a nominally free society.

Speed cameras are an atrocious way to police the road network - and cause more problems than they solve. The WAY that people drive now on major routes is completely different to the way they did before the cameras - many drivers now roar along at over 100mph and just slam on the brakes when a camera comes into view, knowing full well that traffic police hardly exist anymore as all the budget has gone into cameras and other priorities. Road deaths are actually CLIMBING now for the first time in decades, yet we have thousands upon thousands of speed cameras paying out millions of pounds in fines - what the hell's going on?

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[nmg196]

> Ahh the old "there's nothing to fear unless you're criminal" line. CCTV is a
> monstrous intrusion into our right of privacy

You're never going to achieve privacy in the middle of a town center at pub throw out time, which is mainly what these cameras are for! How can a camera 30ft in the air screwed to the side of a building infringe on your privacy? It can't read your e-mail and steal your identity. It's just a camera. In fact you can barely tell it's even you unless you cause trouble and they zoom right in on you. They're not even high res - they're only about half a megapixel.

> almost completely ineffective at reducing crime.

No idea where you read that. They *are* effective at reducing crime, and more importantly - identifying and prosecuting offenders (if they weren't, they wouldn't keep putting them up - no-ones forcing them and they're expensive). Have you ever seen Crimewatch?!

> many drivers now roar along at over 100mph and just slam on the brakes when a camera comes into view

That won't be the case for much longer. They are trialling several systems which average your speed over the entire length of your journey. If you break the speed over a mile, then you must have been doing more than 70mph over the entire mile. If you're average speed exceeds 70 over the entire distance of the M1, then presumably you'll get a much bigger fine or a ban. I'm sure it won't be long before it's impossible to speed on the motorways.

I hope to god that they increase the speed limits on motorways to 80 or 90mph before these systems are in place however.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[vidarh]

I'll only comment on one point, as I want to focus on it, though I disagree with most of what you wrote.

The "huge taxation" bit is pure bullshit. I pay about as much tax here in the UK as I would have done most places in the US. When you add in the additional private health insurance I would have needed in the US to get similar level medical and dental services I would have actually paid more. And yes, I have done the calculations.

It seems that most people tend to "forget" about local taxation and also look only at the top rates of tax whenever they compares [some countries tax system] to the US.

For the UK, for instance, I frequently see the 40% top rate given, ignoring that this is only paid on any earnings above a threshold that is far above average (currently the 40% kicks in on earnings above approximately. 70.000 USD). Last time I did the numbers, someone earning the median UK salary (around USD 52.500 for men, compared to around USD 41k in the US as of 2003) would have an effective direct taxation rate (including local taxes/council tax and national insurance in the UK) of around 22% in the UK, compared to on average 28.5% in the US (this will obviously wary a lot between states and counties depending on state/local taxation).

Now, adding in VAT/sales tax will slant that back in the favour of the US again, but not as much as people think. While the standard VAT rate is 17.5% in the UK vs. 3-4% typical sales tax in the US, however you pay "only" 5% UK VAT on fuel and some other products, and many categories of food, clothing, medical products and other essentials are except from VAT completely. As a result the net tax burden from VAT for the average family is significantly below the standard rate.

Add in the difference in healthcare AND the cost of additional private insurance and the relatively small difference becomes completely insignificant. While the NHS (the UK National Health Service) does have it's problems, it is good enough - particularly for things like emergency care - that vast majority of private health care in the UK is provided as "add ons" because there simply isn't a mass demand for private care for basic services. Which means I can get extensive private coverage for a few hundred (300-500 depending on my needs) US dollars a year.

Yes, if you foresee never having a medical problem, your total tax + health insurance bill may end up a bit lower on the average in the US and the UK. If you want a reasonable coverage, it's going to end up depending on where in either country you want to live.

The interesting thing is that I originally come from a real "high tax" country - namely Norway. However when I did the maths it turns out that even though I earn well above average, the net difference didn't amount to much there either. It would if I had earned 2-3 times what I am earning, but that means it affects only a couple of percent of the total population.

And as for the UK, once I started comparing the cost of obtaining similar services (insurance to match the unemployment benefits / social security etc.) in the private market as I was getting through my tax bill, I would have to take quite a bit more risk to end up spending less for basic services in the UK compared to Norway.

I used to think that I was paying a lot, but it was acceptable because I could afford it and it would cover care for those worse off, but after actually crunching the numbers I've realised that I was actually NOT paying a lot at all.

Add to that the fact that I'm saved the hassle of continuously chasing better deals or wondering whether or not something will be covered by my insurance, and I have no problems with my tax burden. In fact, I'd have no problems supporting a tax increase for people in my salary range if it got clearly targetted at extending benefits/healthcare/education.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[Mant]

- Huge taxation.

Compare to where? Certainly many countries on mainland Europe have higher tax rates (and some have better standard of living as well). VAT (sale tax) is 17.5%, but it is not on some items. Income tax has 20, 25 and 40 percent bands. Historically it used to be a lot higher, so I think we compare it with what it was and Europe.

Fuel tax does annoy people, we pay more for petrol than just about anywhere else and a huge chunk of that is tax.

- Mandatory, expensive and mediocre health care.

Although many people complain about the state of the NHS (which has been improving) British people in general are proud of having it. The fact you can get free treatment is seen as a good thing. Indeed, I think we tend to regard American as rather odd of not having such a health service when most of the rest of the developed world does.

How expensive it is will of course depend on how much tax you pay.

- Cameras everywhere.

Yes, and the scary thing is you don't notice or think about them. I don't think they really accomplish anything.

- A sensationalistic press that makes Fox look bi-partisan.

The tabloids are awful, but only part of the press. The more intellectual papers are called broadsheets (Times, Guardian, Independent) and are pretty good. Parts of the press are sensationalistic, but not the whole thing. Plus we get the BBC, generally regarded as one of the best and most unbiased news organisations.

- Out of control, bureaucratic utilities (like the article states).

I notice there are plenty of post by Americans complaining about similar experiences with American companies. I don't think there is anything particularly British about this.

- Television licenses along with warrant-less searches of homes suspected of running an unlicensed television.

The TV licenses pay for the BBC, and like with the NHS I think you would find most people are in favour of it. Brits are usually pretty proud of the Beeb (especially when it winds up the current government. I think it allows a more unbiased organisation than corporate owned news where the owners have their own interests. It helps keep the other news organisations honest too (apart from those tabloids, which don't really compete).

- Speed traps everywhere, set to excessively low limits and with giant fines.

There is a lot of fuss at the moment about speed cameras, but the really aren't everywhere or excessively low limits. Speed cameras that only photograph you when you are speeding I have no problems with, you are breaking the law and it only captures you when you are. I think they are less problematic than CCTV cameras in city centers, but people feel they have the right to speed and risk other people's lives (because everyone thinks they are a good driver).

- Cameras monitoring every meaningful inch of public space.

Did you do this one already?

I am a very socially liberal/libertarian US citizen

Something you have to realise is that libertarianism is a very American view point. In Europe socialism isn't a dirty world (and is very, very different from communism or communist countries that called themselves socialist), we regards the US parties as being right wing, and more right wing compared to the socialist parties that get elected here.

As I mentioned, the European countries with the highest standard of living (by most measures) tax and spend more. It certainly doesn't seem evil.

Now none of this is to say we don't have personal liberty problems. There has been fighting over ID cards, we are getting biometric passports, and we had scary anti-terrorism laws that violated people's rights long before it was the in thing.

Culturally though I think people in Europe are fine with higher levels of government intervention and action than people in the US. Some of the things you list aren't things we "put up with" but actually want. If you really dislike this you probably wouldn't be happy here at all.

For the record, I'm from the UK but I've worked in the US, so I've got to see both sides.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[meadowsp]

Camera's may not reduce crime, but they make it a lot easier to solve crime.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[nicklott]

-Huge taxation

US federal Income tax:
Rate: 25%
Income Band: $29,051 - $70,350

UK income tax:
Rate: 22% + (1-3% for National Insurance)
Income Band: £2,091 - £32,400 ($4k - 60k)

You were saying? The UK has one of the lowest income tax rates in the developed world. It makes me laugh (and cry) when I hear people complaining about the "high" rate of tax in the UK.

Sources:
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/2004taxrates.asp
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/n6w/index/life/tax/i ncome_tax_rates/index/life/tax/income_tax_rates.ht m
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/nic.htm

Mandatory, expensive and mediocre health care.
That comes out of of the 1-3% mentioned above. What does your government do with that 1-3%? Invade countries? Build space weapons systems? Subsidise cotton farmers? I think I'd rather have my free health service, ta.

Cameras everywhere
Not sure what you mean by that.

A sensationalistic press that makes Fox look bi-partisan.
Umm... not really. Having read both US and UK papers, I've seen nothing in the US to compare to the Guardian or the Independent. People take as much notice of the Sun and Mirror as they do of the National Inquirer.

Out of control, bureaucratic utilities
BT is the last one, but yes.

Television licenses along with warrant-less searches of homes suspected of running an unlicensed television.
TV licenses pay for the largest (ad free) news site on the web, plus a whole bunch of programs that wouldn't get made otherwise (The Office, HHGTTG, Little Britain, The League of Gentlemen, etc). Warrantless searches is bollocks. The TV License people have no more right to enter my house than you do, or the police do, for that matter.

Speed traps everywhere, set to excessively low limits and with giant fines.
Speed traps yes, they are a fucking pain in the arse, but not in their self a reason not to live here. "Excessivly low speed limits" is a bit rich coming from a yank. What's the interstate limit? 55mph? jebus!

Cameras monitoring every meaningful inch of public space.
I guess that's a repeat of No. 2 above. Don't know where you got that from. Don't believe everything you read on slashdot.

wtf does libertarian mean in the US?! I can't believe you put up with the possibility of being shot by the police after being stopped for traffic incidents; a transparently corrupt political system; unrestricted development on a beautiful countryside; blatant society-wide racism; a massively powerful religious right-wing movement; advertising on every inch of spare space;

Now THAT is taking up the arse.

BTW, you wouldn't have been able to live here even if you wanted to, yanks can't get permanent residence without marriage, academia or intelligence.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[nicklott]

Fuel tax does annoy people, we pay more for petrol than just about anywhere else and a huge chunk of that is tax.

That's not really true any more. Fuel tax rates across Western Europe are very similar. France is noticably lower, which is why we notice it, but the rest of them are about the same (eu mandated) level, and scandinavia is noticeably higher (were my observations on a recent road trip to from the uk to stockholm).

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[mcpheat]

Some idiot decided that all the cameras had to be painted yellow which has encouraged the style of driving that you describe. Paint them grey again and the road deaths will start going down again.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[mcpheat]

Mandatory, expensive and mediocre health care.

Health care spending per person in the UK is half that in the US but we still live longer. Our mediocre health care must be doing something right.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[nicklott]

well done that man...

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[greenius]

UK income tax:
Rate: 22% + (1-3% for National Insurance)
Income Band: £2,091 - £32,400 ($4k - 60k)

I don't know where you get those NI figures from... it is actually 11% employee's + 12.8% employer's contribution... thus we are effectively paying 45.8% tax on most of our earnings [up to ~£32K.. then the income tax goes up to 40% and the NI goes down to 1%] (if there wasnt an employer's contribution you'd be able to have a higher salary)... on top of that is council tax which is aproximately 4% for a single income household on average salary... so I am paying 49.8% tax... then of course there is 17.5% VAT on anything you buy, petrol tax, alcohol tax, insurance tax, capital gains tax, stamp-duty on buying houses, stamp-duty on buying LSE shares... wonder we have any money left to buy anything with.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in England...

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, you wouldn't have been able to live here even if you wanted to, yanks can't get permanent residence without marriage, academia or intelligence.

So, you've got what, three... maybe four yanks living over there?

Try a Swiss bank, then

[CaptainZapp]

You will need a valid passport, but that's about it.

Can turn into an image problem though, if the name on the passport spells "Abacha" or the name of some other corrupt dictator creep.

BTW: What you can't do - as much as novelists like to slip that in - is open an anonymous account. You may want to try Austria (and that's changing) or some of those strange islands with funny fiduciary policies.

Re:Try a Swiss bank, then

[Syberghost]

You may want to try Austria (and that's changing) or some of those strange islands with funny fiduciary policies.

Vermont?

Think that's bad? Try NTL.

[Anonymous Coward]

(This a copy of a complaint letter that was actually received by NTL.)

Dear Cretins,

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone.

During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions. Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.

My initial installation was cancelled without warning or notice, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive at all, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website.... how? I alleviated the boredom to some small degree by playing with my testi*les for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept.

The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum.

Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After several further telephone calls (actually 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks) my modem arrived ... a total of six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it. I estimate that the downtime of your internet servers is roughly 35%... these are usually the hours between about 6pm and midnight, Monday to Friday, and most of the useful periods over the weekend.

I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 telephone calls on my mobile to your no-help line this week, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers.

I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman.... and several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no-longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought BT were sh*t, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there?

How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum - incompetents of the highest order. British Telecom - wankers though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.

Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of serv

Custom and tradition....

[jb.hl.com]

Custom and tradition?! Pah! There's none of that left! Britain's rapidly turning into a cultural and political wasteland. The two main parties are Thatcherite (and the electoral system means the third doesn't even get a look in) and they both talk about "saving British culture" from this mythical tide of asylum seekers that destroy everything in their path...but they don't realise there is no culture left: it's been replaced with shit like this. Any tradition or custom we have is slowly being erased in favour of "me me me" lawyer culture like in the US, where everyone is hostile to each other. The socialist caring sharing ethic this country has benefitted from for the past 50-100 years is being eroded away and replaced by complete selfishness on all levels... custom and tradition my arse.

BT

[boogy nightmare]

BT are indeed useless but for me getting broadband was this easy...

Move in to new flat.. Get number = 1 week
make sure phone line was ok
ordered PIPEX broadband on monday, modem turns up on Friday. I plug it in and voila.....

BT can be uber-tosspots but sometimes it just works....

However the article could have been a lot better written in the long run.

Interesting BT broadband "fault"

[Wills]

I have noticed a very surprising new problem with BT broadband.

I have 512/256kbps broadband (it's from a downstream supplier of BT broadband wholesale). The ADSL connection worked perfectly for 7 months using a Thomson Speedtouch 330 ADSL USB modem and the pppoa3 driver giving nearly the maximum download bandwidth of 490-500kbps. I had no complaints about the quality of the service.

Then, suddenly on Wednesday 9th March 2005, my phoneline went totally dead (both for voice and ADSL). BT Fault Repairs phoned to say they had had to replace the line card in the exchange. At exactly the same time and from that date onwards, the ADSL download speed was suddenly greatly reduced to only 120-130kbps and the pppoa3 driver keeps crashing and giving millions of errors like:

pppoa3[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(0)/VCI(0) (OAM?) PTI=0x00
pppoa3[15084]: CRC error in an AAL5 frame(repeated hundreds of times)

Every few minutes, after hundreds of these errors, the driver seems to hang; no packets flow and according to strace it seems that pppd is stuck waiting in read(). This is very frustrating because the connection has to be re-started and it takes about 15 seconds to be re-established.

Even more strangely, on 1st May 2005 the download speed suddenly increased to 300-320kbps but the pppoa3 errors and hanging are continuing.

I've tried running the driver in threaded and non-threaded modes, with sync or async options, as well as trying the pppoa2 driver instead but the errors and hanging problems remain. I emailed the pppoa3 driver authors Benoit Papillault, Francois Rogler and Edouard Gomez to ask if they knew of such a problem but they never replied.

Both BT and the ADSL supplier say that all of their tests show both the phoneline and the ADSL service should be working normally. The ADSL supplier denies there is any problem.

Has anyone else had a similar problem which started very suddenly?

Broadband coverage

[MartinB]

There is already 100% ADSL coverage in Northern Ireland, and will be 100% ADSL coverage in Scotland by the end of 2005.

(Where 'coverage' is of exchanges. The line noise limits of distance from exchange reduces the actual geographical/population access to ADSL. Northern Ireland reckons the reduction is 1.5%, and they're working on providing wireless coverage by the end of the year for these people)

Bank Identity Checks

[anaplasmosis]

BTW, the requirement to confirm identities was forced on the UK by the American Government's War on (Some) Drugs, so I suggest you pucker up and write (to) your Conressman. Good luck.

Everyone loathes BT

[cruachan]

BT are without a shadow of doubt the worst company in the UK. The don't just treat their customers with contempt, they actually seem to hate them and go out of their way to be cause them as much pain as possible. At BT being a sadist is a job requirement.

I'm on one of the last exchanges in the UK scheduled to be upgraded to broadband, and at present I use a combination of Satellite and ISDN. The sat is rock solid, the ISDN is a continual tail of woe. It regularly dies and BT won't fix it within 72 hours unless you pay extra for some 'service' contract. However the 'service' contract only guarentees a 'response' - which BT seem to take as simply phoning you up on another line and saying word to the effect 'oh dear, looks like your ISDN needs an engineer'. They don't actually do anything until they absolutly have to.

They always make the excuse that they are short of engineers because 'work is heavy at the moment'. Work is always heavy, in 5 years of my ISDN line they have never had even the glimmer of enough engineers to service the system with any hint of a timely response. An as to bullet-proofing the line so it doesn't do down as regularly - dream on, that would only take the fun out of torturing their customers.

In the days when they ran a mobile phone business I made the mistake of having a contract with them and their behaviour came pretty close to fraud.

I used to commute regularly on the railways, and bad as their service was - legendary awful in fact - the rail companies still can't lay a finger on the shere loathsome corporate dreadfulness that is British Telecom.

Re:Everyone loathes BT

[BenjyD]

I'd put Demon Internet up there with BT in bad UK ADSL customer service terms. BT may be incompetent - they may have thought that "Please install ADSL on my phone line" meant "Please disconnect my phone line for a week" - but at least they never lied to me.

