I’ll ask my brother tonight…hes been whining on at my mum to change our company as well. Though we had 512k an got upgraded to 2mb for free on BT

That’s http://www.eclipse.net.uk by the way :bounce_g:

Broadband is a big postcode lottery…..

For the local loop end (the bit that goes to your house) its a duopoly between BT (who still provide much of the access and infrastructure for all other non NTL ISPs) and NTL. NTL cherry pick customers in affluent areas / areas where its easy to get their cables in.

OTOH BT have the upper hand in many areas as they were once a Government Department (Post Office Telephones – I’m really showing my age here!) who could overrule planning objections (NIMBYs who didn’t like poles and CPCs (green boxes) ) “for the greater good”

Some NIMBYs refuse NTL permission to install cable – and apparently one whinger stops an entire estate being cabled as NTL just can’t be fucked with dealing with the objections and associated paperwork.

NTL also have a habit of walking away from the market in pikey areas where they have put in cables but local scrotes keep kicking their green boxes in and ripping the cables! (BT’s boxes are made out of stronger stuff though)

But in some areas BT don’t want to install local loop pairs (the telephone line to your house) as it costs them too much – either they have run out of capacity or there are ongoing problems such as water in the underground cables (causes signal interference). Its all about cherry picking and screwing the customer for the least amount of effort and capital investment.

However BT treat their broadband customers with utter contempt, even their high-paying business and major public sector customers. If I wasn’t bound by certain confidentiality rules I could give you stacks of BT horror stories.

Be careful though as some ISPs can become victims of their own success and expand more than their customer service capabilitites (NTL did this very soon after broadband was introduced and only recently have reached a barely acceptable level).

Bulldog was good, but greed for new business meant they “bit off more than they could chew” (sorry) and their customer service lines are not easily accessible. They also are part of C&W who do some of the old bills comms, do you want your party traffic going through the same network?

Remember cops have more corporate clout than residential customers and “good corporate citizens do what their friendly law enforcement agencies tell them to…”

I’d suggest a non-BT ADSL ISP. A friend uses tiscali – pipex also have good reports and have been doing it for years. You get what you pay for with comms services.

And when you migrate from BT Openwoe to another ADSL ISP, keep chasing BT to change the connection to your new ISP. When you dump BT they can behave like a spurned partner who cannot believe the relationship is over. Its actually a 5 minute job to switch over the connections in your local Telephone Exchange but often (happened to about 3 people I know) BT will fuck about your new ISP and stall them because the BT engineers are being prioritised to BTs own work. You may even need to threaten them with reporting to Ofcom… (BT is being investigated for this at this very moment).

Best of luck!