Stand Aside.....gonna go ORBITAL now

[Zak33]

cant begin to get angrier

Zen, the hallowed turf of ADSL have just sodded me about to the n'th degree.

This morning I rang them to get a 100% answer on a broad band account that I have paid to have set up on a house I wanna buy. It failed to connect last night when I wqent trudging round to this blokes house, set up my shuttle in his hallway, sat on the floor and spent half an hour with a flashing light on the ADSL USB modem.....but hell, BT DO activate some stuff late in the day....up to midnight.

I said sorry for wasting the mans evening, the night he got back from his 2 week holiday, and this morning I rang Zen who ASSURED ME it had gone live now.

So I booked time with the Estate agent, who had to sit there, in silence for 30 minutes in a house it turned out he had NO CHANCE OF SELLING because, guess what....it still didnt work.

I SHOULD blame BT for this...as its their TPON network problem.....but I WONT blame them.

I will blame Zen. Why?

Cos I rang their technical line, who rang their BT contact (Like I asked them to do over a week ago, AND last night AND this morning) and I was on hold for 10 minutes and then got told

"BT cant do a copper overlay on that service, so unfortunately we cant make it work"

Now I KNOW its BT's line, BUT A ZEN EMPLOYEE FOUND OUT AFTER I HAD ASKED THEM TO FIND OUT, THAT THEY CANT GET ADSL AT THAT ADDRESS.

I am actually LIVID...... FRIKKIN FUMING because APART from the time wasted, and APART from the fact that the poor sods house has said SOLD on it for 8 days ,and he might have lost ALL MANNER of people to buy it, while I was sodded about, and APART from my missus not getting what she wanted after waiting all this time....

Zen let me down. Personally. If I had been clueless I'd have understood but I have ASKED them to check this THREE TIMES....and each time I've been told its gonna work....no reason I cant work. etc

Need to go fly IL2 and shoot stuff now.....

on my NTL line that NEVER GIVEES ME CAUSE FOR COMPLAINT!!!!!


/stalks off....with dark cloud over his head

[Lee H]

Dude... I can see where you are coming from. I've been lucky ( well sometimes UNLUCKY ) enough to have had ADSL since the trials back in 1999.

When it came to moving from BT to another provider, a similar scenario erupted in that BT said I had ADSL on the line active even though they had cancelled the account a week earlier so I could port across to Nildram.

Nildram we're awesome mate - they rang me all the time and gave me updates. Its basically BT's communcation or lack of it that causes issues like these.

EDIT :: I've heard they are doing trials in Milton Keynes with ADSL over TPON so your best checking on that with www.adslguide.org.uk

[Shorty]

Zak.. buddy.. I feel for ya!

This is what happens when an incumbent, convulted organisation own the core infrastructure to the majority network in the country.

By all means leave plenty of this at Zen's feet. They should have done their homework more thoroughly but partly the biggest cause is the mess that BT are in.

It's hardly surprising with so many departments handling each part of an ADSL enquiry & setup. BTWholesale, BTIgnite, BTRetail. They all have their intrinsic part to play in this farce.

I wouldn't want to be an ISP in this country having to fight against a multitude of different people to get a simple job done. A basic whoosh test should have been performed well before you needed to be sitting in a sellers house with an ADSL modem. That's just absolutely insane. Really. I've never heard of anything so bizarre but Im hardly surprised by it.

Overall, this whole sorry mess is not the first and no doubt won't be the last time we hear of such a thing in this country. It only goes to prove that not only do BT still have a sizeable stranglehold over broadband in this country and that ISP's need to sort themselves out and work together.

Only one or two ISP's have the finances to go into an exchange & provide their own kit. DSLAMs aren't cheap sadly, so until a few more brave it like Bulldog... this is where ADSL will stay in this country.

NTL & BY maybe in debt but they are proving broadband can be a reality in this country (with decent speeds, not this 512kb strangulated services).

Zen: Shame on them for tarnishing their reputation.

BT: All said up there.

EDIT::

Dacs on the line is the oldest excuse I've ever heard from BT

.. and I pray for BT customers when BT move from circuit switching to packet switching. God help us all.

EDIT2:: Wow. BT are trialing DSL over fiber?! Jeez..

[Lee H]

Don't blame Zen. If it wasn't for BT's penny pinching in the 70's you would not be in this issue. They've used TPON and other nasty tricks ( i.e DACS ) for years to cut their costs and increase their revenue.

Are you actually from the MK area as this is only the area I know that suffers from TPON issues and if you are maybe this site is worthy of a read ;

http://www.bb4mk.org/

[Zak33]

no its in Aylesbury..on a new estate where some people have got lucky with a Copper Overlay, and others haven't

just wished they'd checked like I asked them too so much time wasted, so many tears....my hearts heavy now.