Demon's customer services people lied to me directly on several occasions. Their lazy customer support people try to save time by not actually looking details up, they just tell you what you want to hear to get you off the phone.

Re:Everyone loathes BT

[Anonymous Coward]

BT are without a shadow of doubt the worst company in the UK.

You have clearly never had the pleasure of being an NTL customer.

Re:Cannot send mail properly on £1000/quarte

[drspliff]

I went through a similar kinda thing with Tiscali *mumbledcurses*.

So, I signed up for their Home service because it was cheap enough (£15/m for 256k.. now upgraded to 512 for same price), had no bandwidth restrictions, and was a damn sight faster than the 32kbit i'd been used to for however many years.

Got adsl relatively quickly - maybe a week or so later, threw the USB modem in the bin and re-configured various systems. http, smtp and pop3 (for remote access) was all up fairly quickly along with dyndns...

Damnit damnit damnit.. my whole IP block is on a black list because of all 'ye average dsl customers' machines sending spam.

Now, the business service is EXACTLY the same price as the 'consumer' service, EXACTLY the same service, with two exception - you can register a domain with it, and they can give you a static IP address.

Ok.. i'll just switch over from my 'Home' plan to a 'Business' plan.. (switching from 256 to 512 took around 24 hours and only took a 30 second phone call). Hah.. how wrong I was.

So first, I emailed tech support and asked if it was possible to have a static ip and revers dns (for email) on my home account.. can't do it - talk to the sales people and get your account upgraded to a business account.

Phoned the sales people (the only support staff they kept in britain.. the rest are in india), asked if I could get my account upgraded to a business account - same price, same phone line, same speed etc. - Nope.. you have to talk to the business sales people.

Phoned up the 'Business' sales people... they said it wasn't possible until my 12 month contract on my 'Home' account had finished.. WTF.. this is the SAME COMPANY! You shouldn't have to wait for the contract to run out before you can upgrade.

Phoned up regular support.. 'I was told that to upgrade my account from a Home account to a Business account I would have to wait for the standard 12 month contract to finish'.. 'Sorry Mr *******, but you must have been mis-informed, you can upgrade your account at any time, please phone the Business sales line on 0845 xxx xxx and quote your account number'.

Right then.. Did as she said, phoned up 'Business' sales people again, quoted my account number and said that I wanted to switch over to a Business account... the guy I was talking to (who sounded tired and pissed off) just said 'Yeah.. they've been saying that their gonna make it possible for about 6 months now.. You want me to add you to the announcement mailing list?'

So.. here I am, sitting and waiting for them to email me or give any response saying it's possible (phoning every now and then just to make sure I my point across)... NOTHING!

I've been a long-time hater of BT broadband and dialup for a damn good reason - they seem to have different departments for everything, and none of them can talk to each other - so transfering accounts or upgrades and such is a nightmare of looping phone calls and 'lost postit-notes' (my phrase)...

But this isn't BT we're talking about here - it's Tiscali... This stuff just makes my blood boil!

I feel your pain

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been in the UK since February and don't even have a phone line yet. No one will lease me a line for less than 12 months. Broadband also requires a BT line and there's confusion as to weather my flat has said line or not. My landlord says yes, BT says no. If it's a no, I need to pay £74 for a new connection and sign a 12 month contract. That's just the phone line. I will only be in the UK for 6 months so it makes it hard to get anything done.

In short, I gave up. No wonder Internet cafes are so popular here.

BT is useless

[arevos]

I agree BT is absolutely useless. They needed two weeks to connect me to broadband. Zen Internet did it in two days. After the amount of delays and hold-music BT subjected me to, I rather doubt I'll have very much more to do with them in future.

BT? Dont talk to me about BT!

[willm5]

I was an early adopter of ADSL, which I purchased directly from BT. When they first set me up it all went smoothly - although it did take 2 weeks for an engineer visit.

Then I had to move. Unfortunately I still had a few months to go on my one year contract. But when I called BT to set up ADSL in my new flat, they were happy to waive the remaining months I owed them. Very nice of them I thought, yet when I tried to order the new ADSL installation they told me I couldn't pay for it with my credit card because only one installation was allowed per credit card. They wouldn't let me pay by any other method (not cheque, cash nor gold doubloons). I only had the one credit card at the time, so I offered to pay up the remaining months on the old installation to free up my credit card. But they wouldn't let me do that either. Several weeks of calling and being called back went by with no progress and I was eventualy given email addresses to complain to, which were just ignored.

I eventualy just went with another ISP, who were more expensive but helpful. So I am no fan of BT. And dont get me started on the time they routed my phone calls to another (unattended) number, then spent two weeks calling me to arrange an engineers visit!

Dealing with big companies

[cerberusss]

It's better to write a letter rather than call. When you call, note down the subject, time, employee name and conclusion in your agenda. If possible, record the call.

When it's too important to call, write a letter and have it sent with the option where they sign to receive the letter. Again, you have a date, time and name.

When the inevitable time comes that they claim money from you, reply with a letter enumerating all your notes. You'll never hear from them again.

Re:Dealing with big companies

[danharan]

Depends on which big company you work for. I deal with some snail mail once in a while (when phone lines are busy), and most of the stuff I see was received 1-3 weeks prior. Faxing or emailing a _specific_ person would be ideal, as would be recommended snail mail.

Re:Dealing with big companies

[permaculture]

"if possible, record the call"

This (cheap but not free) service allows you to do that from any phone, and have a recording available for download from their website. Check it out: http://www.grumbletext.co.uk/page.php?pn=gtrecord

Welcome to New Zealand...

[node159]

Welcome to New Zealand, however, expect to pay more than 35 pounds for 256kbps 'broadband serverice', and that has a 10Gb cap on it...

You havn't experience hell until you've come down under...

Re:Welcome to New Zealand...

[FidelCatsro]

That really is horrible , I am not to fammilar with the NZ system.
Having a dig i notice they up-play the variety of services(which seem rather good) but downplay speed and cost , 35 for a 256Kbps services is rather offputting im paying the same (plus 15 more for line renatl) for a 2Mb in germany(which is still overpriced)
I have a freind who lived in a rather rual location in Australian , he was paying around 50 for isdn single channel (iirc could have been less) I know the situations better in more populated areas though , is it the same in NZ with rural and populated areas

Re:Welcome to New Zealand...

[SHiFTY1000]

Exactly- its damn sickening how slow and crap it is. What makes it worse is the complicity of the government, they are too afraid to take on Telecom and its undead army of lawyers.
Another example of how privatisation is basically a license to screw your customers...

Re:Welcome to New Zealand...

[lazybeam]

I'm in regional Australia and paying $AU60/m for 1.5M/256kbit ADSL with a 5GB (plus 5GB offpeak) limit, after which I'm shaped to 72kbps (and further shaped at 120% quota to 33kbps) and this is a fairly good deal! Since data travelling through the local IX is free I do have quota-free access to several mirrors so it's not so bad. $10/m more and I could double my quota if I needed. I also have a static IP and custom reverse DNS setup for no extra cost. :)

There's the $18.50/m I'm paying to Telstra as the minimum line rental that supports ADSL (there's a cheaper one, but apparently it's "incompatible" with ADSL). This is cheaper than the $27/m most people pay but I pay 30c per local call instead of 20c, and a few other things are more expensive. But we don't use the phone much anymore anyway.

As to the ISDN, the only ones I've seen are about $50/m for two lines of ISDN (two phone numbers, one pair of copper) plus whatever the ISP charges. Telstra used to charge local data calls at $1.10 per hour, but now offer "unlimited data calls" for $16.50 extra per month. Most decent ISPs charge about $50/m for dual-channel unlimited ISDN dialup, so you are well over $100/m for your 128kbps, or just under for 64kbps. One would only go with ISDN if ADSL is unavailable.

What is described in TFA has happened in Australia lots of times too, check out some old articles in http://whirlpool.net.au/ and you'll see. Few ISPs have their own DSLAMs (only a handful, and they mostly are in the same exchanges). The fastest ADSL offered by Telstra is what I have, and apparently they are going to hobble ADSL2 to 6M/256kbit even if the line can support full speed.

And there are still many customers on devices that stop ADSL reaching them, things like pair-gain systems or RIMs. These are being upgraded, but at the same pace as any ex-monopoly telco. Telstra operate a cable network too so they wouldn't open DSL access there much, since customers could choose an ISP that is not owned by Telstra (Bigpond).

Re:Welcome to New Zealand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, do they actually thottle you yet? I am on the 10gig throttled plan with Telecom and went over my 10gigs the day before roll-over and nothing happened. Just wondering how much over you have to be before throttling occurs.

Re:Welcome to New Zealand...

[Anonymous Coward]

More info, I am on the "Xtra JetStream Plus" plan which no longer exists according to their site.

Exactly!

[Moraelin]

Looking at all the European countries whose idea of "privatizing" was creating one absolute monopoly corporations, I can't help but wonder "WTF were they SMOKING?" The USA went through the legal effort to break up AT&T because of monopolistic practices, yet half of Europe went to great lengths to _create_ their own monopolies.

I mean, let's just look at the Deutsche Telekom here. They didn't just get the whole phone and data lines, they actually got the TV cables too. I.e., they got _everything_ that could have been competition.

Can you even get a cable modem instead of DSL? Well, no, in 90% of Germany you can't, because the Telekom isn't going to compete with itself.

Re:Exactly!

[moonbender]

Agreed on the cable thing. Of course, I live in one of those parts that had cable modem service for a number of years (longer than DSL), and I'm still using DSL. And TBH I think the competition in the DSL market is working really well, as is the state of broadband affairs in Germany in general. When I'll move, I'll probably have the choice between several national and a couple of regional providers. A friend of mine in Dortmund is surfing at 6 MBit/s for something like 40 Euros a month.

Re:Exactly!

[mikael]

Looking at all the European countries whose idea of "privatizing" was creating one absolute monopoly corporations, I can't help but wonder "WTF were they SMOKING?"


It was started by Maggie Thatcher. She believed by "privatizing" the state run monopolies, they would be freed from government red-tape that restricted the development of new services.

The only problem is that now, all the shares of BT ended up in the hands of City stockbrokers, who see BT as a cash-cow. Instead of being allowed to invest profits in new services (ie. broadband) all profits are going straight into the City investment firms who are only interested in short-term profits. So telephone exchanges won't be upgraded to DSL until enough people register interest and there is a guaranteed short-term profit. Or, there is competition from the cable networks.

Re:Exactly!

[houghi]

The USA went through the legal effort to break up AT&T because of monopolistic practices, yet half of Europe went to great lengths to _create_ their own monopolies.

Who are the main owners when they went public? The countries them selves and a lot of them are like that after that again. e.g. Belgacom in Belgium. No real competition, although it now starts to cracle a bit.

The person controlling telecomunications is the same one that controls Belgacom.

Further if they start to privatise more, a LOT of people will be out on the street wich will result in more social security to be payed. Think several tens of thousands and no, they will not all start at the competition.

In the USofA you started with a private company, in Europe with a state owned company. If you are in charge, what would you do? I would go for the money and that is exactly what the goverments did.

Re:Exactly!

[xav_jones]

Just needing to vent over my situation. Moved from Australia 3 months ago to Germany and within a couple of days had placed an order for the connection of DSL. But of course, not with Deutsche Telekom (didn't feel *that* rich).

The service provider we ordered with (freenet.de) said it would take up to 2 weeks. So after a suitable time (I am a patient man), I contact their service line to find out that Yes, they had put the request into Telekom to make the connection and I would have to wait (the operator mentioned sometimes up to 2 months!). After another month I contact them again to be told that Telekom had claimed the number could not be connected to DSL and that they (freenet.de) were now trying to convince Telekom that it could in fact be connected. Deutsche Telekom have absolutely no reason to fulfill orders from competing companies in any reaspnable timeframe, except that they are lawfully obliged to (I guess).

Since we are in a village outside of a small-medium sized town I thought we might have to wait a bit longer. But three months! The Telekom website-phone-number-DSL-connection checker even claims we will have to use a satellite service for broadband. So now after 3 months, I'm told by a rep of 1&1.de that they could have me connected in 2-3 weeks and that they have people in my street already connected. After contacting freenet.de again and being told I would have to wait longer, I have signed up with 1&1.de and will cancel the freenet.de order. Here's hoping.

So to conclude this rant, Aarrrrghhh!

Re:Exactly!

[Malc]

As somebody who's lived both sides of the pond, I think I can suggest you get off your high horse.

US West (QWest now?) that I had to put up with in Denver was far worse than any experience I'd previously had with British Telecom. I would say they were the worst company I'd even been forced to deal with, and caused lots of unnecessary stress. Bell here in Ontario is far better than them, although their price gouging is just as bad as BTs (and they're cheaper than US West was).

AT&T might have been broken up, but it was broken up in to a plethora of smaller monopolies (small being the size of many European national carriers) - how many places had a choice of which baby Bell to use? Then there's the whole thing of long distance... as visitor to the US it's incredibly confusing: one picks up a pay phone and makes a call to directory enquiries/assistance and gets asked to pick a provider... how the F***K should I know which one to pick? I hear the UK recently tried to add competition to directory enquiries too *sigh*

Personally I think the management of the last mile should have been given to separate companies that couldn't provide actual phone service, although I have no good suggestions of how to force competition.

Re:Exactly!

[rcastro0]

Overrated, Flamebait colors! Modders, what are you thinking? This is no 5, Insightful.

The USA went through the legal effort to break up AT&T because of monopolistic practices, yet half of Europe went to great lengths to _create_ their own monopolies.

This poster seems to ignore that the breakup of AT&T transformed one country wide monopoly into several regional monopolies. SBC, the baby bell which acquired the other baby bell Ameritech, serves Chicago. Bell Atlantic, the baby bell which had acquired the other baby bell Nynex, and merged with baby bell GTE to form Verizon, serves New York City. SO WHAT ?

SBC serves Chicago, Verizon serves New York City, France Telecom serves Paris, Deutsche Telekom serves Berlin, and British Telecom serves London.

Many companies, a quasi monopoly, in all cases. It is the fine print that matters, both in Europe and in America. It doesnt matter the least how many baby bells there are, or whether they belong to the state or to investors, as long as the government sets rules (and enforces them!) which facilitate alternative players to compete. The AT&T breakup, I will repeat, meant zilt.

Re:Exactly!

[arwel]

Oh God, don't remind me about directory enquiries! One simple number to remember, 192, replaced by a plethora of 118xxx numbers. The whole thing was so well organised that consumers have no idea which directory enquiry service is cheapest, and they're less accurate than the BT service was too, so there are a third fewer calls made to DQ than in the good old days of the BT monopoly!

Re:Exactly!

[Wyatt Earp]

I've had nothing but good luck with Qwest DSL here in Portland, OR. Qwest Cellular is a different story, however everytime they screwed me on my billing I was able to talk to someone and get it fixed to my satisfaction.

As for payphones...where are there still payphones in the US?

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear the UK recently tried to add competition to directory enquiries too *sigh*

Yeah. The funny part is that no one was complaining about the old 192 and less people were using it anyway; we have things like Yell.co.uk these days. "Spliting up" 192 (Directory Enquiries) was the last act of OFCOM. Needless to say, the change has been a disaster, with recent studies showing people are paying more and getting a worse service; many people are given the wrong number or the numbers can't be found at all. Rubbish.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

lol...ok, I guess that I have my choice of a half dozen different DSL providers and cable means that I am stuck with...what? I live in a Minneapolis suburb. There are numerous choices for internet service.

And for the guy who had the bad Qwest experience...yeah, they kinda suck. Good thing you have a choice. My choice would have been to not sign up with Qwest in the first place. They are widely known to suck and it's your fault for not researching that shit beforehand. If you do it right, you can have internet service the day that you move in or the day after. Obviously you have to coordinate this with your provider but I haven't had any problems in recent years making that happen.

I do wish the prices were a bit cheaper. Competition doesn't seem to be helping that much at all. The only think it helps with in that regard is that you can usually get the first 6 months at half price or something similar.

Re:Exactly!

[Austerity Empowers]

I wouldn't use the USA as a model for how to correctly bust monopolies. Yes our cable lines are different than fiber, and mostly our wireless is different than both of those, but they're not equal and they're pretty inherently price fixed. I'm glad they broke up AT&T, it helps, but it's still not a solved problem.

I can expect when calling SBC or Time Warner to get bad service, high costs and the same headache I experience at the DMV (or any government office).

Really our wireless providers are the closest thing to true competition, but they have very little differentiation of service. There's still no good solution in effect.

Re:Exactly!

[Snowdog668]

I live in a suburb of Chicago. All the lines are owned by SBC. If they ever decide to activate DSL in my town then there will be competition between DSL companies. According to the town officials that's exactly why SBC refuses to turn us up. I was told by the town tech guy and SBC's sales department that the hardware was in place five years ago (when phone service came to this area so long ago it was decided that all the surrounding towns would be served by one CO, which we are of course too far from. There's supposed to be a local substation in our town that was built a few years back that is currently sitting dark).

So my choice right now is dial-up or overpriced Comcast.

Re:Exactly!

[LiquidRaptor]

Interesting story about that too, there was a guy who made several providers with names like, Who cares, I don't care and such. So whenever someone would say those, the operator would simply switch it to that service which charged a 200% premium.

Re:Exactly!

[bheading]

Phone providers in the USA at the moment are back to engaging in monopolistic practices. Apparently the government didn't think of preventing the RBOCs from merging.

Providing a local loop is an inherently monopolistic business; the barriers to entry are extremely high. You can't just have someone dig up your driveway and install a new wire between their cabinet and your street each time you want to switch providers.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

EU law now requires "unbundling" of the local loop. This means you can order your telephone service from one company, and DSL service from another.

