new line?

[danger]

Hi just had my line woosh tested and apparently my line can't be upgraded to ADSL... I was just wondering, as I know people in my street who have ADSL if having a new line installed would make any difference to the quality? If so is it possible to have a new line installed and not have to pay installation if it fails a woosh test?

 

[.Cask]

It might, it might not.

I'm fairly certain you would have to pay for the installation and minimum rental period whether it passes the test or not though. So it's a bit of a gamble really

 

[Wilier]

....and it would be fecking expensive.

 

[danger]

fuck shit cunt bollocks wank pooo...............


no broadband for me then

I feel like I shouldn't be this upset.................. i'm fucked...... I don't want that over expensive piece of poo that is ISDN ooooooooooooooooooooooohhhh 9k/sec let me bow down to it's l33tn3ss


oh well.......... rant over

I think I am actually outside the 5.5k radius... out of interest is that an actual limitation of the technology or is it BT's gh3yness?

 

[.Cask]

3 - 4km is maximum distance for ADSL I believe. RADSL extends that to 5.5km but your maximum upload will probably be less than 256k.

I'd recommend satelitte or moving house

 

[danger]

hmmm move house....... hmmm "Sorry love we can't get broadband...... nope this house aint right we gotta move! rofl" oh wait.... I'm not married....... wahoo the sad hting is I'm actually considering it.......

/me really should get a life instead......


being serious though is satelite in general distribution anywhere....... how good is it? is it 2 way or would i needa dial up connection to send ( which would make the whole thing pointless)

is it any more expensive.... as I was pushing the budget by signing myself up to ADSL lol

 

[PR.]

HEY YOU THINK 9k/s is BAD!?!

I gotta wait til the end of the month to upgrade from 600k to 1mb on ntl:

I'm trying it everyday

https://autoreg.autoregister.net/~autoreg/cgi-bin/AutoReg/cgi-bin/cabletier

 

[danger]

/me adds PR to his little black book.

Alas I don't even get 9k.... my modem signal aint great I'm lucky if I get 4k/sec

AND I LIVE IN CARDIFF....... NOT OUTER MONGOLIA GOD DAMN IT.... ?! HELLO BT CAPITAL CITY..... THAT MEANS YOU PUT MORE EXCHANGES IN DISPERCED SUBURBS... NTL I SMELL I GOOD CHANCE FOR YOU TO CASH IN HELLO I WANT TO BE YOUR CUSTOMER... PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY PLLLEEAAASSSEEE! ONE OF YOU!!!! I DON'T SMELL </pathetic wretch>

would a signal carry well over say 500m of Cat5 Cable? coz I know someone about that distance away who has ADSL....... could just tap into their pipe heh

 

[PR.]

I see that people in London now are also getting a bargain trial offer for ntl:'s new Wireless broadband its limited to 600k but there is quite a discount...

http://www.wireless-trial.ntli.net/

The first 1000 to sign up will get free service until end of March 2003 - all you pay is for installation, currently £99 for a standard install and £130 for non-standard (i.e. chimney brackets, long distances etc).

 

[danger]

y on earth would you want that if you're living in london... where presumably everyone can get either dsl or cable ?!

 

[xane]

A word of support for ISDN, I was using Home Highway for around four years before I got ADSL, and in preference to a modem it is so much better. ISDN compared to a modem is more than just the difference between 64k and 56k, ISDN gets you a lot better ping and is way more stable.

The only problem I see with ISDN is the lack of unmetered services nowdays, ISDN connections are lumped in the same category as dial-up and as such are restricted by cutoff times and total hours connected per day/week/month etc, the real freedom in ADSL is not having to worry about how long you are online.

Whilst it is true ISDN is about the same price as ADSL, for less speed and less connection time, its a big boost from modem, and if you were willing to pay that anyway I'd go for it still.

 

[Testin da Cable]

Originally posted by ^Danger
AND I LIVE IN CARDIFF....... NOT OUTER MONGOLIA GOD DAMN IT

you know.....everyone in Mongolia has DSL

 

[xane]

Originally posted by Testin da Cable
you know.....everyone in Mongolia has DSL

They just don't have any computers to connect to it

 

[danger]

WHAT THE....... this gets worse... I've measured my distance from the exchange not as the crow flies but as the road winds resetting the odometer on my corsa and driving there....... 1.8 miles that's what around 3.5km yet I'm still out of range.... I know it's on "underground cable and telephone" wires but where the fuck is that extra distance coming from? Have they wound an extra 20 loops in it.... just for the fuck of it? Could they have made a mistake? Seriously.... this really pisses me off.... i mean if i was dumb enough to live in a place that really was unlikely to support broadband a geek like me would have no business living there.... but.... GRRR! c.a.r.d.i.f.f. c.a.p.i.t.a.l. c.i.t.y and my exchange is enabled and i'm a 3.5km drive from the exchange GRRRR!

