Doesn't matter how good your ADSL ISP is.. BT still own your Sorry Internet Ass

[Zak33]

Zen were due to migrate me this week to 21CN. Sure enough, yesterday am I awoke to no connectivity, but I was expecting some downtime...

3 hours later still nowt, so into the trusty router and ... oh... why do I have a BT IP address.. that's not a Zen IP address.

Ring Zen... to be greeted by their pre recorded intro saying the BT fault report system was glitched and they had no access to it.

Nice technical advisor, we worked through the default stuff like lightning (new filter, master socket etc) cos it's worked for 4 years and now it's stopped.. and the last time Zen saw me on their network was 2am.. but my router's connected and syncd to a diff IP.

Tried using a BT test username but couldn't access web.

So.. 2 faults... both occured the second I went over to BT 21CN, poor Zen can't do anything until the fault is dealt with by BT.

BT > My Sorry Web Access Ass.... no I got's no web and am sitting in a mates MOT station using his office!

[Zak33]

and then NO C0D5 or even I Player last night.. neary died !

[oolon]

You could have a nice play of Assassins Creed II while you what... Oh..!

[shamus21]

BT should only be an ISP, its not interested in running a broadband network or building one most of the tech its installing now is already out of DATE.

[peterb]

BT should only be an ISP, its not interested in running a broadband network or building one most of the tech its installing now is already out of DATE.

BT retail IS only an ISP - the infrastructure is maintained and operated by PT Openreach - a separate company within the BT group.

As for 21cn - well I suppose you could say it was out of date, as TCDP/IP was initially developed over 30 years ago - however as it is pretty much a universal standard, it would seem silly to develop something new and incompatable.

Without knowing too much about the detail, I suspect the 21Cn backbone will be IPv6 - which is pretty up to date - and BT Research (another separate company in the BT group) were (and are) at the forefront of IPv6 network development. Prior to that, BT Research were involved in developing Synchronous and plesiosynchronous digital highway protocols.

None of this helps Zak, who I guess has fallen into some technology black hole - and makes me wonder if the BT aunthentication server has had a problem, and even more frustrating that Zen cannot log the fault.

This shows BT's real weakness, in taht while they are excellent at technology, when it comes to delivery, they are lsomewhat less good, and BT Retail's customer service has a pretty poor reputation!

However, until the cable companies and those ISP's that are interested in LLU provide the same national coverage as BT - I can't see much incentive for improvement - and the cable and LLU companies are interested in investing in small communities because their return on investment is so small. You could make the ame point about BT (as a PLC) but as they had the infrastructure in place, they have used it to make broadband available to the vast majority of the population.

[Zak33]

I'm back

It's been 5 looong days.

On Saturday a BT engineer was due to go to the exchange and check for cross jumpered connections....only the BT system was borked so the BT engineer didn't get the appointment sent to him.... so a whole weekend with no broadbean....

this AM Zen had them book another visit, the BT dude showed at mine this PM at 2pm and went into town to sort my cross jumper... (I still had a connection into a BT IP pool and not a Zen one)

He rang to say he has sorted it, and would be there quite a while.. while he moved the rest... so I guess a few other people in Aylesbury have had no broadbean for a few days... unless they're all BT punters in which case I'll be the only one with a problemo...

and now.. I've requested my regrade on Zen's Portal page and await the speed change.

5 days with no broadbean is... hell tbh

[gss03]

Look on the bright side - at least Zen acknowledged the problem, escalated it to BT and it got sorted. I know of many a cheap ISP that would still have you reboot/ resetting your router to try and fix the problem - all on an 0870/ 0871 phone number!

The BT infrastructure does seem to be the weak point on all occasions.

[badass]

I'm back

It's been 5 looong days.

On Saturday a BT engineer was due to go to the exchange and check for cross jumpered connections....only the BT system was borked so the BT engineer didn't get the appointment sent to him.... so a whole weekend with no broadbean....

this AM Zen had them book another visit, the BT dude showed at mine this PM at 2pm and went into town to sort my cross jumper... (I still had a connection into a BT IP pool and not a Zen one)

He rang to say he has sorted it, and would be there quite a while.. while he moved the rest... so I guess a few other people in Aylesbury have had no broadbean for a few days... unless they're all BT punters in which case I'll be the only one with a problemo...

and now.. I've requested my regrade on Zen's Portal page and await the speed change.

5 days with no broadbean is... hell tbh

Presumably Zen will be offering you some money off your bill for a service not provided (and claiming it from BT)

[mycarsavw]

Zak did you have to...you know...talk to Mrs Zak and stuff?

I ditched "broadband via BT" at the end of last year in favour of wireless (WiMax) broadband and it's the best thing I ever did.

[dfour]

That doesnt sound fun. Im expecting my zen account to be changed over by the end of this week and hope im not going to suffer the same problems as you did Zac

No online gaming what will I do??

[Funkstar]

I was switched over some time before Zak and had zero issues. So I think Zaks problem was a fairly isolated incident.

[dfour]

I have switched over now without any problems but now because of my poor line (my line attenuation went from 50db to 67db) even after forcing the modem to use a adsl 2 modulation my speed is almost 2 meg slower Almost wish I hadnt bothered now

I will put a call into zen and see if they can help me out somehow.