Ask Deutsche Telekom whether you can have just the DSL service from them, no phone attached, and you will be impolitely ejected from their shops.

All telcos suck

[Alioth]

BT doesn't have a monopoly on sucking.

I lived in the US for several years, and was in a GTE (which became Verizon whilst I was there) area. They sucked every bit as hard as this guy's complaint against BT, and that was just for voice (I used RoadRunner cable for broadband). Specifically:

- two weeks after I moved in, they disconnected me without warning because they unilateraly decided my apartment was 'abandoned' (yes, that was the word they used).
- I got disconnected *again* when a new neighbour moved in because they thought my line belonged to my neighbour.
- more billing errors than I care to mention
- abysmal line quality; in the middle of a metropolitan area, when I was on dialup it was impossible to get much better than 33k dialup connections. Yes, they DO have line faults in the US. They just don't actually fix them.

Then there was MCI. They had a whole new level of suckage. I wasn't even a customer of theirs, and one of their charges showed up on my bill. "Third Party Call" it was called - a $10 call from Florida to New Jersey (and I lived in Texas). MCI never did properly refund the money and I had to PAY Verizon for 'third party call blocking'. I had to PAY them to fix a horrible security hole whereby you can charge money to a different phone line! Apparently you can set up a 3rd party call by calling the operator and having the charge sent to another phone line. I suspect you do have to provide some details so the operator knows you're not just picking a line at random, what I suspect is the operator mis-keyed the number to charge to.

I also got charges put on my phone line from another random long distance company with no explanation. I could never get them to remove that charge, fortunately it was trivially small.

Re:All telcos suck

[Anonymous Coward]

True. We just had a delightful comedy experience with SBC. We moved house a couple of months ago (a couple of miles down the road) and we keeping the same phone number. So we call SBC, explain when we're moving, and can they transfer our phone and DSL service. No problem, they say.

So we actually move, and the phone line doesn't work. Despite the fact that the phone used to work for the bloke that lived there before, they managed to arse up the line in such a fashion that required an engineer to take 2 hours to fix it. SO then the next day, the phone line works, but somehow the cretins have neglected to set up a local toll service. We have local, long-distance and international, but can't call the doctor's office 10 miles away.

SO we eventually get that fixed, but my DSL router still has a sad red light. It seems that they couldn't just transfer the service, they had to terminate the DSL at the old address, and then set it up at the new address. That doesn't seem like too much of a problem, until you realise that "disconnect" means "wait a week for the request to propagate through our systems, then another week for anyone to do anything". "Connect" then means "wait a week, then another week" and we can't start the connection request process until the disconnect is complete because the computer won't let us.

So it took them a month to make about three entries in a database.

Is there a telco that doesn't suck?

Re:All telcos suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a telco that doesn't suck?
Rephrase: Is there an RBOC that doesn't suck?

In my experience, no. Once telcos grow beyond a certain point they just suck. That's why I've switched to wireless only and cable modem for broadband.

Check your VPI and VCI values..... should fix this

[SomethingOrOther]

Cell had wrong VPI(0)/VCI(0)

Hard to tell from your limited error logs, but on a UK line the VPI value should be set to 0 and the VCI value 38.

I've known shitty USB modems to throw a wobbler and reset these values to 0 0 before (on a windoze box) which is *possably* what your problem is.

Re: Place Fridge Here

[Anonymous Coward]

I have three words for you:

'Small Claims Court'

This is why I moved to the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm British and I couldn't stand to live in that shithole of a country for another minute. I've been living in the US now for 14 years and couldn't be happier with my decision.

In the UK, getting things done takes a back-seat to procedure and paperwork. Here's a hint for those still in the UK:

(1) Take the customer's credit card number.
(2) Give the customer the product.

What more is there to it?

In the US they actually understand the concept of customer service. I've lived in four different apartments where I've had broadband - in most cases it was connected and turned on quickly and smoothly without me even *speaking* to a human being. And I still thought it was shitty because I had to wait a few days. In many cases I've had phone service from the day I moved in (because I've been able to schedule in advance when I want the service to be activated).

One year rolling contract

[Salk]

My major complaint against BT is the one
year rolling contract:

http://www.bt.com/terms/pdfs/bt1050.pdf

I know a couple of people who have been stung
by this.

Given that they have a monopoly on DSL and
cable broadband sucks it would be foolish to
go into dispute with them.

Re:One year rolling contract

[hedge_death_shootout]

cable broadband sucks

In my experience cable broadband doesn't suck.

Re:Check your VPI and VCI values..... should fix t

[Wills]

Yeah, thanks, my VPI/VCI are already correctly set -- like I said, the ADSL worked perfectly for 7 months and then suddenly developed a serious problem on the same day that BT said they replaced the line card at the telephone exchange. I get lots of variations of that error message:

May 10 11:46:20 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(0)/VCI(0) (OAM?) PTI=0x00
May 10 11:46:20 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(4095)/VCI(65535) (OAM?) PTI=0x07
May 10 11:46:20 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(3087)/VCI(40907) (OAM?) PTI=0x03
May 10 11:46:20 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(288)/VCI(20612) (OAM?) PTI=0x04
May 10 11:47:37 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(0)/VCI(0) (OAM?) PTI=0x00
May 10 11:47:37 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(4095)/VCI(65535) (OAM?) PTI=0x07
May 10 11:47:37 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(3087)/VCI(40907) (OAM?) PTI=0x03
May 10 11:47:37 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(288)/VCI(20612) (OAM?) PTI=0x04
May 10 11:47:37 host last message repeated 3 times
May 10 11:49:31 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(3087)/VCI(40907) (OAM?) PTI=0x03
May 10 11:49:31 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(288)/VCI(20612) (OAM?) PTI=0x04
May 10 11:49:31 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(4091)/VCI(61648) (OAM?) PTI=0x00
May 10 11:49:31 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(128)/VCI(0) (OAM?) PTI=0x00
May 10 11:49:31 host last message repeated 13 times
May 10 11:51:56 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(3087)/VCI(40907) (OAM?) PTI=0x03
May 10 11:51:56 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(288)/VCI(20612) (OAM?) PTI=0x04
May 10 11:51:56 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(4091)/VCI(61648) (OAM?) PTI=0x00
May 10 11:51:56 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(128)/VCI(0) (OAM?) PTI=0x00
May 10 11:51:56 host pppoa2[15084]: CRC error in an AAL5 frame
May 10 11:53:35 host last message repeated 2 times
May 10 11:54:40 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(3087)/VCI(40907) (OAM?) PTI=0x03
May 10 11:54:40 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(288)/VCI(20612) (OAM?) PTI=0x04
May 10 11:54:40 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(4091)/VCI(61648) (OAM?) PTI=0x00
May 10 11:54:40 host pppoa2[15084]: Cell had wrong VPI(128)/VCI(0) (OAM?) PTI=0x00
May 10 11:54:40 host last message repeated 20 times
May 10 11:56:04 host last message repeated 133 times
May 10 11:57:07 host pppoa2[15084]: CRC error in an AAL5 frame

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I had exactly the same problem. There is one (albeit drastic) solution to anyone in this situation.

DROP THE PHONE LINE.

If you ask BT to cancel the phone line and then instantly re-instate it (they can and will do this if you ask them nicely) it will also drop all associated services from the line.

Also, a quick note to all you American's out there who can't quite belive it: So far this guy has had it easy. It gets a LOT worse. The real irony is we british like to laugh at you guys for being stupid!

yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[steve_l]

Despite the article authors critique of DSL, he could at least get a pay-as-you-go mobile for a reasonable fee, one that works everywhere.

Whereas US mobile phones, what an epic.

1. you need to work out which providers have approximate coverage in the places you live, work and travel.

2. you then need to decide between prepay or x-minute contracts.

3. prepay is very expensive, minutes expire unless you phone is topped up, not available everywhere.

4. x-minute contracts are rounded up minutes. Its not "50 minutes of calls a month", its "50 calls a month, of 1 minute or less each". And the minutes expire.

5. you pay to receive calls, on your mobile. So family minutes are cut in half if they are used intra-family.

6. you pay to receive text messages!

7. there is no such thing as text message interop! You cant text other networks. So you need to know the network of your friends.

8. Different network providers have different handsets. You cant juggle SIM cards around or choose the phone you want.

9. When you buy a phone, you pay an "activation fee" for some idiot in the shop to turn it on and press a few buttons.

10. phones are bound to a particular area code. If you move, you either need a new number, or people pay long distance rates to get to your phone.

Clearly the incompetence and pricing of EU land lines helped encourage good mobile phone networks. But also those crushing government standards bodies that mandated GSM everywhere, SIM cards everywhere ended up creating an ecosystem of phones, SIM cards and low friction switching between providers. It also created a new crime: phone theft, but that's another story.

-steve

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[rco3]

Allow me to rebut and point out some relevant facts, please:

1) Yes. Partially due to the fact that the USA is very large and sparsely settled in places. We have multiple carriers. We saw fit some years ago to dismantle our telephone monopoly. Perhaps that was wrong, I can't say.

2.) Yes. Choice is bad?

3) [shrug] Prepay is expensive? OK. I wouldn't know. Sounds like it's not a good choice. Bummer.

4) No, it's 50 minutes of calls per month. There's no restriction on calls being 1 minute or less. I think I know what you meant, but what you said isn't true. Yes, minutes are rounded up. Is an average of a half-minute per call really going to break you?

5) I don't pay anything to talk within my family. My last two plans have included unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes within my network, not just my family. I can talk to anyone who also uses my provider, all I want, no minutes counted. While it's true that half of zero is still zero, it's not really relevant.

6) I don't pay to receive text messages because I don't receive text messages. Perhaps I would find them more useful if I didn't have to pay for them... but I don't use them at all.

7) last I heard, we can text between networks. Again, I don't care - but I'm pretty sure you're mistaken about this as well.

8) In some cases, yes. Not in all cases. If you get your phone unlocked, you can juggle the SIM cards, if your carrier uses SIM cards, and your phone speaks the network protocol of the carrier you want to use... I got the phone I wanted. You might pay more... but what you'd be paying is the actual cost of the phone, not the subsidized and discounted cost, the balance of which the mobile carrier recovers over the life of your contract.

9) ...press a few buttons, set up your contract, initiate a billing relationship... yep. They charge for that. However, the people who set up my last contract weren't idiots; in fact, they were very helpful and knowledgeable.

10) This is purely a consequence of large area and population. It's not symptomatic of mobile service in the US, it's symptomatic of telephone service in the US and it's pretty close to unavoidable. It's certainly not conveniently avoidable. There IS a reason that we have area codes, and it's not to make BT look good. Besides, I haven't had a mobile plan which charged for long distance in what? Five years? More? It's not an issue. If I wait until after 7 PM, I get long distance from my land line at $0.016/minute - no, that's not a typo, not 16 cents per minute - 1.6 cents per minute. Who cares?

The picture isn't as bleak as you paint, sir.

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[DrEldarion]

7. there is no such thing as text message interop! You cant text other networks. So you need to know the network of your friends.

Er, no? I text people on other networks multiple times a day, and have for years.

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[loopkin]

No, no, no. If i understood well the parent, things could have been done a lot better in the US.

Let's compare what can be compared: US to EU, and even EU+Russia (that's a lot bigger in both population and superficy) :
- you can keep the same _phone_ in all the countries (you just change the SIM when you move in another country, or you have roaming when you're on travel, without changing anything - though roaming isn't usually cheap...). also, right, some networks do SIM-lock the phones, but usually it's not very difficult to have them de-SIM-locked by the network.

- i've never heard you pay for receiving text messages in any network in any country (but then maybe sometimes it's the case, i'm not a big text messages user as well).

- usually you can send text messages between networks (well, to be fair, it's not always the case between networks of different countries, and especially with countries as Russia or Romania).

So if you think that there is no government body over that, that it's just that several countries government agreed on GSM, you'll see that the result is, as compared to what the parent describes about the US, amazing.

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[Dave2 Wickham]

Unless I'm misunderstanding your point #1, the UK has several multiple carriers too.
</minor_nitpick_which_is_probably_wrong_anyw ay>

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[AaronGTurner]

In the USA some carriers have equipment that is mutually incompatible. In other words if you are in an area with provider X then your phone from provider Y may simply not work. I am not aware of this being the case in the UK. In the UK there are multiple carriers but at the hardware level there is at least signal compatibility so you have a possibility of connecting if your phone is configured such that it may connect to more than one network provider (which is pretty common).

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[Dave2 Wickham]

Ah, yes, it's all GSM here; some providers do lock their handsets, but this isn't irreversable.

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[Neoprofin]

If that's the case then they're few and far between. I have a phone with "The midwests largest cellular communication company" which I don't think is national by any means and traveling from Wisconsin to Vancouver, CA the only time I lost signal was in the desolate barrens of majestic Montana.

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

". there is no such thing as text message interop! You cant text other networks. So you need to know the network of your friends."

Bullshit. I've texed plenty of people on Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint with my T-Mobile phone. Try it before you spout crap.

". phones are bound to a particular area code. If you move, you either need a new number, or people pay long distance rates to get to your phone."

Guess what? Long-distance is actually *cheaper* in the US than calling a mobile is in Europe.

"you pay to receive calls, on your mobile. So family minutes are cut in half if they are used intra-family."

Yes, you do. But the person calling doesn't. Look at the rates for calling a mobile in Europe - then tell me that we get a raw deal here. Even by multiplying the rates in the US by two (to account for the fact that both parties pay), I still pay less per minute than in Europe.

"When you buy a phone, you pay an "activation fee" for some idiot in the shop to turn it on and press a few buttons."

Generally waived if you buy your phone at the right place.

"Different network providers have different handsets. You cant juggle SIM cards around or choose the phone you want."

You certainly can. Some phones are SIM-locked, but I can use any GSM-1900 compatible phone with T-Mobile. I've had 13 different handsets in the last two years (4 grayscale Sidekicks, 4 color sidekicks, 2 Sidekick 2s, 2 Treo 180s, a HTC Wallaby Pocket PC Phone, and a basic Nokia).

"you pay to receive text messages!"

I don't pay to send or recieve text messages. Nor do I pay by the kilobyte for GPRS like you do in Europe. I get flat-rate ulimited data & SMS for $15 a month.

"you pay to receive calls, on your mobile. So family minutes are cut in half if they are used intra-family"

Not so. I don't pay to calls to any other phone on my network (T-Mobile USA). I can call my family *all I want* and not use any of my minutes.

"prepay is very expensive, minutes expire unless you phone is topped up, not available everywhere"

Prepay runs on the same networks as non-prepay. Cards are availabile at gas stations, supermarkets, and many other locations. Prices average to about $0.15 per minute, cheaper than prepaid in Europe. Expiration varies, but T-Mobile, for example, gives you 365 days.

"you need to work out which providers have approximate coverage in the places you live, work and travel."

Namely, most of them. Verizon, Cingular, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Nextel all have major population centers and larger towns covered. Anything with more than 10,000 people will have coverage, as will interstate highways. Some providers are better, some are worse.

T-Mobile is generally considered the weakest provider, coverage-wise, in the US. I have no problems using their service 99% of the time.

"you then need to decide between prepay or x-minute contracts"

This is different from Europe how?.

Your comment shows that you are misinformed about the US wireless industry.

For $85 per month, my family gets:

- 3 phones
- 500 pooled minutes
- Free nighttime calling, weekend calling, and calling to other T-Mobile subscribers
- Unlimited GPRS on two of the phones
- Unlimited SMS on my phone
- No long-distance to any number in the US
- No roaming anywhere in the US

If you don't want GPRS, you can do even better:

For $40:
- 600 "peak" minutes
- Unlimited off-peak (night) and weekend minutes
- Unlimited calling to other subscribers on the same network
- No roaming or long-distance charges in the US

Run the numbers. Compare the rates. You'll see that they are much lower in the US.

The "cheapness" of wireless in Europe is a myth.

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[bluGill]

You can switch your GSM phone between Tmobil and Cingular. I've done it with others I work with.

They give you a new phone for signing up with them, so almost nobody does it, but there is no reason it can't be done. (Note you have to get the phones unlocked first. Not a problem after it is paid for)

Nobody in the US cares about text messages. See our per minute charges on a voice call are so cheap that we just call someone and talk. SMS on a phone is at best difficult and slow. You use it there because you pay so much for your voice time that you care. I don't think twice about making a 1 hour voice call to someone 1000 miles away, I just dial.

Last time I was in Spain I told someone to call my cell phone (company cell phone from our France office) and they told me that was too expensive. Your criticisms of the Us networks come from the very fact that your networks are so expensive that you need work arounds so you can afford it.

My cell phone roams in all 50 states. (some better than others, but if the city has any population I have service) No extra charge. I don't even think about it.

Instead of criticizing our network (which isn't perfect) start looking really hard at yours. Every time you send a SMS you should be asking why you are not just making a call. (SMS is great for little facts like an IP address, but in most cases a voice call is much better) Everytime you are in a different country, remember that our states are equal to your countries (in fact the two words mean the same thing), so why is roaming so much more? Start demanding change to the problems of your system.

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[loopkin]

Well, about roaming, the thing is that because we all speak different languages, people travel less inside the EU than inside the US. Hence companies have nothing to gain from making roaming cheap. However, i'd say it'll change in the future, because new generations are better are speaking foreign languages.

Then, about SMS, i tend to agree. Moreover, here, in France, SMS are horribly expensive to send. Now, except roaming and SMS, mobile phones aren't expensive at all.

Finally, i know very much about the US system, i was just elaborating on your the reply to the parent post, and, to say the truth, was quite surprised...

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[raju1kabir]

Despite the article authors critique of DSL, he could at least get a pay-as-you-go mobile for a reasonable fee, one that works everywhere.