 

[danger]

/me considers unbundling his local loop should he win the lottery

hmm why not have a fund whereby everyone chips in, in an attempt to unbundle every local loop and leave BT retail up shit creak?

*Wakes Up*

oh well I could always plant a bomb in my exchange.... if i can't have ADSL no one I know can ?! Illegal, Yes.... Childish, maybe... pointless... without doubt..... satisfying yes sir

 

[Embattle]

Its part of the cost of using old technology to create new technology

 

[danger]

The only problem I see with ISDN is the lack of unmetered services nowdays, ISDN connections are lumped in the same category as dial-up and as such are restricted by cutoff times and total hours connected per day/week/month etc, the real freedom in ADSL is not having to worry about how long you are online.

Yes and that's a big problem.... I can't find a decent 128k freecall provider without cut off's by that I mean one that's affordable... i mean i was thinking of having ISDN in addition to my analogue line and just constantly multibonding.... but that's gonna cost.... + u've got the cut off's..........

let's face it it's gonna cost me, £100 installation, £50 for a card and £25.75 a month for the line....... + I'd need an unmetered provider.... i could maybe use freeserve anytime but that would be another £13.99 for only 64k unmetered with enforced 2 hour cut offs... the only reasonably priced ISP that doesn't enforce cut off's doesn't bear thinking about (AOL) so to recap ISDN would set me back £150 up front and approx £40 I could get a 1mbit cable line for that IF NTL weren't gh3y and cabled to within a mile of my house then stopped

then BT go on about satalite... which looks shat.... a one way fecking connection.... still having to dial up... so i'd need a dish.... 2 analogue phone lines and an freecall internet provider..... + I bet the latencies on it will make it suck for gaming.... least of all coz u have to send the info via a modem..... isn't it possible to send a signal 2 ways with a satelite or something?

sorry to whine on it's just really pissy.... the fact that there aren't any real decent alternatives if u can't get DSL or cable really annoys me. BT go on about satelite... but that isn't a decent alternative either..... they suck. ISDN could be a viable alternative if the dialup scene wasn't so bad.... in fact if i remember rightly i read somewhere there's something they can do with an ISDN channel making it a permanent always on type of connection without dial up or something.... lol oh well </bleet>

 

[Will]

A 2-way satellite connection has a lot of latency, more than 56k.

Unlucky on the connection situation, you are in the same boat as a lot of people here, and having broadband myself I know I could never go back. I used to pay more for my dialup than I pay now for cable, using Demon as my ISP. But I was rewarded with a ping of around 120.

I'm not sure what I would do in your situation. But then again, I have decided to never live anywhere without cable/adsl.

 

[xane]

Originally posted by ^Danger
let's face it it's gonna cost me, £100 installation, £50 for a card and £25.75 a month for the line....... + I'd need an unmetered provider.... i could maybe use freeserve anytime but that would be another £13.99 for only 64k unmetered with enforced 2 hour cut offs...

BT Home Highway Together costs £25/month, this includes £2.80 of calls, a total of £26 including VAT, but this price also includes the line rental. If you chose ADSL you'd still have to pay line rental at a regular BT Together fee of around £13/month (incl VAT), so HH is actually costing £13/month.

Installation is actually closer to £75 for existing lines, and the modern HH boxes have a USB ISDN TA built in, so you can connect without any extra hardware needed (assuming you've got USB). ADSL costs for installation as well, and the cheaper ones do not include any equipment.

Good priced unmetered ISPs with reliable connections are hard to find, rather than have cutoffs you can go for a FRIACO based service, which is limited to a certain number of hours/week. if you go for something like Plus.Net (which I have used in the past) you will get a good reliable service with some rather nice web hosting options, typically 150 hours costs £15/month.

AFAIK, Plus.Net FRIACO does not have a cutoff and also does not count "night time" usage (1am to 7am), it is worth looking into.

Now £13+£15 = £28/month (including VAT) is comparable to some of the cheaper ADSL, you don't get the speed or the bandwidth or the "always on", but you will get a reasonable ping for games and a much better download than V90, plus the added advantage of a second phone line.

The unmetered options would apply to modem too, so if you are comparing modem to ISDN the additional monthly cost is actually only £13/month for the "rental".

