fv1609 Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Today was the final straw with my ISP. Many problems over the years, 3 changes of name & protocols unilaterally. Having to reset account etc. Have had no service today still. Help (?) line tells me to reset my router to factory setting. As I bought it can,t help me. Well what do they know in India? Local evening news has my neighbour then the village PO saying they can,t function as thieves have stolen cables so that 20,000 broad band connections are out.Thanks India for putting me in the picture & messing up router. Ordered my MAC code. Yes I know another ISP would still be down but might get more help & honesty. Very tedious using phone 3G & that is quite slow as must be jammed locally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fv1609 Posted July 1, 2011 Author Share Posted July 1, 2011 Not thieves, it was vandals who cut the fibre-optic cables between Salisbury & Southanpton. Each cable has another 40 fibres within it. So going to be a while before they can be repaired & some cable runs replaced. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChasSomT. Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Dongle! Get a dongle. A chap at work has a place of his own, but spends more time with his 'Lady friend', so it isn't worth paying for a phoneline/broadband at his house. He's got a 'Dongle' for his laptop that connects to Vodafone via their mobile network, and it all works very well for him! Worth investigating? 'Chas.' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fv1609 Posted July 1, 2011 Author Share Posted July 1, 2011 Chas a dongle on the 3G phone system is all very well. But I have both Vodaphone & BT phones & for much of the day the 3G network has been very slow & stubborn, I assume a fair number of the 20,000 customers cut off from broadband have resorted to trying to do the net on the phone network. But gosh it is tedious doing this way. Just grateful radio & TV comes in through just an aerial! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willyslancs Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 in the local paper last night , they are now pinching , the aerials and flashing off peoples houses when they are in!:wow: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fv1609 Posted July 1, 2011 Author Share Posted July 1, 2011 Well that post took over 2 minutes to upload. Makes the old dial up seem like a luxury! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ferretfixer Posted July 3, 2011 Share Posted July 3, 2011 Well that post took over 2 minutes to upload. Makes the old dial up seem like a luxury! Clive, 'Isnt modern technology wonderfull'? (When it works!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoelH Posted July 3, 2011 Share Posted July 3, 2011 I read about Salisbury been without phones and broadband - didn't know it was due to thieves. I used to work within Salisbury as IT Support - I am glad I wasn't there that day . I use the ISP that is BT - my friend uses Virgin Media. The quality of support offered by Virgin Media is a great deal better than BT - however, my friend had a great deal of problems with the actual service delivered by Virgin Media - mainly at peak times - in general the load balancing on BT seems to be a great deal better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fv1609 Posted July 3, 2011 Author Share Posted July 3, 2011 My broadband is back again & the 3G web is working normally now. I've not followed the news report but I drove past the site yesterday. So perhaps it was meant to be a theft, then when then hacked through the cables found it wasn't copper? Yesterday there were 6 BT vans with 3 teams working along the A36 plus a BT emergency control van with satellite dish. I know whichever ISP I used that would have taken it down. But I'm miffed paying for a 25 min call to India being told about resetting MY router as that was why I had no broadband. I'm not entirely impressed with BT sales though. Not knowing of this major fault I asked them to do a personalised speed test for me with a view to signing up with them. After a minute or so I was told it was about 2mbs. Funny that when the system was down! I normally get about 1.5mbs, but about 3 years ago it was generally 3.5mbs. That was until the wire in the lane came down, so they replaced a whole new wire from the junction box to the house. Must be less copper in the new wire! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Suslowicz Posted July 3, 2011 Share Posted July 3, 2011 I read about Salisbury been without phones and broadband - didn't know it was due to thieves. I used to work within Salisbury as IT Support - I am glad I wasn't there that day . I use the ISP that is BT - my friend uses Virgin Media. The quality of support offered by Virgin Media is a great deal better than BT - however, my friend had a great deal of problems with the actual service delivered by Virgin Media - mainly at peak times - in general the load balancing on BT seems to be a great deal better. Hmmm... I started out with Pipex until they laid off everyone with a clue (putting their mailservers into an address range declared to the world as "ADSL Dynamic Dialup" was the final straw), then switched to Demon. That was OK apart from problems with the local BT hardware until they were swallowed up by Scottish Telecom (who laid off everyone with a clue), and I'm now with Be (for connectivity) and Gradwell (for email). This works Very Well Indeed for what I want to use it for, though it's not (when you add everything up) the cheapest solution. Someone I know with Virgin has endless problems with their offshored "technical support" - his current problem is connecting to GoDaddy in Arizona - it works for _everyone_ else, including other Virgin users, but not from his connection and "technical support" are denying there's a problem. There may well be someone in possession of a clue working for Virgin, but if so they are very well hidden. Your mileage may vary, contents may settle in transit, close cover before striking, prohibited where void, void where not prohibited, not for sale to miners, may contain traces of humour, etc. Chris. (Dinosaur Herder and free-range cynic.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toner Posted July 3, 2011 Share Posted July 3, 2011 To be fair to Thus (who used to be Scottish Telecom) it was investing heavily in Demon just before it was swallowed up by Cable and Wireless. Then umm, can we say "asset stripping"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Suslowicz Posted July 10, 2011 Share Posted July 10, 2011 To be fair to Thus (who used to be Scottish Telecom) it was investing heavily in Demon just before it was swallowed up by Cable and Wireless. Then umm, can we say "asset stripping"? Presumably the investment was to try and entice back the customers who had left when the support got transferred to India? Getting rid of Malcolm Muir (who I always though was on the inventory as "essential network infrastructure/physical plant") was a another line of writing on the wall. Clueless & Witless, asset stripping? You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment. Chris. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtistsRifles Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 Re. Virgin Media - simples - demand to speak to a supervisor as you cannot understand what the current person is talking about. If that fails - demand to talk to some one about taking legal action for their failure to provide the services paid for. I had problems recently when our "up to 20 Mb" connection was damn near as slow as a 56k dial up. Spoke to a friend in the legal world and was told that was outside what could be considered"normal variation" in the "up to" clause they all use.. Rang VM back - Indian support centre told me there was nothing wrong so the words "lawsuit", "compensation (large)" were dropped into the conversation. Within minute I was transferred back to the UK to an expert there who took one look at the network config their end and said "there's over 1,000 modems on the server you are using". Whoever was responsible for adding new users - UK or Indian I don't know - had not bothered to load-balance the area servers, they were just adding the new modems to the first server on the list... It was fixed there and then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fv1609 Posted July 12, 2011 Author Share Posted July 12, 2011 Well that was very easy goodbye Free(pay)serve/don'tWanadoo/Lemon now on BT:D Got the wifi going with 2 PCs & 2 phones in a very short time. But have spent nearly 4 hours trying to set up the various email accounts, trouble is the instructions that "guide" you through setting up on their Thunderbird a quite different from the latest version I have. There are certain name of fields & turns of phrase that are not the same & some ambiguities. The ports Thunderbird thinks are best are different from the BT ones. Then again I thought I was setting it up for mail from BTinternet but this all intermingles BT-Yahoo mail. I don't now if those are different things are its all part of the same thing. At least I can still use gmail & the spammers haven't caught on to that address yet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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