I don't understand why this isn't modded offtopicker. I mean, since he's in Europe he can also get affordable health care and a decent falafel. But that doesn't illuminate the DSL situation much.

4. x-minute contracts are rounded up minutes. Its not "50 minutes of calls a month", its "50 calls a month, of 1 minute or less each". And the minutes expire.

Five years ago, when there were 50-minute contracts, you might have been onto something. These days it's 2000-minute contracts.

10. phones are bound to a particular area code. If you move, you either need a new number, or people pay long distance rates to get to your phone.

BFD. Anyone calling you with a mobile phone isn't paying long-distance charges anyway. And everyone else STILL pays less to dial long-distance in the USA than it would cost to dial any mobile phone within Europe.

All this point does is call attention to how expensive European phone calls are.

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[steve_l]

Yes, both are flawed. But when I lived in Oregon I found what was on offer truly sucked. There are still some parts of the state (much of the coast; nealry everywhere south of eugene bar I5), where analog is all you get, and you are meant to be grateful.

Note that the use of SMS is not just to save money on calls (my virgin prepay is 5p/minute after the first few minutes of a day; no monthly fee). Its more a social thing. you text people a bit when its less important than voice, more than email. I'm told that in Japan it is common for a round of texting is the precursor to a call "can I call you now?", with all the incurred extra revenue for the telcos that implies.

A big rip-off in europe is when you roam, the caller makes an apparent long haul connection to the home country, the recipient ends up fielding the receipt costs. Which is why when you travel for any length of time, you just buy a new prepay SIM for that country, text the # to your contacts, and away you go.

-steve

(ps, you can have countries that are not states. Scotland, for example)

Re:yeah, at least he could a mobile that worked

[steve_l]

I'm not going to argue the points, just observe that one possible cause for my frustration in the US is the way that coverage was sold off on such a fragmented basis. So many companies bidded up the NY coverage, whoever wanted oregon-south-east-sticks got got it 15c. Once you had the radio waves, it was free to do with what you wanted.

The EU process was
-per country
-GSM *mandated* on the relevant frequencies.
-same(ish) frequencies everywhere

So in a single country, you pick a provider and be relatively sure that it will work everywhere, bar the ones that are well known for bad coverage.

In the US, you dont even get per-state coverage. So when I am stuck in a ski resort like Bachelor, OR, I'd see signs "Cellular one is our provider, get cellular one today", as if I'd run out and buy a new phone, just to make calls from that place, even if it didnt work there.

Conclusion: The granularity of contract was too small.

Now in the EU, doing it per-country is arguably too small too. Its why you get hit hard when you go abroad. Maybe next time, they will do a "per EU" contract, though the countries like the licensing fees, and may not be willing to play that way.

Wireless

[BigYawn]

God bless Wireless broadband.
Bye bye, phone line rental! See you in hell, BT!

Whoaaaa! That felt good! :-)

Re:Poor sod!

[puke76]

I can't wait till he finds out that UK Online port filter their broadband traffic ...

Highlighting the issue

[Danj2k]

A lot of people are simply dismissing this article as pointless bitching, but I think it's a good idea to highlight the kind of issues that occur over here with BT, from the perspective of someone who isn't used to the system and expects bureaucracy. As the first post shows, there are people in the US who don't realise how bad things are over here with regard to the Internet and telecommunications in general. BT rules the roost with an iron fist, and Ofcom isn't showing any more signs of being able to deal with them than Oftel did... maybe if some American company were to buy up a chunk of BT, we'd get better service - it's clear that there's a market for it.

whoa

[Mark_MF-WN]

Woah -- you've got some real bile in you!

My province has a similar problem with our phone service. It was privatized some time ago, and is now terrible. And yet the exact same company that is mismanaging the telephone network provides absolutely superb DSL service -- because they're in ruthless competition with the local cable companies.

The free market is a thing of beauty when it works, and is an absolute nightmare when it fails. The exact opposite of crown corporations, actually. Crown corporations are just all uniformly annoying; not particularly well run, but not particularly badly run.

Re:Check your VPI and VCI values..... should fix t

[Wills]

I've known shitty USB modems to throw a wobbler and reset these values to 0 0 before (on a windoze box) which is *possably* what your problem is.

Yes, I wondered whether the USB modem might have developed a fault, so I bought a new USB modem and tested it on the same phoneline with the same driver. Unfortunately, the ADSL hanging and errors continued to occur with the same frequency as with the original USB modem. I also tested both modems on somebody else's ADSL phoneline, where they worked perfectly, so I think these USB modems are actually ok and the problem is due to something else, e.g. the ADSL linecard at the local telephone exchange. It seems like a very unlikely coincidence that the ADSL service should fall over on Wednesday 9th March 2005, after having worked perfectly for 7 months, on the very same day that BT replaced the ADSL linecard.

Article Was Fine Says Fellow Brit

[Makarakalax]

As a fellow brit, I have to disagree. He pretty much spoke the truth (eg BT suck, and so do most of the related industries). His comments such as "Does that even happen in the US?" etc, were sometimes silly (nothing's perfect), but otherwise pretty tame. I've read commentries about people visiting other countries before and usually people are far less pleasant.

Take a step back and look at your response, bit extreme perhaps?

Frankly your response does damage to how people here on slashdot will generally perceive us, so thanks for that.

Re:Article Was Fine Says Fellow Brit

[stu_coates]

I'm gonna have to disagree slightly here:

• BT can install POTS lines reliably and normally ontime
• BT engineers are pretty good and hate the company as much as the consumers
• BT cannot do reliable ADSL, infact most things that's non-voice sucks
• ...and when they switch their entire network to VoIP the world will end! ;-)

I have 2 (BT) ADSL lines (not using them as an ISP) which failover when a fault/outage is detected... which is quite often!

Re:Article Was Fine Says Fellow Brit

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't quite grasp how he thinks that slagging off BT will upset his British friends. Clue: it won't. BT is a nasty grasping monopoly that the Conservative party set loose when it privatised BT back in the 80s... shame that no-one since then has had the balls to actually tackle BT's monopoly over the local landline exchanges properly. A long succession of toothless regulators have promised to do it and failed miserably, or been bought off, or fobbed off with excuses. On the other hand the mobile telco infrastructure in Britain is (no overstatement here) ten years ahead of the U.S. in coverage, quality and customer service.

By the way how are DSL providers in the USA ?

[Arthur B.]

I currently live in Paris but will move to NYC shortly and wonder what services/prices I can expect.

For the moment I am the happy user of a 20Mbit/s connexion + ~hundred of TV channel + unlimited free phone calls for 30 (~$40) a month. The ISP is very geek friendly... provides official support for Linux, dDNS, a wifi enabled modem/router allowing NAT rules etc.

We do have the same kind of issues as in UK, with France Telecom, the former state owned monopoly. They often tend to be slow to switch lines when you don't suscribe to their own retarted-end-user-oriented ISP.

Now what can I expect in the USA ? In NYC more specifically ?

Looks like he had it easy...

[alex_ware]

We waited for TWO YEARS to get ADSL out of BT. Gotta love those tech support people, we now have ADSL after upwards of 3 attempts.

BT Don't Respond Very Quickly

[Makarakalax]

My parents lost their ADSL connection for two months. A friend of mine lost his for 6 months. The whole time BT in both circumstances claimed that there was no problem and it must be a fault at their end. In my friends case he eventually figured out there was a fault at their end and exactly what it was so he phoned them and explained to their operators what they should do to fix it. It fixed it.

I forget what fixed my parents problem. My parents still use BT for ADSL (yeah I think they are stupid too). The BT DNS servers regularly fail resulting in my eventually installing a DNS cache for them.

My last employer at one point had their external phone lines go down most days in a 2 week period because BT were doing something on the local exchange. The company makes half it's money from cold-calls. And it coincided with payday and meant we very nearly didn't get paid that month because accounts couldn't wire the bank (or whatever it is they do which require the phones).

My experience with BT is quite poor. If the stuff they provide works, it works well. If it breaks you will suffer potentially weeks of crap customer service. Eventually it will magically get fixed.

Having said all this I agree with you that they are better than the rest that you can choice from in this country. But I wanted to dispute your good response times/reasonable service claims.

Same as in Ireland

[Zerikai]

ISPs/Telecoms probably share the software...

In my case it took me about 3 months to get the local thieves (Eircom) to free up my line from the broadband service that they claimed I had ordered from them (no, never did, why would I order the same package at 3x cost?).

They only moved their asses when finally after about 2 months I decided to contact the Communications Regulator.

Nowadays when your ISP encounters this situation they send you a nice form where you can specify which ISP you want and which one you no longer want... I guess that even with this process it takes about 2 months anyway.

Re:Same as in Ireland

[wflynn]

My cousin took around six months to get broadband and that was only after ringing Eircom at least once a day for three weeks........ Eircom are out doing themselves with their latest trick. Anyone who wants to more to an local loop unbundled product (Smart Telecom) is forced to change their phone number because Eircom won't release it at the same time as the unbundling takes place! The regulator then dared to try to do its job.... So Eircom has them in the High court to try to stop them....... So we wait...... The town my parents are living in was left off the broadband roll out for a long time because they miss read the census data!!! I wish we had the situation in France, 20M/512k with free nationwide landline calls and TV for less than a 1M/128k ADSL only (was 512/128 until about a month ago). While not everything is perfect their either, it is better than Ireland.

Why weren't questions raised during election?

[spot35]

To quote the article...but possibly stray a little off topic

So here I wait, stuck in dial-up hell. Why weren't these the questions raised in the just-completed general election? Ah, well. Now I understand why there are so many pubs in Britain.

This is because we have a very skewed view of what democracy is. Roughly two thirds (!) of our population didn't want the current government in and yet they still retain power. Since the election, we've heard of a new fleet of nuclear subs, a new programme of nuclear power stations, a high stree spending crash. But before the election none of these issues which the voting public would have been interested to know about were there.

The current state of western democracy sucks.

Re:Why weren't questions raised during election?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but look at it this way....
they've got Dubya who makes His Tonyness look like Gandi in comparison.

In that context, I'd consider our election (Nu Labia geting a slap but without the Tories getting in) a fucking result :-)

US Equivalent

[Phillip2]

In the US, this wouldn't be a problem.

Having just arrived in the US, you wouldn't have a social security number. So no one would give you credit for anything. So you can't get anything which you pay for in arreas.

Of course being unable to get broadband would not be a problem. In the absence of electricity, what would you plug your computer into?

Phil

Re:US Equivalent

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course being unable to get broadband would not be a problem. In the absence of electricity, what would you plug your computer into?
After requesting a separate service identification number (you know, since you don't want to give them your SSN) and pay them an up-front deposit you use the power they provide to your house.

Broadband, problems? Well maybe a little...

[s_wardman]

Most people I have spoken to agree that BT are a bit , well, bad at customer, or even ISP relations. I haven't heard that much about NTL, so I can't say anything about their level of service

Having said that, my experience with two different ISPs has been mostly good.

Zen Internet managed to get ADSL for one place setup in just a week. The advertised lead time was 12 days. A year later, an upgrade from 512kbit/s to 1Mbit/s. They informed us we would lose our connection for a short while, and told us when it would happen. It happened, but the new connection did not appear to have come online. A couple of technical support calls to some friendly and helpful operators who said the problem was (apparently) BT had been a bit slow changing the line, and they would take the matter up with BT immediately. The next day, we have a 1Mbit/s connection. There have been no real problems with the service, except for fires in some cable tunnels taking out half of the telephone lines in the area.

I have not had first hand experience dealing with Bulldog Broadband setup, but the existing service I get from them has been exemplary.

Both Bulldog and Zen provide service alerts on their respective sites, informing of any problems or upgrades, as well as emails to the account holder.

For those looking for a provider for broadband, I highly recommend these ISPs. If you feel like looking around a bit more, try ADSLguide and ISP Review to get the low-down on UK providers.

Slow Web Pages

[Anonymous Coward]

I kid ye not, BT classify packet loss and high latency as "Slow Web Pages"...

I had problems with performance on my line some time ago - Poor speeds through my ISP _and_ the BT Speed Checker. After talking with my ISP, and them forwarding the problem to BT I eventually had a BT Wholesale technician trying to figure out how to use Ping. After enough bitching, I think they just switched me to a different DSLAM.

talk about whining

[cinnamon colbert]

I only got half way thru this verbose whining piece of bullshit.
maybe, somewheres in the ton of fancy words (looking for Mr Good bar: if anything spills it is milk the engl prof tells them) there is actually a valid complaint.
If anyone actually managed to get thru the article can u summarize it in two paragraphs for us more literate intelligent folks

Re:Let's review...Where the horror ?

[sjf]

This guy's mistake is thinking that BT gives a damn about his attempt at public revenge. You are right, the story here is that there was a fault on the line and the landlord/prior tenant didn't cancel some services they should have. It took a bit of time to sort it out. Has he ever been to the RMV, or called his HMO ?

Sounds to me like he has a FAR wider range of options for broadband than I have in the US, at prices that look pretty reasonable: UKP29/m for 8Mbit ( US$60) including telephone service - wow !?!?

Short version: "I'm American, and I want it now ! Whaddya mean there's a problem - didn't I tell you I'm American ? Stupid beaurocratic Brits. Bwa wa wa, I'm telling..."

Just think of it as Karma for all the times you moved into an apartment in the US and got free cable.

What bugs me about BT!!

[johansalk]

In addition to the DSL fee to my ISP, I have to pay BT a line rental fees eventhough I never use it to make or receive phone calls! And it isn't cheap either; ~£50 per quarter at least.

Re:What bugs me about BT!!

[matthew.thompson]

£11.50 per month actually. Quite a bit from £50 per quarter.

If you're paying that you're also paying for one of their inclusive calls packages and should shut it off.

Have you considered what it costs to run that line of yours that you're not putting any phone calls down? The cable, the trunking, the witching equipment in the exchange, the power, the requirement to provide service to enable 999 calls etc???

BT are bad but NTL are worse

[ajs318]

BT are bad, but NTL are worse.

I have to have a phone line from NTL, even though I don't use it for anything {their broadband signal travels along the TV cable}. Of course, they tell me it's "free", but this just means "we'll make you pay for it whether you want it or not". They also claim that calls are cheaper than BT, but I never found this to be the case: "national calls at local rates" is just a euphemism for "local calls at national rates". Plus, everyone already knows my BT number. Oh: and when BT printed the phone book, they managed to miss out my NTL number anyway!

Their "free" web space, included with the broadband, is also worse than useless: there is no PHP, no database and no Perl. At first I was told this was because I was running Linux my end and their services only work with Windows. After persuading them that I had borrowed a Windows machine from next door {actually, getting a friend who knows Windows to translate for me} I succeeded in persuading them that the fault -- that I was seeing <? phpinfo() ?> instead of the PHP info screen -- lay their end. Apparently I have to pay extra for a "business" account in order to use these "advanced features" which are already running on my internet sharer. NTL's resident Linux guru {they did manage to find one} suggested I could run my own Apache server, which is true; but my IP address is subject to change at random and without warning. It would be Russian roulette running sendmail on that connection {and their DHCP server does not honour my hostname request either}. Fortunately I work for an ISP and my boss is a hacker, so I can use their DNS to handle my domain name -- everything but MX, which uses a a POP3 account on Work's server.

To add insult to injury, Slashdot {and a few other services} are blocking NTL's web proxy server {which I have not yet found a way to bypass}.

OTOH, other countries have worse problems than lousy internet services. And I quite like a decent cup of tea with milk and no sugar, sitcoms without laugh tracks, TV without adverts and the generally-accepted right not to be shot at .....

This is what happens when you move to London

[ttys00]

I moved to London from Sydney a year ago, and had to go through the same experience.

I'd recommend PlusNet for an ISP, if for no other reason than they give you a subdomain on their network, which can be handy for us geeks.

One example

[Mr. Underbridge]

Just my opinion , but i don't like infrastructes such as water ,power , telephone lines and hospitals privatised . It has never reduced costs as they had said(well gave the reason as to why they did it) The trains are worse and more expensive than ever and telephone line costs have gone up.

Telephone in the US got cheaper when the Bells were broken up, especially for equipment. And as far as social services, we in the US have a somewhat different set of challenges, so things like compulsory public education and public hospitals almost never work.

Re:One example

[number11]

Telephone in the US got cheaper when the Bells were broken up, especially for equipment.

Total cost of local service got more expensive. Equipment got cheaper, since you could then provide your own (no reason why this couldn't have been done pre-breakup, in fact I often did so though it was technically forbidden). But keep in mind that the quality of that equipment also got cheaper. WE knew what it cost to send a guy with a truck to fix your phone, so they built (expensive) phones that wouldn't break over a 20 or 30 year lifetime. Nowdays all the phones are cheap crap that you're lucky if it lasts a year.

Long distance service got cheaper. Since I rarely call anyone outside of my city, that's not much of a benefit for me.

so things like compulsory public education and public hospitals almost never work

Actually, they work reasonably well in most places, in spite of politicians who pander for votes by promising to cut the taxes for their rich buddies. Public education tends to be underfunded, not because it wastes money teaching, but because the pols keep dumping additional social-service-agency jobs and requirements onto the schools without providing funding to cover the costs (e.g. the misnamed "No Child Left Behind" law that fails to provide funding for the mandates it requires).

Health care does tend to lag behind other industrialized countries. Public hospitals tend to be underfunded because out of control health costs (drugs that cost 3x what they do in other contries, financing systems so complicated that health system overhead such as clerks and profit payments eats a third or more of health spending).

Re:One example

[Mr. Underbridge]

Long distance service got cheaper. Since I rarely call anyone outside of my city, that's not much of a benefit for me.

It's a benefit for a lot of people.