Regarding 128k usage. In my experience its not actually necessary. A 128k connection does not give a higher ping (it is larger bandwidth not faster speed) and will only really give the 15K/sec downloads on fast local hosts, like Barrysworld for example, unless you are a true download junkie it wont make any difference in the long run.

 

[granny]

One thing to bear in mind is that NTL *are* still pushing ahead with a pretty aggressive program of expansions. I've been told this by a couple of blokes I know who work for them and I've also seen it in practice - 2 months after I moved into my house in Derby NTL did some cabling and lo & behold cable modems became available to me.

Might be worth phoning them up and asking if they're planning to extend their service in your direction in the next 12 months or so, they were pretty forthcoming when I asked them the same thing when I moved.

 

[xane]

Originally posted by xane
... limited to a certain number of hours/week ... typically 150 hours costs £15/month.

That might have read wrong. £15/month is for around 40 hours/week, or 160 hours/month, depends how the ISP measure it.

BT have a similar one, £17/month for 150 hours/month, and cheapo ISPs like V21 do £15/month for over 200 hours/month.

 

[danger]

cheers xane... it's looking more attractive.... Although the 128k was for downloading... I know 64k is good enough for gaming... which is why I don't feel completely peaved....... are there likely to be any problems latency wise using ISDN on a freecall provider?

I haven't given up on ADSL yet as my line length is only 4.8k... I'm still ringing up... getting narky and trying to get them to sort my line... has anyone had any luck with getting BT to sort it when they have too much noise on the line?? If so any advice of who to call / what to say would be appreciated

 

[danger]

For anyone who's remotely interested here's an update....


After 2 weeks of ringing them, BT still refused to admit that my not being able to have DSL was due to HF line loss and not my distance... Despite repeatedly quoting the 4.8km value I get from the 0707 blah blah test.

I was so pissed off I lodged a complaint with BT... after not responding to it within the 3 days they said they would I waited a further 2 days before getting REAL PO'd and writing to Oftel.

After writing to Oftel they called me and within 2 minutes of speaking to the lovely bloke at the other end of the line informed me he'd get onto BT for me... within 2 hours of hanging up the phone BT called me, apologised, informed me that my not being able to have DSL was due to too much HF Line loss. wahoo a moral victory at least..

They then told me that there was nothing they could do about it on this line however they could install another line for me and if it fails the test I won't have to pay the installation or be tied into any 12 month contract....


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WORK

 

[Testin da Cable]

fingers crossed mate

 

[Wilier]

Nice, any victory over BT is a victory for the republic.

VIVE LA FRANCE


erm.................srry.


BTW, Danger, I hate you. They wouldnt touch my line with a shitty stick, never mind install a new one.

 

[danger]

Heh cheers guys...

Will.... as I said I had to write oftel in order to get nething done

u can always give it a go

Been talking to a bloke on ADSLguide forums who had 5 lines installed before he eventually got a line suitable for ADSL


/me goes out to buy scotch for the engineer....... reckon a bag of top quality skunk might persuade him to sort the line?

 

[Will]

Maybe.

I find OFTEL really can get things moving for individual cases. Its just the big stuff they have problems with, like local loop unbundling.

 

[danger]

Yes.... usually (well in my case) it meant I was put through to BT high level complaints... so I spoke to someone who's voice carried weight instead of some peon from the broadband helpdesk... Don't wait long if you don't get what you want within 3 phone calls... call oftel.. that's my advice will save you alot of hassle(sp?)

DO IT WILL YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE

provided your somewhere within range

 

[Will]

*nods* I work in customer services (sort of) in another Telco (I think you all know which one, its not really important anyway), and it is a good shortcut to get you through to someone who can get things done. It is possible without going to Oftel, but you need to know how to work the system. Oftel is a lot easier.

 

[kameleon]

I had problems with BT because I moved house, then had to wait 7 weeks for them to decide to do an engineers test on my new phone line. I finally got pissed off with them and sent an email (composed while fueled on strong lager and a homeopathic remedy for whatever ails ya). They very nicely rang me up the day after I got NTL cable installed to tell me I could now have ADSL. I very politely told them to shove their broadband up their collective arse.

I ordered NTL cable on the phone, was given an installation date and time there and then. Within 2 hours of the engineers coming to fit the line/modem etc I was surfing on my phat 600k broadband pipe. The £25 a month also includes the rental of a cable modem which has USB and ethernet connectivity. and up to now the service hasnt had a single glitch.

Get in touch with NTL ( whose cable service is based near cardiff) and beg em to install it on your street. You could even canvass your neighbours and ask em for sigs to sign up for the service