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

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...

[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: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.

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: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.

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

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: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

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: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?

[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

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

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!

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.

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: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.

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).