Equipment got cheaper, since you could then provide your own (no reason why this couldn't have been done pre-breakup, in fact I often did so though it was technically forbidden).

Mainly because, since it was forbidden, no one sold it?

WE knew what it cost to send a guy with a truck to fix your phone, so they built (expensive) phones that wouldn't break over a 20 or 30 year lifetime. Nowdays all the phones are cheap crap that you're lucky if it lasts a year.

I see no proof that current phones don't last a while. And the old phones lasted forever because they were big, analog, featureless pieces of shit.

Actually, they work reasonably well in most places, in spite of politicians who pander for votes by promising to cut the taxes for their rich buddies. Public education tends to be underfunded, not because it wastes money teaching, but because the pols keep dumping additional social-service-agency jobs and requirements onto the schools without providing funding to cover the costs (e.g. the misnamed "No Child Left Behind" law that fails to provide funding for the mandates it requires).

No idea where you live, but if it's in the US and local schools are nice where you live it's because you're rich, plain and simple. That's not the case for most Americans.

Re:One example

[cayenne8]

"Actually, they work reasonably well in most places, in spite of politicians who pander for votes by promising to cut the taxes for their rich buddies."

Man...I don't know what ya'll consider RICH. I certainly don't consider $45K-$90K rich by any standards...especially if you are married and have kids.

Everyone I know in this bracket, are fully middle class...and we all got a tax break. People who PAY taxes, get tax BREAKS...those that do not work to pay taxes...don't get breaks. Simple, eh?

And, anyone with a real job...shouldn't have a problem with health care...If you work, you can have health insurance. Not that difficult. The school situation IS sad. It's not that money isn't being thrown at it...just that the $$'s are misused to support an overly bloated mgmt. level...with teachers and other's unions keeping a stranglehold on the system. Get rid of the unneeded overhead, pay for quality teacher...and don't teach to the lowest common denominator..and you'll see success in the schools.

Re:One example

[number11]

I certainly don't consider $45K-$90K rich by any standards...especially if you are married and have kids.

No, I wouldn't call that rich. And you already pay way less taxes than in almost any other industrialized nation in the world. I'm talking about stuff like the estate tax, which only affected people with enormous estates, not people like you. Taxes on income other than wages.

And, anyone with a real job...shouldn't have a problem with health care...If you work, you can have health insurance.

I know plenty of people who have jobs but no health insurance. Maybe you don't consider those jobs "real", but the people who do them sure as hell do. Maybe if we require all employers to offer the same level of health insurance to all employees. (Though frankly I don't think it should be the employer's job to provide health care, any more than it is to provide fire protection and police coverage.) Me, I'm self-employed, and I can't afford health insurance.

the $$'s are misused to support an overly bloated mgmt. level

Mandates from Congress where Congress doesn't provide the funding to fill them are a bigger problem. That crap eats budgets up. It's easy for Congress to say "you must do this" when they're not planning on paying for it. Such as the expensive "All Children Left Behind" testing. Such as services for disabled kids. Such as nutrition programs.

Re:One example

[number11]

It's a benefit for a lot of people.
Yup. Obviously not for me, though.

I see no proof that current phones don't last a while.
For suitable values of "a while". A year or two.

the old phones lasted forever because they were big, analog, featureless pieces of shit.
No, they lasted forever because they were well made. Of course their feature set was pretty much frozen when they were made. Now we have lots of features (most of which nobody uses) and a new crappy phone every year or two. (I'm not exempt.. I use the "redial" and CID buttons myself.) While I realize there are people whose lives will have a gaping hole in them if their phone doesn't have an Eminem ringtone, I'm not in that group.

Re:One example

[cayenne8]

"Me, I'm self-employed, and I can't afford health insurance."

I'm trying to break out in the indie. contractor world....from research I've done..for a single buy, insurance is only about $3K+ a year or so. That's NOT that much really....

Re:One example

[number11]

from research I've done..for a single buy, insurance is only about $3K+ a year or so

Depends. It wouldn't be such a problem if they gave that price to everyone. But they don't. Try telling them you're 60 and have health problems (say, diabetes and hypertension, common enough at that age, or breast cancer in remission), and see what that quote is. If they don't just hang up on you.

british infrastructure

[capicu]

the problem with britain is that most of our infrastructure dates back to the roman occupation: phone lines, hospitals, transport, city structure - just about everything. seriously though, bt is the typical sort of company - fine if you happen to be one of the 90% of people who fit perfectly into their model of how people should be, but if the slightest detail is out of sync you're in for a lot of work.

And what's with the payphones?!

[FatSean]

Some take cards, some take coins, you never seem to have the payment needed! I shoulda just bought a cheap pre-pay phone over there.

SBC is worse!

[cameronk]

As a fellow American, I must beg to differ. Last year, I moved across San Francisco from downtown to the Presidio. My new home has cat-5 in every room and a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. The first monday after moving in, I called SBC, receiving a quote for phone service and internet. At around $125 per month for flat rate domestic calling and a skinny broadband connection, the fastest available, I was pretty excited.
After placing my order, the salesperson transferred me to technical support to help move my number several miles. This did not seem relatively daunting, I have previously moved mobile numbers from Cingular (part of SBC) to T-Mobile and from People's to SmarTone (in HK) in either case taking less than a day or two. SBC has not yet figured out how to do this on their voice network. They did offer to let me keep the number at my old location and forward calls to my new location, for only $30 per month.
Eventually, SBC suggested that I port my number to another carrier which would allow them to port it back to my new location. This did not work either. My ultimate option was to port the number to Vonage, a service which has worked perfectly thank you.
My next problem started concurrently, getting stuck in SBC billing hell. With a flat rate phone plan, unlimited broadband and relatively few international calls, all of which were placed over the Vonage phone anyway, I expected a very stable bill. Unfortunately, over four monhts, my bill ran from ~$170 to over $500, all far more than SBC quoted in their original sales pitch. Attempts at sorting out billing problems cost hours and hours of time waiting on hold.
Eventually, I gave up. SBC claimed I had signed some contract, which I have not, something they are unable to produce. They would not allow me to cancel my DSL service or move lines to another carrier. Given that my number was already in the trusty hands of Vonage, I simply ordered two more voip lines. I called Comcast and their sales agent personally brought over a cable modem within an hour. (Talk about incredible service!)
Moral of the story: I'm not paying SBC one red cent, have boradband that is nearly 10x faster and have a higher quality phone service. My total communications bill, including television, is now less than $100 per month.
I must respectfully disagree with all of the wankers who feel that America should really serve as a model for telecommunications policy.

Problems like this exist everywhere

[Kookus]

The US doesn't have it all that great either. Yes you can break down the steps needed to get broadband into 2, but let's say you goto college. You end up moving into an apartment every year, and each year you are joined with 10,000+ other individuals who also want broadband. Well... they (comcast) don't allow you to just install the cable modem yourself, they have to have a techie come out and help you plug it in, even if the previous occupants had the same service and nothing was changed except that you don't have the damn cable modem... Do the math. 1 techie can do how many people in a day? On average it took us 2 months each year to get broadband. :/ That was until our leaser got smart and put in their own network hooked to the campus, then we could just plug our stuffs into the wall! Another great story is cell phones! I had sprint for 2 "lovely" years. I could only make calls outside of buildings, and not too far away from big cities. I switched to verizon, got my phone, got my service plan, just needed to get my phone number switched over. I didn't like the idea of giving it up. Well.... My family at the time with sprint was on one of those family share plans. So the main account holder was my father, but he had already changed to another carrier. I call in to cancel my service. "hello" yadda yadda "what's your name? and last 4 digits of your social security number?" I give those up. "I'm sorry that is incorrect!" WHAT?!? okokok I see maybe I need my fathers name and soc.... I gave those... "I'm sorry that is incorrect!" WHAT?!? no it ISN'T! whose name is on the account? is it (insert all family names in there) "I'm sorry we can't divulge that information. After 4 phone calls, each boiling my blood more and more I finally blew up and told them off. Then on the 5th phone call I finally guessed the right combination of names and soc numbers. It was my father's name. My sister's soc number, and MY phone number. The damn idiots mixed our information up and created a new person. TRY GETTING YOUR PHONE NUMBER NOW HAHAH! omg, Sprint can go die for all I care, I will never let anyone in my family go to them ever again!

The system is fundamentally flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

It is in BT's interest to make it as difficult as possible to deal with a third party ISP as BT sells their OWN BROADBAND SERVICE.

Dealing with a third party ISP (for a DSL connection) in the uk is one of the most frustrating things I have ever had to do. The ISP blames BT who in turn blames the ISP and round and round you go. The customer service of both the ISP's (Demon in particular) and BT is simply appalling.

I challenge any business to move premises, have there broadband switched off at the old site the day they leave, and switched on at the new site the day they arrive. This SHOULD be a relatively simple task. We have, however, done this twice in the recent past and no matter how much planning, explaining, etc is done beforehand, it is impossible to make happen.

Actually thinking about it, BT's own home internet service is not much better. You simply cannot move house without first cancelling your existing account and then reapplying from your new house. In short this means a couple of week's minimum without broadband. WHY IS THIS SO ?? WHAT IS THE REASON FOR THIS ??

It shows how little I think of BT when I have switched to NTL because they have better customer service !! and everyone in the uk knows what a useless set of w***** they can be at times.

BT needs a kick up the arse from the regulator. The system is burocratic (sometimes deliberately) to the extreme.

Oh and also, the original article is in no way xenophobic or patronizing.

Re:The system is fundamentally flawed

[doppleganger871]

This is why 3-way calling would be ideal. Put both of them on the phone and let them fight it out with each other. I've actually done that with another company, i dont remember what companies I had on the phone, but I told them that it wasn't MY Problem, and that YOU two should sort it out, so get to it.

Re:Let's review...Where the horror ?

[biglig2]

For those British readers wondering what the hell the RMV or HMO are, the RMV is the American version of the DVLA.

HMO is a bit harder to translate. Think of what it would be like if you had to deal with a billing department whenever you used the NHS and you'll get the idea.

Lucas Electronics again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont tell me.. DONT.

British telecom is made by Lucas Electronics.
Makers of fine british refgerators,
and automobile electrical supplies.

Joseph Lucas, Prince of Darkness.

Nice to see it isn't just an American thing

[ebvwfbw]

Here us American's thought we had stupid people working at customer service for the phone companies in the US. You know, screwing up orders, giving you a big old hassle and taking a week to turn on a line that is already connected. All it takes is a little command on the computer but NOOOOOOO, take a week to do it. No rationale for it either.

#include "bitch"
#include "moan"
#include "blame_government"

I Once Wanted to Live in America...

[Makarakalax]

Call me crazy, but as a fairly socially libreal/libertarian UK citizen, it shocks me what people in the US put up with. The DMCA? The family entertainment copyright bill? Infinite copyrights for lovable animated mice? A president whose facial expressions are hilarious?

But anyway, here in the UK taxes seem reasonable to me. I have to pay for society afterall.

Healthcare seems fine.

I don't notice the cameras really.

Yeah the bureacuracy sucks.

TV Licenses are cheap and the result is great, advert-free, TV, great radio stations and a great bbc online resource. At the very least it pays for Doctor Who.

Speed Cameras make it less likely that some speeding arsehole will get me killed, and don't bother me because I don't break the speed limit! The fines aren't much really, I think it's the 3 points on the license that hurt.

I don't mind cameras, speed cameras, etc. Who the fuck cares if they're getting watched? I'd much rather be safe on the streets and the roads, which I believe these cameras assist.

Re:I Once Wanted to Live in America...

[narf]

A president whose facial expressions are hilarious?

He only makes those expressions because Blair's nose keeps tickling his prostate.

HomeChoice

[nigel_atkinson]

"I ruled out HomeChoice, a nifty little ISP which provides up to 2-Mbit DSL, phone service, and PVR-like TV-over-IP services because the set-top box that the company provides is apparently difficult to integrate into an existing network."

I agree with Matthew, this statement is plain wrong. The HomeChoice set-top box presents both RJ45 and USB interfaces for DSL. The only problem for a non-technical user is that the network interface provides an unfirewalled connection on a live internet address.

Step-by-step guide to safe(r) surfing:

Step 1: Purchase Firewall/NAT Router/Switch/DHCP combo (mine is also a WiFi access point).
Step 2: Plug it into the mains.
Step 3: Insert one end of the supplied CAT5 cable into the RJ45 socket on the HomeChoice set-top box.
Step 4: Insert other end of cable into the switch.
Step 5: Connect devices to switch.
Step 6: Enjoy video on demand through your TV while waiting for that large BitTorrent to complete.

Re:HomeChoice

[writertype]

Mark Hachman here.

I based that comment off of user forums and DSLReports.com. Apparently I'm mistaken, which is good news. I'll have to check with them and see how long it takes to implement their service, though. Bulldog told me it would take six weeks to put the service in (which involves switching the line over from BT). Trying to publish a Web site on dialup is quite painful.

Again, however, my thanks. You can also reach me at mark_hachman@ziffdavis.com if you'd like to fill me in offline, as it were.

Blame Thatcher and the Conservatives

[Dogtanian]

I think the trouble was the privatisation was most heinously botched.

Blame Maggie Thatcher. A lot of what was later tagged "Thatcherism" as some sort of philosophy was actually more the consequences of political expediency than any idealism.

In the case of BT, the Tories wanted the money. They could have privatised it properly (i.e. such that there was a genuine free market), or they could have done it quickly, giving us the worst of both worlds- a private monopoly that required lots of regulation and was still crap.

They chose to do it quickly, because they wanted the money. All that "free-market" crap was tacked on as justification. If they'd meant it, they would have taken the long but effective route.

Competition? Ha ha. Remember those Mercury phone booths that appeared in the early 90s(?) and disappeared not too long afterwards? That was your lot. It took 15 years for any sort of competition to reach your average consumer, and as we can see, it's still reliant on BT.

Thanks Maggie.

Re:Blame Thatcher and the Conservatives

[timmyf2371]

On the subject of free markets, British Telecom asked Thatcher and the UK Government in the 1980s if they could deliver fiber to every property in the UK allowing a wide range of facilities, but were told no due to competition rules.

Re:Blame Thatcher and the Conservatives

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of crap. You have no idea what you are talking about. Before privatisation, in order to get a phone lines you had to get into a waiting list and you'd get your line several months later if BT (or the GPO as it then known) could be bothered to come round at all. Not only that, but you were not allowed to connect your own telephone to the line - it had to be one provided by BT. Most people rented their identical phones for extortionate prices. Call prices were far far higher than now, especially for international calls. If you want to see real shite service, go to the continent to see how these marvellous state owned companies treat their customers. I recently had a phone line changed in France. It took them 5 (yes five) months to have me connected. For a couple of those months they claimed that my line was not a real phone line at all, but a public phone box! In the UK, BT staff at least pretend to be polite. With France Telecom, they are openly rude and obstructive and expect you to be grateful when they finally see fit to do something for you. To see how privatisation and competition has benefitted the UK, just compare our mobile service where we have around 7 operators to, say France, which has only 3. The service in the UK is inifinitely superior and the prices about half.

Re:Blame Thatcher and the Conservatives

[X-101]

On the subject of free markets, British Telecom asked Thatcher and the UK Government in the 1980s if they could deliver fiber to every property in the UK allowing a wide range of facilities, but were told no due to competition rules.

Not true. In the 80's BT did in fact install fibre optic cable extensively on their backbone. What they asked the government for was additional public subsidies to install fibre optic cable on the "last mile" from the exchanges into people's home. This would have cost a fortune and would also have destroyed the fledgling cable companies (which was part of the reason for asking for this subsidy).

Re:Blame Thatcher and the Conservatives

[Dogtanian]

Let's get one thing straight; I'm not really old enough to remember the pre-privatisation days, but I'm perfectly willing to accept that the GPO/BT was crap then.

Your rebuttal is flawed because it assumes that I was anti-privatisation and/or considered the results to be worse to what they were before. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this isn't intentional straw-man tactics; but go back and read the post again.

I'll also assume that you weren't attempting a false dichotomy (half-arsed privatisation vs. incompetent public ownership being the choice we are presented with). Of course, the GPO were indirectly under the control of the government beforehand; the same government that privatised BT. I doubt they were that motivated to improve the performance of the GPO-owned BT; that would provide a case against privatisation.

My gripe was that the quick-n'-dirty privatisation resulted in a private monopoly that didn't do what it claimed to do and required extensive regulation.

If they'd done the job properly, the free market should have evolved much quicker. Does *anyone* consider BT to be the right way to do a privatisation?

Obviously those that marked my original post "flamebait" did.

Re:Blame Thatcher and the Conservatives

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll also assume that you weren't attempting a false dichotomy (half-arsed privatisation vs. incompetent public ownership being the choice we are presented with).

In a (non existant) ideal world, they would have taken a decade to unbundle the whole of BT and only then privatised it. However, in the real world, you have to get things done in a politically acceptable way.

BT was the first of the big privatisations and it had to be done in a practical timeframe. Furthermore, the breakup of, what was at the time Europe's biggest telco, was certainly not politically acceptable in this context.

It is not a false dichotomy. There was a choice of privatisation in, more or less, the way it was done, or no privatisation at all of BT or, if this had failed, any other big state company.

If you look across the world, every telco privatisation has largely followed the BT model because nobody has come up with a better solution. Sure, it's not perfect, but it achieved the bulk of what was intended.

That doesn't mean that the process is complete. We have more and more alternatives to BT coming onstream: LLU, cable, 3G and other wireless variants like WiMax. As these alternatives mature, the problem of BT's fixed line dominance will be greatly diminished.

Re:Blame Thatcher and the Conservatives

[Dogtanian]

Yes; what you say is correct to some extent. The privatisation was more likely to succeed if they did not split BT up, and they sold it in a manner highly likely to make it a success (IIRC it was sold pretty damn cheaply).