[0iD]

I've been lucky, I'm in a rural location, but I still get 2mb/s. Go figure ...

Poor chap, feel for ya mate.

[tiggerai]

Don't blame Zen. If it wasn't for BT's penny pinching in the 70's you would not be in this issue. They've used TPON and other nasty tricks ( i.e DACS ) for years to cut their costs and increase their revenue.

Are you actually from the MK area as this is only the area I know that suffers from TPON issues and if you are maybe this site is worthy of a read ;

http://www.bb4mk.org/

yup, tell me about it... I had broadband in the third world (aberystwyth) before my 'rents had BB in "the new city" of Milton Keynes.

Coverage was particularly poor across a broad swathe from Shenley Lodge and Loughton in the west, through Great Linford in the north, Middleton in the east, and down to Old Farm Park in the south.

what a pile of pooooop. Guess where I live!

and shame on Zen, but i still love them (thanking them right now for my inet!)

Oh, and a HUGGGLES edit for ZAKKY! (})

[Nick]

You'll always find us 'hicks int he sticks' can get BB more often purely beacause the hosuing estates there tend to be of a much smaller build number (hence less need to cut costs with aluminium cabling) and also tend to be older, so more likely to have copper as BT wasn't private and so cost concious then...

Don't get me started on DACS... lost my connection after seeing a BT putting a DACS box in... TWO MONTHS of BT swearing blind there wasn't one... even as I told them I'd actually spoken to the engineeer as he was fitting it!

Zak, can't you go cable? I thought all of Aylesbury was fully cabled up now?

[Zak33]

no NTL in Fairford Leys...they wouldnt let them dig up the pavements,

AND to ad insult to injury, as we all know NTL will offer "Broadband" to customers outside their own cabling network via BT's own cables.

They fail to mention that BT cant actually fulfill it even if you order it.

SO NTL have got a single customer in the road in question, and it must be a on copper pair...so the guy who owns the house is now ringing me saying "I dont understand why you're having trouble....Mr X over the road has broadband with NTL" which he HAS.....cos there was a slot available for him back then...but they've run out.

Rang Zen today to chase up either A: getting BT to run a cable (no Sir..they cant) or B: getting my money back.. which they HAVENT started yet cos apparently they have only today been instructed by BT that its a closed show.

I give the hell up

[[GSV]Trig]

Don't blame Zen. If it wasn't for BT's penny pinching in the 70's you would not be in this issue.

Also point some of the blame at Maggie Thatcher, BT went to the government knowing that we were going to tall behind compaired to the rest of europe in the telco stakes and asked for some money, she said no, if she'd of said yes imagine where we'd be now....

[[GSV]Trig]

Pay the chap over the road some money each month, get him to get the fastest connection he can and just chuck a Cat5 cable over to him....

[Zak33]

and as if to prove that no one trusts or believes me, the guy who owns the house is gonna apply to NTL today! Even though it redirects him to the Freedom page which offers a 512 connection and no set top box....so is ADSL as I have been telling everyone for weeks!!!

[Moby-Dick]

I feel for ya mate - its very odd that Zen would have given an activation date without the thumbs up from BT.

What I think has happened is that one part of BT gave it the thumbs up. and hence the order went ahead. However that part wasn't actually fully informed of the exchange status. They only have a database ( called ECO ) off yes/no's its not a live system which actually checks your endpoint at the exchange.

You have every right to be let down , but I woudl personally direct my anger at BT for not being able to communicate between any of its many limbs

[Zak33]

I blame my Mum. Its all her fault Dunno why...it just is. She'll just laugh and swear a bit

[TiG]

Also point some of the blame at Maggie Thatcher, BT went to the government knowing that we were going to tall behind compaired to the rest of europe in the telco stakes and asked for some money, she said no, if she'd of said yes imagine where we'd be now....

IN a worse situation than we are now. The main reason MK is in such a crap situation is the fact that it is more modern, They have fibre laid for the most part. That Fibre can't use ADSL but it can use a huge amount of other communication technologies.

If BT had invested that money in the 70's it would have been on one thing and one thing only and that would be Fibre just like MK is. And we would have been in a worse situation, until they got the fibre protocols sorted.

Its a bad situation to be in, but the reason we suffer from it is because we've got equipment in, and have done for years, all the other countries (norway/sweden/taiwan/china etc) have got huge connections because of the fact that their installations of equipment came at a much later time and had the setup of learning from experience.

We shouldn't put copper in the ground for ADSL now, we should be putting fibre in, and working on the new technologies that will actually not just give us 10mb, but will give us 100mb+ etc.

Copper is simply the local loop solution to a problem. Anything above 2mb is fibre apart from a few extreme circumstances.

Its a crap situation for Zak to be in but its just a situation that needs to be dealt with on a long term vision rather than short term fixes imo

TiG

[Zak33]

carrier pigeon then