Slashdot Mirror
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."
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/
Now that I've vented, I'll go and read the article. After which I'll probably need to vent again.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Two words: British Telecom (and a toothless regulator). But you read TFA, so you know that.
...nothing's easy over here.
I'm too cool for a sig.
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
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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.
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.
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!
"...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!
Game dev and music blog
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.
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.
Most of these problems would likely not of occured if they hadn't privatised BT .
.
,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.
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
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
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
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
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.
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
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
Being British, and having had the drama of getting broadband installed recently, I can completely see the author's point here -
... well, you voted Tory right?
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
+Pete
Score:-1, Funny
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And then I had to actually call up and ask about the line! The nerve of it...
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Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
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
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 DieQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
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.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
BT terrible? It's an outrage!!
Just try NTL, then you'd know what terrible service really feels like...
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:
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.
This post is pretty grim, indeed. But, as the brighter side, the rumors say there are people who live in Somalia and Sierra Leone...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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.
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!
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.
...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....
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 :-)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
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
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
> 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 :
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
Xenu brings order!
Stop opening other peoples mail. Return to sender with "No longer at this address" on it.
(This a copy of a complaint letter that was actually received by NTL.)
... 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.
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
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
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".
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
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.
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!
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.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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.
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I can't wait till he finds out that UK Online port filter their broadband traffic ...
London's finest organic fairtrade coffee
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.
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.
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.
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.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
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.
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
Allow me to rebut and point out some relevant facts, please:
...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.
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)
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.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
reloading slashdot repeatedly
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.
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.
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.
>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
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).
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
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.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
- 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.
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.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
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.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
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.
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.
"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.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
". 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.
US federal Income tax:
Rate: 25%
Income Band: $29,051 - $70,350
UK income tax:
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.Rate: 22% + (1-3% for National Insurance)
Income Band: £2,091 - £32,400 ($4k - 60k)
Sources:i ncome_tax_rates/index/life/tax/income_tax_rates.ht m
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/2004taxrates.asp
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/n6w/index/life/tax/
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.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.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
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.