If memory serves correctly, one of the later privatisations was a relative failure; this couldn't be allowed to happen with BT.

Nevertheless, I don't consider a private monopoly to be in any way desirable. You missed my point about the false dichotomy; there were two other alternatives- to privatise it properly (arguably an ideal rather than something practical) or to keep it government-owned, but *run the damn thing properly*.

I accept that it would have been impossible to create a 'perfect' market in a reasonable time-frame, but I still think they could have done it better. Whether this would have been politically expedient is debatable.

However, I consider 15 years or for any notable competition to arrive to be one *heck* of a long time.

You say that we have "more and more alternatives to BT coming onstream". Yes, we do. However, that's 21 years later. The children born at the time of the privatisation will now be graduating university... ideally, I'd like to see results quicker than that.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those errors about wrong VPI/VCI numbers happen when the driver receives corrupted ATM packets (often a telco h/w problem). The original poster said the ADSL worked ok for 7 months, which means the ADSL was set up with the correct VPI/VCI numbers.

please, no more shit

[misterpies]

Is it possible to mod down a story?

Sheesh. One guy has a bad install (mostly caused by his landlord, it seems), and it's generalised into a country-wide experience.

First, factual errors galore.:

"As I understand it, there are a certain number of fixed telephone lines in Britain. These lines are highly prized, as each homeowner leases the line from British Telecom"

Clearly, he doesn't understand it. He makes it sound like people have to fight with their neighbours to get a line! I think his information was last updated circa 1980, when it was true everywhere in the world. If you want a new line, all you do is phone up BT (or another operator in your area - yes, they do exist to correct another error) and they will add one. Ah, the magic of digital exchanges.

"Each homeowner must politely ask British Telecom for a number, and only one number may be given out per line."

As explained, BT is no longer a monopoly (it has a local monopolyin some areas, but I recall that Bell Atlantic had a monopoly when I lived in Boston so that's hardly UK-specific). And to say "only one number can be given out per line" - duh, that's how a line is defined. It does NOT mean that only one number is available per address. All you do is call BT or whoever and explain you want more "lines".

"For reference, let's review the procedure for obtaining broadband in the U.S. Step #1: Call up your cable or DSL provider, walk through the options, and decide what you want. Step #2: Receive and install the modem, or have an installer do it for you."

So he's not comparing like-with-like. First he spends a page whinging about how long it took him to get a phone line. Then he compares it to the US situation _starting from the point where he already has a phone line_.

Let's have a like-for-like comparison, please. What is the process for getting broadband in California when you just moved into an apartment, the landlord previously had broadband and only asked his provider to switch the day he moved out, and you didn't do anything about it until the day you moved in?

For the record, I've had BT Broadband for over 3 years, including one move of house, and no problems. I just called them up and ordered it, and a few days later there it was.

anyway here's a little tip for our friend, which may even be of use in the USA: If you are moving house, why not call up the relevant service providers a week or two BEFORE YOU MOVE, tell them your moving date and ask them to have it ready for when you arrive. Of course, the problem then is tht Slashdot is unlikely to publish your "my dream installation" story.

Re:please, no more shit

[JaxWeb]

Good Post! =D

The Psychology of Attracting BT Engineers

[evilandi]

>>their engineers will only come out between 9am-5pm Mon-Fri.
>Technically not true. They have early-shift and late-shift engineers, and the former can work pretty early in the morning. But you have to find your way through the incredible, Byzantine, almost unreal tangle of red tape

...or...

When you arrange the engineer's visit, insist that the operator puts "CUSTOMER WILL SUPPLY BACON SANDWICH" on the call details.

I have used this trick twice now. First call of the morning (08:30) every time. One of the guys actually drove a 30 mile round trip back to HQ to pick up a spare part and come back to me, after being fed a bacon sandwich and promised more.

Seriously, you have to be aware than BT engineers get allocated a whole heap of calls for the day, then they get to choose which ones to do in which order. The ones they leave until later will probably get postponed as they run late.

Therefore you need to make your call the attractive one which the engineer picks first.

All BT engineers like bacon sandwiches. There are NO vegitarian BT engineers. You need calories and protein to climb telephone poles.

Next, the most important question when the engineer arrives is "Tea or coffee, milk and sugar?". Once you have your engineer, you want to keep him on your side. Your anger with the bureacracy of BT means nothing to him, if you get feisty he can just pretend he doesn't have the part and will have to come back tomorrow (ie. you get marked as troublesome and always get picked last each day).

Re:The Psychology of Attracting BT Engineers

[kahei]

I was, of course, aware of the magnetic attraction that sugar, salt and grease hold for the British technician. I didn't realize, though, that you could ask the call center to annotate the request.

I will try your suggestion. Soon engineer requests will look like this:

#1357726 Line from local p.c. suspected broken. BACON SANDWICHES AVAILABLE. WE PROVIDE TEA!! DON'T DO 26 Elm Gardens first! He is crotchety! Also, we guarantee that if you come before 8:30 our daughter will answer the door (subject to availability).

Re:The Psychology of Attracting BT Engineers

[scharkalvin]

Why does this sound like something Douglas Addams
would have written?

Douglas Adams...

[mark0]

So, am I the only one old enough to remember DNA's game Bureaucracy? Apparently, it was inspired by a very similar experience...

Who owns the roads?

[Colin Smith]

The lines as I see it are like roads, or like electricity wires. It's in the local/national interest that they are of a good quality and can handle the load but after that what services you run over them is up to commercial providers. Giving a commercial company a monopoly on the lines, or roads is, well, anti free market.

Sounds familar: Telstra

[sr180]

Sounds exactly like the sort of thing Australia's government run telecomms monopoly would do, Telstra. (Or better known as Helstra, or Tel$tra or ripoff merchants.)

There best effort for me was watching a Telstra tech out on the street playing in the Telecomms pit. He accidently disconnected an E1 (30 digital phone lines) of ours at work. I noticed it go down so immediately went out to speak to him.

He realised what he had done and appologised. I asked him to fix it, he said he wasnt able to do that, and Id have to ring Telstra and lodge a fault. But HE broke it! Not me! Sorry, but he couldnt raise a fault or escalate it.

So I ring Telstra in a bad mood. We have a few decent service contracts with them, so it shouldnt be a problem. No worries, I ring telstra and lodge the fault. The woman on the other end of the phone mentions that they will have to Test the line and that it would take FOUR HOURS. But the tech is already there! Call him. He will tell you that its broken and exactly what the problem is. Sorry, they cant do that, they have to test it and you WILL have to wait 4 hours. (Meanwhile we are short 30 phone lines.)

I get a call in four hours, that yes the E1 is down (no shit sherlock!) and they will need to send a Tech out. But there is a tech already here! Anyway, three hours later and another tech arrives, but he sees the first tech in the pit still, so he leaves. Another call to Telstra sees him come back. The tech then speaks with the first tech and decides that he cant do anything that the first tech cant, so we need a DATA technician. Guess what, I need to call tesltra again. Why me?

But heres the best bit, Its now very late on a friday, because of all their time wasting antics, so a Data Technician wont be able to come out to MONDAY. A weekend with out the E1 we desperately have to have in our crucial period.

When we did get our data tech out, it took 30 minutes of him scratching his head, and 30 seconds to do something in the exchange to fix it.

Monopolies suck.

Re:Think that's bad? Try NTL. - Virgin Broadband

[davids-world.com]

Similar story with Virgin Broadband, who is re-selling DSL via BT end-points and the NTL network. It was absolutely awful, and I was without a connection for more than a month, after it worked initially.

Call center agents were incompetent and simply didn't do their job. In the end I had to send them a 3-page letter, mentioning the telecoms watchdog (they are member of some ombudsman service and Virgin would get charged a case fee in case it's used), to get them to apologize and refund some money.

The only way I got my broadband back was by re-ordering on a different line, and waiting for two weeks.

Unfortunately, I don't see why other services would be any better.

Well, that's the problem with monopolies

[Moraelin]

The instant someone _can_ milk a cash cow, they _will_ milk it. It's their duty to shareholders and all that. You just can't expect a company to think "we now own the whole market, so we'll be nice, provide a good service for the minimum fee to recoup our costs, and gladly share it all with our competitors". It's just not how capitalism works.

Which is why I wonder what they were smoking when they created those monopolies to start with.

They've been struggling to make them play nice ever since. Me, I wonder what gave them the idea that you can expect a monopoly to play nice.

Re:Well, that's the problem with monopolies

[mikael]

They weren't smoking anything - the political parties were being told what to do by investors - "Run your country according to these rules, otherwise we will lower your international credit rating". Not forgetting the donations of several million $$$$ for the next election battle.
At this time, broadband didn't exist - and ISDN was for businesses only, so the only requirement by the regulator for home telephone services was to maintain existing services, continue upgrading all exchanges to system X and maintain 24/7 emergency telephone service.

Hah

[Anonymous Coward]

And people said Hitchhiker's Guide was supposed to be about a Brit dumbfoundedly wandering through the USA, when in fact it was a Brit dumbfoundedly wandering through Britain.

These people are Vogons.

Just another self-centered american complaining!

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't bother to find out how things work. Expects the world to be just like the USA. Come on folks, nothing important here!
./ is an old spinster network.

Same deal in the US...

[b0bby]

If you want to ditch Verizon you have to go through the same stuff here. I switched from Speakeasy + Verizon to Cavtel recently & was without DSL for 3 weeks; first I had to cancel Speakeasy, then wait for Verizon to clear the line before I could even place my order with Cavtel. I've lived in the UK, so I hate BT as much as the next guy, but don't kid yourself that dealing with Verizon is any easier.

Every Brit has a BT horror story...

[dj1471]

I think every Brit who has tried to work with BT, especially as a business customer, has their own BT horror story. Here's mine:

The company I was working for ordered 1MB broadband. We are on a reasonably rural exchange which had only very recently been upgraded to support it. So we ordered it and was informed that an engineer would come and check the line, as they weren't sure whether we were too far from the exchange or not. So the engineer came, said "you're fine mate" and off he went. "Great" I thought, I'll be surfing by the end of the week. A week and no broadband later, I called the ISP to be told that the BT line test had failed, despite the engineer telling me otherwise. So I called BT. Now some of the Brits here may have heard the rumour that some technical people work at BT, and if you say the right combination of words to the right customer service advisor, they'll put you through to them. Alas, this failed and I ended up at "Business Purchasing" of all places. The guy I spoke to promised to look into it and call me back by the end of the day. A collegue also called the company's account manager at BT, who also promised to look into it and call back. Of course, neither of them did, but that's fairly typical. I now know to make a point of asking for their full name, so they know that you know who they are and can complain to their manager if they don't do what they promise.

Anyway, a week later a broadband modem and BT connection kit arrived, which they intended to charge us for as well as a monthly fee for their own broadband service. Now, we didn't order broadband from BT's ISP, so I called BT to be told that I must have ordered it. My protests of never having done so and not even having the authority to do so within the company fell upon deaf ears. I must have ordered it, even if I say I didn't. So I cancelled the order "I" had made and gave up. Clearly the slime-ball I spoke to at Business Purchasing had made it to get a commission.

I complained by e-mail, to be told that I had asked the rep I spoke to to order it, in order for a new line test to be done. Which of course I hadn't, nor would I, because it's a silly idea. I suggested they listen to the recording of the conversation (guessing that they record all calls). The next e-mail I received was very apologetic and I was promised that steps would be taken to ensure it could never happen again.

That didn't fix the broadband line test issue however and in the end we gave up fighting BT and went for a lower speed.

Re:Let's review...Where the horror ?

[Anonymous Coward]

HMO is a bit harder to translate. Think of what it would be like if you had to deal with a billing department whenever you used the NHS and you'll get the idea.

<troll>Wait... you mean your health service has a billing department?</troll>

Re:Just another self-centered american complaining

[Anita Coney]

Yeah, how idiotic to expect people to actually do their jobs. And how dare we expect bureaucracies to run smoothly. We're just a bunch of arogant pricks over here in the US. We should respect different cultures.

Re:Think that's bad? Try NTL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, mod parent /informative/, dammit.

Faults on the line...

[cthrall]

> (Do we even have "faults" on the line in the
> U.S.?)

Yes...it took two or three visits to get my line noise cleaned up. Nevermind the amazingly poor performance of the Verizon DSL once I got it going...like 28k speed or less. And it took about eight calls to Verizon to get them to change the name and address in all their computers.

what?

[hostylocal]

sounds to me like he was just unlucky... he had some 'extraordinary' requirements that bt couldn't resolve because they suffer from the same problems that any large company has - one hand doesn't know what the other one is doing. i've been a bt customer from _years_ and had bb from them since they first activated the service. i ordered bb, they delivered on the day they said they would. they've upgraded the service and recuded the price to at least appear competative - i'm now paying was i used to pay for 512k for 2mb and i have never had a single days downtime that was caused by bt... touch wood. i've had a fault on the line before, but that it just what they tell customers. my particular 'fault' was caused by an 'engineer' unplugging something at the local exchange. everyone gets crappy service now and again but that's no reason to go whining about it on the net. unless you can gather an army of like minded customers and start your own website....

How can phone connection take so long ...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>> "it took a month and a half to get the damn phones connected"

When we moved into our current house we went with BT as they could connect us in 2 weeks, NTL said 3-4 weeks.

Funny thing is that we had cables for both services already present. In fact since my TV aerial blew down a couple of years ago I've been using an NTL signal which they are happily piping into my house.

So, as the NTL cable is clearly connected and active, what is it that takes 3-4 weeks to do. Must be the "bollock juggling"???!

Surely the phone operative can go to my address on their operations program and click the activate service button in about 15 seconds. Or does it not work like that?

I would really like to know.

I understand that there are service standards and line checks, but could they not connect and say ... "service may be degradated until we can check the line", or something.

Try living in Australia...

[silent77]

This guy doesn't know pain. IF he was a real man he'd move to Australia and deal with the UK debacle x 10! And that's on a good day! Changing ISPs? No chrun process? Telstra refusing to remove speed codes? The avg. process can take up to three weeks. Moving from a Telstra DSLAM to an Internode ADSL2+ DSLAM in the SAME exchange? Try 4 months. And even then, you could be looking at a reconnection fee. Sigh.

Re:Try living in Australia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try moving from Australia to UK and going around and around in circles.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148945&thresho ld=-1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&cid=1248917 3

Culture Clash

[verloren]

So much of this article seems to be based in a lack of understanding of a foreign system, rather than flaws with the system itself (not that there aren't any of course).

When I first moved to the US we had similar problems with all manner of things. We had to arrange for a phone company, and once we had one we had to get another one to speak to people a long way away.

We had to take our driving tests again (fair enough), but the test was conducted on a large empty car park with stripes for roads (and then I lost a point because I wasn't paying sufficient attention to other traffic - what traffic, there's only us here!)

We had to buy insurance to make sure that the house we owned wasn't actually someone else's house.

We had to pick an amount of insurance we wanted for our car. How do I know how much insurance I need? Should I be carefully to only crash with Yugos?

The list goes on, but the point is that while the system may be odd, it's primarily my lack of familiarity that causes problems.

Re:Think that's bad? Try NTL.

[VStrider]

Laughing-Out-Loud !! Funniest thing i read today :-D

What's this talk of 2/4/8 Mbit... 24Mbit...

[silent77]

Surely the UK and US would have at least... http://www.internode.on.net/adsl2/index.htm I've been using 24Mbit for a while...

And while you are about it

[Epeeist]

Oxford is not in London, Manchester is not in London and Edinburgh isn't in London either.

It's not all bad

[Fusen]

with the recent take up of LLU, Easynet are paving the way forward atm with their 8MB service. at only £29.99 it's about as expensive as BT's 2MB service. Now that LLU is finally get a foothold and ADSL2 being tested on the UK lines I don't think we will have too many problems with speed... unless you happen to live in the countryside. if that's the case then your buggered :(

Nobody is ever at fault...

[SilentJ_PDX]

I've lived in Britain for the last 4 years and I can say the guy's experience is not normal, but it certainly happens frequently.

The British way of privitizing a monopoly is to sell the infrastructure to one company and give several other companies the right to sell service. On the rail network, Network Rail owns the tracks and several train companies provide service. The phone service is similar: one large arm of BT owns the lines and another arm of BT competes with several other telephone companies to provide service to consumers (the "phone service" BT has several restrictions on how it may cooperate with the "line-owning" BT).

Unfortunately, these arrangments mean that problems are always blamed on the other company. If your telephone doesn't work, BT will blame the phone company for a computer fault and the phone company will blame BT for a bad connection. When the trains are late, Network Rail blames the train company for poor train service and the train company blames Network Rail for poor tracks. It's much like how software developers will blame Microsoft for compatibility problems and MS will blame the software developers for a poorly-written application.

In the end, you're stuck trying to deal with two companies that both claim they're not at fault. It's no fun and it usually takes ages to get problems fixed.

(* In the US, monopolies tend to get broken into smaller monopolies: AT&T was broken into several smaller companies that had monopolies in their (smaller) service area. To me, the British system seems fairer but the US system seems to work better for the consumer in practice. Those of you who have a bad experience with your US cable/phone/electricity supplier will probably disagree... but if you haven't lived in England, I don't know how you could compare.)

Try Shaw

[ArbitraryConstant]

You should try Shaw if you ever find yourself in Canada. They are, in my experience, awesome.

It took approximately 17 hours from when I first contacted them to when I was up and running. I hadn't even started unpacking yet, it was just me on a mattress on the floor with my little iBook, a modem in the wall, and piles of stuff everywhere.

Shaw's business tech support people were a breath of fresh air. Long experience has taught me that you've gotta go through the script on a supported OS before you can make them believe it's their fault. No sense in complaining, the support people don't make policy. Just do it with a minimum of fuss and you can talk to someone in a position to do something about it sooner.

