Phone & ISP - I'm sick of BT

(yes i am still wasting money on a demon email acct, though again they have never fkt me abt)

But yeah, BT... aaargh. I'm fairly sure they never sent me the notification of changes in the terms and conditions (the condition I broke wasn't in force when I joined) or the first warning or any other notification emails. No way to prove non-receipt, of course, and the posts on www.btsuck.org suggest that it would've been pointless to try arguing even if I thought I had a reasonable case. Plus the DNS server died half the time for me and the news server would often tell me I was unauthorised even when I'd dialled up with them and had a perfectly valid BT IP. Grr.

I take it from Toby's post that Freeserve don't object to automatic rediallers, which is good, because one of the things BT booted me off for was using automatic redialling software when I hadn't been, and I've been nervously waiting a minute every time since.

(Yeah, Graham, university in-halls phone franchises are generally pretty nasty too. If you're looking for other things I'm right about ;) then don't buy a Mesh PC... oh, wait, you wouldn't. Well, that's ok, then.)

You do get booted after two hours continuously connected (but logging straight back in is not a problem), but I always take that as a sign that I should be doing something else anyway. With a 56k modem I don't expect to be able to download 80MB chunks of DTP shareware anyhow.

As for the phone service, I've got the bare minimum on both lines now, as I make all national and international calls via Tele2UK (the Post Office service, which does demand a BT line), so no need for FriendsTogetherOverseas or whatever it is. Bills typically consist of the line rental plus 60-odd cheap local calls.

ugh fuck these clowns

You haven't seen clowns until you have dealt with verizon.

if you try and open a new account with a phone line that you've tested and know works BT will try and claim that it doesn't so that they can charge you £122. they'll deny you have a working line that just requires a switch flip at no charge (and they'll take 3 weeks to flip it). happened to me and now someone else i know. they must be in trouble if they have to resort to trying to rip customers off this way. 12 month contract is total BS too.

yeah fuck these clowns, totally.

we had a working phone line but some previous tenant had replaced the regular phone socket cover and put one on without a slot to connect to a phone. how much did it cost for a BT tech to come by and spend all of 10 minutes putting on a new socket cover? £212. fucking mega rip-off.

I was ripped off by the ridiculous "reconnection charge" when I moved into this flat, as the BT line, though it was in place, had apparently been unused for too long. Well over £100 for them to flip a switch somewhere, or even less work. It still irks me 18 months on.

Oh man, £122 connection charge. I'm warned that they'll try to charge me extra to activate both phone sockets, too. But the Post Office is only £15 cheaper and Talktalk only does new lines if you sign up to their ADSL, which I don't think I want to.

Then again, I do want ADSL and don't know what ISP to go with at all. Any recommendations? Someone that won't throttle everything to sub-dialup speeds in the evenings and isn't too fussy about what I do with it, if you get me. Ahem.

Thanks!

i use Be. up to 24meg depending how far you are from the exchange (i get a steady 13meg but i live a fair bit away), £20 a month, completely unlimited, never experienced any throttling despite my best efforts (ha). need a BT line as well though.

yeah Be is the one

idnet. slightly more than be and some limits but have never looked back since getting away from plusnet. good mac support too if you're into that kind of thing.

post office website says:

"Install or activate a new line – depending on your situation, we may have to install a new phone line or activate an old one. The standard cost for a new line is £107.66, subject to survey. But don't worry – if there’s an old line that's still active, you might not have to pay"

plus no minimum period of contract for phone unlike BT's rolling 12 month contract (ie you have to pay them for the remainder of the year if you cancel). there is a minimum term for broadband (12m) and a fee if they add a new line and you leave within 6 months.

no ideas about caps or throttling. (oh, see http://www.avforums.com/forums/internet-service-providers-isps/991392-post-office-broadband-any-good.html )

(am currently paying bt £39(?) or so per quarter, about 1%(!) of which is call charges. but i need a fixed line for the tivo. (not forgetting all of those silent calls that get left on my answerphone). post office not *that* much cheaper but i'd get shot of bt)

Thanks everyone. I like the look of Be - not decided yet, but they're probably the front runners - but am a bit suspicious about the special Be router they make you "lease" from them. You've got to send it back or pay £50 for it when you leave Be, and it says "certain features of our service will only work when used with our Be Box" (eh?).

Oh well, I guess I could do with a new router anyway as the current one likes to overheat. Just suspicious of unexpected costs down the line when I forget to send it back, as I imagine they'd rather have the money than some dusty used hardware and won't make much noise about reminding you, but maybe I'm wrong.

I use BE, and they're great. The router they send you is a pile of shit, so you'll need to buy a new router (like, £30 from PC World, doesn't have to be a brilliant one) and do some techy stuff to get the ourter to pass the data along to your one - there's a posh word for it, but I can't think now. The forum on the BE site is really god and will tell you all you need to know about this sort of thing.

I don't know if I'm missing any features, but I can still use email/web/p2p with no throttling and 13Mb speed. I think they might be talking about fixed IP adresses, but I haven't worked out why you'd need them anyway.

uh, why buy a new router? BeBox has been absolutely fine for me (on my 2nd now as had to get a new account when i moved, friend got the old one)

I had to keep restarting the router every ten minutes. It hink the forums said that the boxes are reconditioned and old, so expect it to go wrong, and if it doesn't then you're the lucky one. It might be okay if you're not asking it to do too much, but I'm in a shared house (so 4 computers) and some p2p use as well, so we were hammering it a little. Your mileage may vary.

Hate, hate, hate Be. Service itself was goodish to be fair, but DNS is woeful, and support is crap. Spent hours on the phone one night, then got hung up on. Am in the midst of switching to ADSL24: They used to be amazing apparently, but the service they leased has been getting hammered so now they've got a new product (look for the LLU one) which is a resold Be connection, but with their own support/DNS and other infrastructure.

never had any problems with Be in over a year of using them. mind you i came from Tiscali Hell - anything seems like a massive improvement after them.

Who is it who took over Pipex? Is it Tiscali? I would Google it BUT THE INTERNET CONNECTION HAS BEEN DOWN FOR THE PAST TEN HOURS.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15598438

UK arts lobby groups have demanded BT block access to the BitTorrent file sharing website, The Pirate Bay.

Music industry trade body, the BPI, said it would take legal action if the telecoms firm refused to co-operate.

The movie industry has already forced BT to block Newzbin 2, a members-only which aggregates illegally copied material.

BT said: "We can confirm we are now in receipt of a letter from the BPI. BT is considering its response."

The telecoms operator added that a court order would be needed before any blocking could begin.

A source told the BBC the firm was unlikely to fight a lengthy legal battle as it had in the Newzbin case.

"We would not tolerate Counterfeits 'R' Us on the High Street - if we want economic growth, we cannot accept illegal rip-off sites on the internet either," said the BPI's chief executive, Geoff Taylor.

Richard Mollet, chief executive of The Publishers Association added: "It is crucial that the creative sector keeps up the momentum of getting internet companies to do their bit in tackling illegal sites."

The Motion Picture Association, independents trade body PACT and the Creative Coalition Campaign also voiced their support.
Illegal

The Pirate Bay was launched in 2003 by a group of friends from Sweden and rapidly became one of the most famous file-sharing sites on the web.

Although it hosts no files itself, it does allow users to search for and get at copyrighted content including movies, games and TV shows.

In April 2009, the Swedish courts found the four founders of the site guilty of helping people circumvent copyright controls.

They ruling was upheld after an appeal in 2010, but the site continues to function.