I was ready to connect my iBook instead of my firewall box (obviously this problem occured after I unpacked), but they understood what I had done to diagnose the problem and agreed with my assesment (I imagine they confirmed my results on their end). Also they had heard of OpenBSD, which is probably the only time that has happened to me.

Telus on the other hand... After what it took to get the bloody phone connected, I'm not touching their Internet service.

Re:Try Shaw

[Anonymous Coward]

As anecdotal evidence, I offer that over the past couple of years, most of the geeks in our (computer services company) office have moved one by one from Telus to Shaw. Shaw can on occasion be annoying. Telus induces something akin to road rage.

Re:Try Shaw

[ArbitraryConstant]

Indeed.

I had a problem that was messing up my connection (random packet loss), and after a month of not having it fixed they basically told me they didn't expect me to pay for the service until they had it fixed. It was annoying, but the price was right.

They're in it for the long haul. They know that making me happy is going to be paying off for years when Telus won't offer the same quality of service.

Re:Try Shaw

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> Telus on the other hand...

That might be the right hand of Satan, I think. My last interaction with them ended with the customer service(?!) rep, politely and helpfully informing me that they could not help me, and that if the manager of the store where the phone was purchased would not act, my only option was to write the governing body to complain (CRTC).

Thanks Telus, for a phone that goes out of service in downtown Toronto, In rural Ontario, in my living room, in... you get the Idea.

Re:Try Shaw

[l8f57]

You can then imagine my pleasure when, a few years ago the area that I live in (Durham Region, Ontario) was serviced by Shaw. They made a deal with the devil (rogers), and switched. My service was immediatly broken, and did not really ever work right again.

Re:Try Shaw

[Type-R]

Telus on the other hand...

Oh if only I had a nickel for everytime I heard a horror story start with that phrase. Telus and their resellers like Interbaun, offer up tech support and service that makes you realize how smart feces flinging monkeys are. I mean at least the monkeys actually fling poo, Interbaun, for a 4 month period couldn't get more then 65% of thier packets in our out of their network. The response from both Interbaun and Telus was thousands of words amounting to an image of someone trying to pick there nose, missing, stabing themselves in the eye and going "Ahhh, durrrr."

And yes, Shaw does kick ass as far as home and small business links go. They aren't perfect (nobody is), but they get it right most of the time. That might be somewhat colored by the fact that I switched from Telus, but at least I'd trust Shaw to be able to find their own ass with a GPS and two hands.

Re:Try Shaw

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been really happy with Shaw but for the last three months or so the actual service has blown mightily. eMule is currently pulling a whopping 1.1kB/s session average (3 Days, 1:1 ratio) and their DNS could be very charitably described as sketchy. I thought it might be my router or my segment but I was over in West Van and saw virtually identical performance on my friend's system. He's not running p2p so I don't have real throughput figures but "slow as a slug on Seconal" looks about the same no matter what you are running.

Unless Fido HS covers me, it looks like I'm going to have to choose between customer service and IP service. At least I've already got 'Net so I can surf (sort of...as long as it's not during prime time...and I don't try to actually do broadbandy things at the same time) while I wait.

(fwiw I dropped several times while writing this).

Heh, at least he has a chance of GETTING DSL.

[Gldm]

Try South Africa's Telkom. Here you can't get DSL without a 3GB per month cap. Of course local traffic and your uploads count on your cap. No you can't get another ISP because all ISPs just resell their lines. You can get DSL that cuts off 3 days into the month if you play onlne games, or you can get 56K and have 1800ms pings to everywhere. Yay.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Humo(u)r

[SilentJ_PDX]

The organisation of phone companies in the UK sucks and it makes the problems described in the article all too frequent. They're not the norm, but they still happen significantly more often than they should.

The article was a rant... You've got to forgive a few of it's worst moments (like the "faults" line you quoted) to see the point it's making.

Re:Cannot send mail properly on £1000/quarte

[bananasfalklands]

BT had a 'big computer' stolen from Hertfordshire. There was no reverse dns for a lot of that time I hope you we not trying to send to aol?.

Reverse dns was a feature that also never existed according to there staff.

The chap you ring when cancel BT will undertand your problems its a bit late then though.

Re:Almost

[symbolic]

I laughed while I was reading the article, because nearly the exact scenario happened with us (here in the U.S.) as we were trying to transfer the provision of DSL service from AOL to Qwest. Because each one decided to point the finger at the other, it took several weeks of phone calls, several promises on their part, my increasiug ire, and finally, someone who decided that it might be a good idea to actually do their job and get things take care of. The whole experience was quite nasty, but unfortunately, not all that surprising.

Re: Faults on US lines

[shm]

I hang on a mailing list where there are a lot of retired AT&T 5E guys. The last few weeks has seen a lot of email where these guys are diagnosing faults on their own home lines and then presumably calling up the service provider (Verizon?) to explain exactly what's wrong with the line.

So (1), there are faults on US lines. The author of TFA is way wrong on that and (2), the guys who might possibly be able to fix the problems all got laid off.

How about this one...

[Gid1]

I have a "disconnected" (ie. unsubscribed) BT line in my rented flat in Central London. I don't really want or need a telephone service, as I use my mobile exclusively. However, I do want the Bulldog 8 Mb/s service. To provide a broadband service, Bulldog have to take over the line completely, connect it to their equipment at the exchange and also supply me with a traditional PSTN voice service.

To do this, Bulldog tell me that I need to reconnect and subscribe to BT (for a few hundred pounds) just so it can then be _unsubscribed_ and transferred to Bulldog.

OR, Bulldog can install a new line independent of the existing wiring, which will involve cables going everywhere, and hassles with my landlord and probably the freeholder of the building.

In other words, Bulldog can't reactivate a previously BT line. This is no criticism of Bulldog (although I have a whole bunch of those too, mainly as a result of having a SDSL service with them at work last year). In fact, the Bulldog sales guy mentioned that they are trying to get OFCOM to change this situation.

Oh, and don't suggest going to BT for the broadband service. I made that mistake at my last place!

BT could, if they were nice, just free the line for Bulldog to reconnect: it's probably just one menu option on their system. However, they're holding it hostage just because they can.

The other problem is that when dealing with this, BT acts like a lot of little companies (eg. BT Wholesale, BT Broadband, BT Residential, etc) which slows everything down. In fact, last time we had a line fitted at work (a leased line), three different BT vans turned up at the same time, from different departments.

So, sod it. Instead I rigged up a firmware-hacked, power-output-boosted, parabolic-dished wireless link to my office, blasting a reasonably good 2 Mb/s through my neighbour's bedroom at waist height. I don't think he's noticed yet, or tried to reproduce.

Parent is absolutely right

[metamatic]

Yes, the exact same problems can occur in the USA. I know someone who was not only without broadband, but was without a phone line at all, because the existing line was marked as belonging to someone who had moved out ages ago, and they had no idea how to contact him to get him to transfer it.

Sure, British Telecom are crap. But phone companies in general are crap, including US ones.

It's also amusing to see Americans preening about the supposed deregulation of the US market. I tried to experience the joys of deregulation last month when I moved into my new house, and found that the telephone market where I live had been deregulated into a complete monopoly owned by a single company--just like in England.

Yes, I had a choice of broadband providers--I could go with the cable monopoly or the telephone monopoly. It's the same in England, if you have cable available.

here's one reason: backups

[EvilStein]

I have boxes in a colo in San Francisco, and I live in the south Bay Area. My cable modem hits 4mbit. I have a linux box at home with ample storage that I use to run rsync backups of data that's in the colo.

Over a monthly period, that'll easily hit 30gb.

Re:here's one reason: backups

[sydb]

In your capacity as a private individual you have the funds for colocated servers => you can afford a leased line.

Re:here's one reason: backups

[EvilStein]

Says who?

T1 = $550/mo
Cable modem = $45

Big difference, and I get over 2x the incoming bandwidth.

Re:here's one reason: backups

[sydb]

Excuse me while I find the part of my post that says "T1 is about the same price as cable modem"...

...

No I can't find it.

So fuck if T1 is 5 times the price of cable. If you can afford colocated servers (plural) for personal use, then you can either afford a T1 or you can buy a tape drive.

Re:here's one reason: backups

[EvilStein]

And you have exactly how much knowledge about what I'm doing?

Oh, that's right...you have none at all.

Buhbye, troll.

Re:here's one reason: backups

[sydb]

FFS.

My original question was: what would you be doing that required > 30Gb a month.

So of course I have no idea what you are doing!! Otherwise I wouldn't ask!!

Un-fucking-believable.

Re:here's one reason: backups

[EvilStein]

Uh, and I answered the original question. Pulling data off of machines that are in a colo. You said something stupid about getting a T1 and that if I can afford a colo, then I can afford a T1 or a tape drive.

I answered your question, plain and simple. if that's too difficult to understand, perhaps you should avoid asking difficult questions in the future.

Come back when you have a clue.

Re:here's one reason: backups

[sydb]

Paraphrasing:

Me: What would an ordinary person, even a geek, need more than 30Gb a month for

You: To backup large quantities of data from my colo servers

Me: But why would an ordinary person, even a geek, need to do that? And if you're not an ordinary person then you can probably afford something else.

You: I just do, I'm not telling you why, and you're a moron.

Where did you answer my question? I actually couldn't give a fuck what the answer is, but I do want you to admit you didn't answer the question, because you are hiding your oddball requirements. As it is my guess is you run a business, and your pbp.net url bears that out.

Mmmm, is the US that good ?

[sgidude]

I know someone in NY who has been waiting for months for phone & broadband. The reason his building does not exist according to the Telco's, the fact he & a number of others live in the apartment block is obviously an aberattion that can be explained a correct computer mapping of the buildings in NY & he live in an alternate universe of bricks & mortar. Nigel

Ahhhh... Telstra

[ockegheim]

My parents have the same problem as the British guy. They had a school-aged Chinese boarder for a while, and he got adsl. After his parents worked out that he wasn't doing any work, he went back to China without putting his affairs in order. So if they want adsl, they have to get the line unblocked by talking with the boarder's ISP. But the boarder's uncontactable in China, and Telstra are unwilling (bastards) or unable (stupid) to tell them which ISP is blocking a line that they own. Lucky for them they're happy with dialup.

Where he went wrong...

[skinfitz]

...was in even considering BT as a provider. Get the BT line, then choose ANYONE except BT for the broadband service.

BT have ok exchange hardware but an unfathomably crap service. 'Downtime' is a word that all BT customers are familiar with.

(Actually as a tip for foreigners, avoid ANY company with the word "British" in it.)

Re:Where he went wrong...

[The MESMERIC]

I am with these guys, because they are not overloaded (yet) you get superb service.
Really attentive.

Much better than dialling up some £1.00 p/minute support going around in circles.

Re:Think that's bad? Try NTL. - Virgin Broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

Broadband in the UK is virgin on the bl00dy ridiculous.

\me goes back to dialup ...

Re:Poor sod!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those ports should be blocked. 80, 8080, 3128 and 25 are all pointless ports to be open inbound to consumer boxes. If they want to run a web/mail server they can go through a colo or hosting service.

My attempts at broadband with BT

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a fairly reasonable IT professional who recently relocated from Australia, to the apparent modern and banking centre of the world, the United Kingdom.

Having finally securing the lease on a small flat in the south west suburbs of London, we attempted to get the phone line connected, which after around 2-3hrs waiting in a public phone booth, we were told that the only option was a 'pay-as-you-go' service.

Basically this meant that we had to pay line rental and credit the phone bill in advance to be able to use the phone. The 'reasoning' behind this was that the flat had been blacklisted from the PREVIOUS tennants failure to pay the bills, and as such we had to go on this plan for 12 months to prove our ability to pay the bill. (needless to say we had never even met the previous tennants..)

To add insult to injury, we were told that because of this, we were unable to get broadband from BT or any reseller using BT's equipment, and we were also unable to migrate to Bulldog or UKOnline because they link into the BT database which had flagged the line as unable to get broadband!

After some arguing with various helplessdesk personal, we spoke with a manager who wanted to help, but we had to pay 12 months line rental in advance, the line would be disconnected then reconnected then we could apply for broadband.

So, after toleranting dialup for a month or so (which actually worked, as BT had provided me with a freecall number for BT plan on my BT pay-as-you-go phone) I broke the lease agreement and moved house. Basically BT, discriminated against me based on the previous tennants.

I could also get started on the lack of the ability to pay bills from internet banking, going around and around in circles trying to open bank accounts, utilties etc, but really, this is a backwards country. Think I'll happily move along to a modernised country next.

some advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if you spent less time masturbating to stolen movies, you could find a decent job?

Lawrence Lessig explains why broadband sucks

[PinglePongle]

In this article, Lawrence Lessig explains why broadband sucks in the US - but he draws almost the opposite conclusion to the author of this piece...."Let the markets, both private and public, compete to provide the service that telecom and cable has not."

Dsl? Try Banks!!!

[doyen2000]

Hi,

This is my story.. I'm from Australia and I never been to either the USA or UK before the 2001.

So I moved to CA, Bay area in 2001 from Australia.. The bottleneck there was getting a social security number. Two weeks later I was able to get a debit card with Visa logo with the bank account I opened. After that getting DSL was another week or so. No problem.

In Febraury this year I moved to Scotland. With everything being global I thought things would be similar. I have heard that getting a bank account was a big problem but if I have my name on the lease of the place I'm living in, I reasoned, it should be ok. I never thought that it would be may and would still not have a debit card.

Two weeks to get a place. The Real Estate would not take american credit cards for the deposit so over three days I withdrew the amount from teller machines. When I had the lease I went happily to the bank, I had a proof of address. It didn't count. I had to wait another 3 weeks for the council to send me a bill for the council tax. This would be my proof of address.

The first pay check was sent to me in two checks that I could cash.. the checks were written by hand which I thought would get me in trouble as I had heard from previous friends (one was arrested at the bank because they thought they were illegal) but at least that went ok.

In the meantime I tried to get a phone connected. It would be four weeks wait for the engineer to turn up. This is Glasgow, the second capital of the Empire.. what takes them so long was my question. It was not obvious were I lived either.. I was told one right(1R). Which meant 1st floor, the door to the right. The British Telecom person did not have a clue about 1R so I had to choose between 1/2 or 2/2. Off course I got the wrong one and when I discovered it and I called BT to tell them they responded with I had to re-schedule and it would take 6 weeks.

In the bank front when I had the council tax bill they allowed me to get a bank account but it could only be a savings account with a card that I could only be used in ATMs.. for a debit card I would have to wait for 4 months.. four pay deposits for them to give me the card.

This meant that I was limited of what I could buy on the internet some will only deliver to the address the card was registered. I would have to buy airline tickets, hire cars with my american cards and then wire money to the accounts.

Late March and finally the phone was connected. Two weeks later I got my dsl connection with the thanks of american cards.

But I'm getting used to carrying 1000 dollars in my pocket when I'm buying furniture and asking colleagues to buy me stuff over the internet.

I guess things could have gone much worst but I never thought that getting a debit card would make me so happy.

Cheers, A
ps: I actually brought my linksys router from the US to the UK thinking I would only need to buy new power adaptor.. good idea except that they do not give you modems. At least the Netgear works really well.

ISP suggestion: E7even

[cagliost]

I've used E7even for over a year now. They're the cheapest ADSL available in the UK, and they're run by techies so all of their employees know what they're doing.

(I don't have any link to them - I'm just a very satisfied customer.)

Familiar stories all...

[BrokenHalo]

I was living in the UK at the time the idea of privatisation of British Telecom entered the otherwise vacant brains of Thatcher and her delightful band of cronies. My monthly bill quadrupled immediately.

But the story in TFA sounds remarkably similar to my Australian story of the scenarios I had to endure when I foolishly was enticed into moving my mobile phone service from Vodafone to Three.

To cut a long story short, it took exactly forty days and forty nights (and countless calls to customer care services which, needless to say, were outsourced to India) to port my number from one service to the other.

I'm regretting the whole excercise now, and as soon as Vodafone gets their 3G services under way, I'm going back.

meh, happens everywhere

[jmason]

In the past 5 years, I've spent quite a lot of time in both Australia and the US as a new arrival, and had to set up broadband internet connections in both (naturally!). I've encountered:

• line faults (yes, even in the US! duh)
• places where various vendor's packages are unavailable due to lack of coverage
• $500 deposits required, and faxed proof of income, because I have no local credit rating
• long waits because a social security number is required, and it takes 3 months to get that issued
• and yes, culture shock. for example, you quickly learn to pronounce a wide "R", because the round "R" used in the UK and Ireland is incomprehensible to USian phone operators ;)

The author is naive. I suspect he's spent a lot of time in a nice high-tech hotspot like Silicon Valley, where everything on offer is oriented around his kind of needs -- much of the rest of the world, and indeed much of the US, isn't like that.

Anyway, it's a learning process. Next time he moves somewhere, he'll know to do a bit more research and not expect it to be just like the US. Good for him ;) In the meantime, the article's a waste of front page space.

pointless stuff

[reed]

Wow, that was one of the most pointless rants I've read in a long time.

Sounds like Qwest

[RustyTaco]

This sounds a lot like the troubles I've had with QWest. At least BT could tell him if he was eligable consistantly, Qwest couldn't keep their systems up to tell me if I was eligable, or the status of my order.

- Nick

Get real

[Sprotch]

Some people will never be happy...
Do you know how many /.ers would kill for a 20 Mb access + free national calls + free cable TV + cheap calls abroad? And all that for 30 euros/month...

Re:Get real

[wsapplegate]

> Do you know how many /.ers would kill for a 20 Mb access

Like all those poor schmucks just out of the ADSL-covered zone who seem to be eternally condemned to dial-up ? 'Cause that's another thing I forgot to bitch about : the regulation authority doesn't seem very interested in getting all these nice operators to venture out of big (and lucrative) cities. The end result : if you live out of town, you can either (a) resign yourself to using 56k, (b) pray for a DSLAM to materialize near you (you'd better pray to multiple gods if you want to have even a slight chance), or (c) pay through your nose for bidi satellite access at near-broadband speed and near-unbearable roundtrip times. Talk about digital divide...

Re:Get real

[Sprotch]

Well, if you consider that millions of euros should be spent to give ADSL to this lone dude, than your point of view might seem reasonable.

Thanks for making another point in favor of the private sector.

BT in H2G2

[charlie_vernacular]

For those in doubt about BT's buggeration credentials, there's just this minute been a scene about how awful BT is in the latest (Quandary) Phase of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, currently on BBC Radio 4 (I'm listening to it as I write this).

And Arthur has fallen in love...

Billing

[phorm]

My experience with Shaw however was that while their service was generally decent, their billing system was (and from those I know who continue to patronize them, still is) a steaming pile of inadequate and error-prone crapulance.

It's nice to have service, but having bills not arrive on time, not arrive, arrive as double bills, free services charged for, payments received not registered, etc... well you get the idea.

Re:$40USD/month for 5 Mbit? Lucky bastard!

[op00to]

I pay $29.95 (promo price, regular price $39.95) for 10Mbit downstream/1Mbit upstream, in the United States.

Sounds like broadband to me. How is this an oxymoron again?

The Horror of SBC

[SamDrake]

That's not much different than my situation here in Silicon Valley, California, USA.

I am lucky enough to have DSL - 384KB down; 128KB up. I guess that qualifies as "broadband", though just barely. When we had it installed we were JUST beyond the distance limit - we were 18000 cable-feet from the central office. Some of our neighbors could get it to work; others could not. I was lucky...but 384Kb was the max I could get.

I've had the service for years now. Recently, every single month I get a piece of mail from SBC offering to upgrade me to "DSL Pro" - megabit or more speeds - for just a few dollars more than I'm paying now.

Three times I called them up to place the order.

Three times they accepted the order and gave me an installation date.

Three times their engineering department cancelled the order without any notice to me.

Three times they increased my bill to the "DSL Pro" rate, even though they hadn't bothered to actually install "DSL Pro".

I finally got the details of my situation out of them.

My service, as I said, is a long haul pair that goes from my house all the way back to the CO. NOW they have neighborhood concentrators scattered around, so they run a single highspeed link to the concentrator, and then just connect pairs from various houses to the concentrator. So the old cable length limitations are mostly gone, at least in my neighborhood.

Problem is that because of the way their system works, in order to switch from the OLD service to the NEW service they first have to disconnect the OLD one - then wait TWO WEEKS for all of the databases to update, then re-install me on the new service.

TWO WEEKS of downtime to upgrade! The kids would go ballistic. No thanks.

Meanwhile, they continue to send me snail mail every single month begging me to upgrade...knowing perfectly well that they don't have a credible way to upgrade me.

If I was going to upgrade to anything, I'd march down to Comcast and walk home with a shiny new cable modem - hook it up and be running with no downtime at all.

SO, I'm not feeling so sorry for the original poster in BT-land. The situation isn't any better over here.

Broadband in ireland

[Cros13]

It seems like paradise compared to here in the Irish Republic.
We also have our former state monopoly(eircom) that still has that air of bureaucracy hanging stale in the air. I'm a telecoms engineer myself and have been fighting for 6 years to see some semblance of DSL enter my area. I have currently resigned to paying 3700($5000!) a month for a T1(that's 95% of my wages by the way). It all started when I tried to get someone to install a phoneline in my newly built home(CAT6 in the walls and all). What followed was a 3 month debacle during which I pleaded, begged, offered to install the line myself, buy the exchange, borrow, steal, maim and kill my way to a basic POTS line. I broke into tears several times(for the first time in years). Eventually I lost my temper and screamed obsenities down the line. 15 minutes later an eircom van arrives complete with an engineer who finaly connects my line.

Whooo... now I can get DSL!....cant I?...whaddya mean 'what's DST?'...oh god

No cable, no DSL, nothing. Fast forward 4 years...DSL arrives in select areas of Dublin due to government pressure. Still no DSL in my area I plump for a T1 out of necessity.

2 Years later: DSL arrives by surprise in our town! A group of tech-aware people in the town collective stop gnawing their nails.
We make a call to a nice eircom lady who explained to us that it had only been announced that broadband was available in the town, it wasent actually available to customers, but it was planned "sometime within the next 3 years". Cue appearance of clumps of hair littering the streets.

And I still can't get DSL!

BTW: see http://www.irelandoffline.com/ http://www.eircomtribunal.com/

Re:Let's review...Where the horror ?

[RomulusNR]

Has he ever been to the RMV

For those not from Massachusetts, that should be DMV.

(And for Washingtonians, that should be either DOL, with a different office depending on whether you need driver licensing or vehicle Licensing.)

Y'know, that brings up an interesting counterpoint: At least in the UK, you always know who to talk to. In the US, the names can change wildly even for public agencies depending on where you are.

Ever have to change long distance carriers? Aside from the cashing-an-anonymous-check way. And is that interstate long distance you're changing, or local long distance? Did you check the inter-LATA interstate rates versus the inter-LATA intrastate rates? And did you make sure the city immediately bordering your town is local or long distance?

It's just like the same thing I say to everyone who insists that Canada's national health care is a huge neglectful clusterfuck by bringing up isolated anecdotes of people who were waiting too many weeks for treatment of some non-life-threatening ailment. I direct them to any of hundreds of stories of people in the US who found out that their life-saving surgical procedure was rejected for coverage by their PPO.

Re:Poor article (author response)

[writertype]

I'm the author.

As others have pointed out, I have absolutely, positively nothing against London, England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, or the continent of Europe. I lived in London ten years ago as part of a semester abroad, so I'm familiar with London life. I hoped then that I would have the opprtunity to live once again in this marvelous city, and I'm quite thankful that I've had the chance.

I really would like to make that clear -- I think you have a world-class city here, and a wonderful society. Please don't make me sing "God Save the Queen" in Trafalgar Square to prove this :)

I also want to make clear that even though I have been frustrated by the system, the BT employees I have spoken with have been courteous. I still was upset and frustrated by the decision not to allow me to file a complaint, but that's that. My issue is with the system and the apparent bureaucracy.

Here's the crux of the matter. England is famous for its literature, its poetry, its love of the written word. For me, as a writer, I find it hard to believe that there would be an infrastructure in place to hinder that exchange of information. If this is considered unreasonable or xenophobic, I apologize.

Final point: I have to say that I am completely unaware of any line "faults" (ADSL or otherwise) that have occurred in the U.S. I would encourage other Americans to point out my mistakes, but honestly, it's always worked seamlessly. (Now, there have been interruptions in my DSL service, but I have never ever had a phone stop working and been told that there was a "fault" or other problem that necessitated a 48-hour outage. A winter storm, of course, is a different matter.)

coffee for the cable tech

[Anonymous Coward]

I offered the cable tech a warm cup of coffee and in return he gave me unfiltered cable tv with the highspeed I had ordered. Treating the techs with a little respect has always worked well for me.

cheer up

[makeyourself]

what the article says is normal here in Mexico, nevertheless, he have the attitude to deal with it in an indifferent point of view, almost not even caring about it. Sad, but true.

... or have a friend on the inside that tweaks the line for you :P

Diversity Differences.

[D_Lehman(at)ISPAN.or]

Being American (me ducks the flames), I honestly don't know what a fault is. I've never heard of it. I'm not saying we don't get them, but you all seem to know about them or have at least heard of them. It's just not that way here, or at least locally here.

As for broadband, I have even more options. I can go dial-up, cable (what I have), DSL, or (what few others seem to have) Wireless Tower (1Mbps wireless broadcast from center of small town).

I do hear that Europe has SMS. Well, we've had text messaging for a long time, though not SMS. But, the US isn't a big text messager. The difference between the US and Europe is that we get unlimitted minutes (yes, I can talk to my fiance from my mobile phone to her's 24/7/365 at no additional charge), no long distance charges between states, and unlimitted "2 way radio", but we pay per text message. In Europe (so I hear), it's the other way around. The only thing my phone can't do at this point that I hear is rolling out there is full streaming video, though with XSVoice, I do get streaming audio (music, news, etc) at no extra charge.

There are differences in the systems, and monopolies exist even here. I don't know how BT or others work, but I got digital cable and broadband here with nothing more than my credit card, address and cellphone. The cellphone didn't require anything but my credit card. No bills, ID, password, or blood sample. Honest! ;)

In all seriousness though, someone from Europe might be just as lost in the midwest US (try finding public transportation here... and it's called a used car lot, hehe). This isn't noise about nothing. If he were where I live, he'd have broadband with same day istallation with any or all of 3 different providers, 2 without a landline phone, 1 without any wires coming in the house at all (assuming it ran on a generator). Or, he could have USB'd his cellphone to his computer for 3x dial-up speeds. Don't even get me started on Satellite broadband with a dial-up uplink. :)

It's not really a cultural difference, but with telecommunications, this highlights a major difference. British readers are saying "That's not that bad, and the US isn't all that much better" US readers are going, "Dang, is it really that hard there?"

I think the point is obvious in those reactions as to what the difference really is. For the record, I don't have a land line at all. Phone calls distract me from Slashdotting.

-1, Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly know absolutely nothing about the US cellular system. 7 of your 10 points are simply wrong. I have taken my phone with me all across this country, east coast to west, north to south, and never once paid a roaming fee.

Let's see an European phone cover that much square footage without paying any additional fees.

expectations caused this trouble.

[drwho]

Everytime I see an ad about some 2mbps DSL service for $30/month, I get excited, and think: to hell with comcast! I want more bandwidth for less money! ...and then I read an article like this and decide to stay with what I have.

It's hard to be an educated consumer in a technological age. Every consumer wants to buy commodity products at the lowest prices, and every business wants to differentiate in the market in order to NOT be bound by commodity economics. What this generally means is, that there are advantages and disadvantages to each service. Too many times I haven't been sophisticated enough in my shopping and have ended up with something worse than what it replaced. A DSL provider that uses PPPoE...oops didn't think of how that degrades reliability and performance. A cellular service using GSM...erf, these codecs aren't as nice as CDMA's, the voice quality is degraded. A web hosting company that doesn't have any phone number for technical support -- oh, is that even legal? And on, and on. Sometimes it's better to just pay a little more for something that you have, that works, than to try to save a few dollars and end up with frustration. Please note that I am NOT saying you get what you pay for - you don't, you get what you negotiate. Rather, I am just saying that the devil you know is better than a brand new satan. So Comcast is where I stay for Internet service, even if DSL is cheaper, because it works and the performance is decent and they aren't (yet) blocking any TCP ports.

What does this have to do with BT, deregulation, and the rest? I told the story because it tells you the pressure that companies to improve their market presence, sell more service, and raise profits. Some of this is done with good work and value for the dollar. Often it isn't, it's just to con customers into buying what they don't need, having fine print that gets you out of the expensive neccessity of troubleshooting, and, most importantly, of being able to cherry-pick customers:

In the monopoly days, the deal was: Provide universal service, and you can charge universal prices. But all customers had to be served, regardless of the expense (within the legal limits). It costs much more money to wire rural areas with electricity and telephone service, but it had to be done, because telephone service was valuable only as much as it was universal(hence the joke: "Who was dumb enough to be the first one to buy a telephone?"). City telephone customers subsidizes rural ones, but since most of the telephone jobs were created in towns and cities, it was sort of a fair trade.

It was thought that once universal service was achieved by the telecom syndicate (AT&T, GTE, etc. in the US, BT in the UK), that it could be transformed into a free market where the customer could choose one of several telecom providers. For long distance service, the reduction of costs a hundred fold was significant, and benefitted the customer (so far). However, the problem with leocal service is that, regardless of a customer's statistical location in a metropolitan area or not, some are more difficult to serve than others. It is now the case that no company wants the problem customers, so if you're line doesn't qualify for DSL they're happy to let you try to jump ship to another provider. The obligation of universal service is non-existant in some places, and only given lip-service in others. Some sort of system has to be worked out, wherein the 'problem customers' are assigned to telecom companies who are obligated to provide service at some mandated level of quality and price. This is why we have regulated telecom.

I like the excitement caused by VOIP and cellular and other technology that has had a drastic effect on lowering the cost of telecom to the consumer. However, if the problem of universal service is not properly addressed, we're going to hear many more stories like this BT horrorshow, especially in older areas where the copper infrastructre is already a hundred years old and there is little money or incentive to maintain it.

Re:Let's review... Huh? Step 3?

[StaticShock]

...let's review the procedure for obtaining broadband in the U.S. Step #1: Call up your cable or DSL provider, walk through the options, and decide what you want. Step #2: Receive and install the modem, or have an installer do it for you. Step #3: There is no Step #3!

Huh? I rather assumed Step #3 would be "profit".

BTOpenWoe

[Hugo Graffiti]

There is a website called BTOpenWoe where people can go to moan about BT Openworld. You can still find my own tale of woe there from three years ago:

My Business 500 account was supposed to have been activated 3 weeks ago but I keep getting Error 691. There is no physical problem because when I eventually got through to tech service the test user name worked fine. They reckon it may be because my username has been "registered twice" or some such baloney. This is a bog standard new account so I don't understand why this isn't an automated standard procedure. I have had no reply to the emails I have sent to the orders and billing email addresses. It is completely impossible to get through on the phone to the billing dept, you are left listening to music (eg "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away...") with no indication of how many people are ahead of you in the queue. And this is a phone company! I HAVE however received a bill for £175! The level of service is absolutely appalling, I only wish I'd come across this site before I placed my order.

It actually took months to get them to cancel the order and stop them from sending me ever more threatening demands for the £175.

Do you still want municipal wi-fi?

[OreoCookie]

This is how monopolies and government (aka monopoly) run services work.

It can be still worse in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in a semi-rural area. When we moved in we ordered the phone line two weeks ahead of time. When we arrive, no phone.

So we call up the provider. They tell us that the builder failed to run a line from the house to the street. Of course, he had - its end was waving in the air like the tail of a dog who is looking for a leg to piss on.

They come out again. They tell us that the builder had failed to dig up the neighbors driveway to run the line to their junction box. We patiently explain that he has no right to do that - its their job. They were paid to run connections to every parcel when the subdivision was created.

They tell us that it will take two weeks for them to come out to out to put the line under the neighbors driveway. They say it will take this long to pull permits from the county. This is an outright lie, as we discover when we call the county. They do not need permits.

We lodge a complaint with the Public Utility Commission. They come out next day and install our phone.

However, they weren't done with me yet. My neighbors on either side have DSL so I apply for DSL. They tell me my line does not qualify. I tell them bullshit my neighbors both have it. I call their network people and we establish that all they have to do is switch my connection to a newer distribution box and I will be good to go. I call the DSL people back and they claim there is no such distribution box.

I threatened to lodge a second complaint. They took great glee in telling me the PUC has no jurisdiction over DSL.

So BT may be incompetent but some of our US phone companies are actually evil. Its hard to believe they were not deliberately victimizing me for lodging a complaint. They have proved they lie to customers so why should we believe they don't also victimize them? And this company actually has the gall to go round advertising "we have great customer service".

I did eventually get DSL about six months after this Gotterdamerung in a teacup. And it works quite nicely too. But what a struggle.

So while our English corespondent has my sympathies, he could be much worse off if he lived in the Us.

What solution?

[Mike Schiraldi]

Someone [...] came up with a very elegant, very British, solution to broadband policy here.

And what was it? I read through the whole article and never found out what this teaser was all about.

Funny thing that

[OneArmedMan]

... This is *exactly* what happens here in Australia , except you might want to replace all instances of BT , with Telstra ( the Australian equivilent ) .

Shit prices , shit products, shit service...

oh yeah ... and they are basicly incombent(spl) but this is slooooooowly changing ... so you have to deal with them, even if you go with a 3rd party ISP.

Horrors!

[StikyPad]

Right, then. I had two choices. I called up UK Online and asked for the 8-Mbit service: pricey, but actually comparable to what I would have paid in the U.S. The sales lady asked for my phone number; no problem. Postcode? Here you are, then!

The real horror is the terrible job this guy does of trying to write in British style.

Re:Think that's bad? Try NTL.

[HumanTorch]

John Doe = Richard Morrell?

Mod parent INSIGHTFUL

[grolschie]

Telecom NZ suck a big fat one. They have a system where they can only change your connection speed on your plan's anniversary roll-over date (one day every month). Even if you give them plenty enough notice, something will no doubt go wrong and the computer will roll-over on the anniversary missing your plan change. No manual connect speed plan changes can be made, you will have to wait yet another month and hope that the change gets made on the next anniversary date.

Their tech support is even worse. They will give you a ticket number, but chances are, unless you are a business customer and insist strongly, no-one will ever follow up the phone call. Don't expect a reply to any emails sent to their tech support email address! Seriously!

I had a problem recently where I couldn't connect to their news server because their news server did not have the complete list of Telecom NZ owned IP addresses, so there were the obvious authentication problems. Every time I restarted my router, I'd get given a new IP address. Some IP addresses that I received could authenticate with the news server, and some couldn't. It was russian roulette. Keep restarting the router until I got an IP address that worked. Well, instead of providing their server with an updated list of IP addresses, they asked ME to write down the IP addresses that I got assigned by their DHCP that cannot authenticate and let them know so they can add them!!!

9 to 5 is a way of life in the UK.

[jotaeleemeese]

You can hardly blame BT for that.

Re:Think that's bad? Try NTL.

[Anonymous Coward]

my feelings towards NTL, and it's worthless employees

"its".