5Mb bb for £29.99
 

I've got a friend who has asked me to setup his new 5MB NTL broadband connection, he has upgraded from 1MB and has had a new 250 modem installed.

NTL have given him a cd which they said he needs to run before the new speed will take effect, even though he has internet at the moment. I asked him how much he was being charged for this 5MB service I've never heard of, he says £29.99. I'm going round tomorrow to see it.

Whats going on, I've found no mention of 5MB on the 250 modem and having to re-register to get the new speed? I tried http://192.168.100.1 but it couldn't be found, has it being disabled on the new ones?

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

5MBit is NOT offered by NTL, there is a 1, a 2, and a 10MBit service (formerly 3MBit) and the 10MBit service is £34.99 and can be limited by some hardware to 5MBit(ish)

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

Thats what I thought, but he insists that ntl are providing 5MB at £29.99

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

Perhaps they're giving him a discount because his hardware cannot meet the demand but if so why aren't they giving it to everybody else? Either that or he's been completely screwed over.

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

They have given him a new 250 modem (the blue one) so the hardware is upto it. The engineer installed it yesterday.

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

Ive had something like this before where my mate got 1.5mb BB when everyone else was on 1mb and he was paying the same amount (this was at least 6 months before i received it).

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

Perhaps (trying to think of a plausible explanation) they tested his line and due to distance from his cabinet told him he would only get 5mb and cut him a special price? Any takers..? :erm:

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

Nahh, best thing to do is check the config file by going to 192.168.100.1

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

No, cant be that, ntl's service is not like ADSL where the bandwidth is determined by the distance from the exchange, either it works or it doesn't.

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

Can someone please correct me if i am wrong as i don't profess to be an expert, but when NTL brought out all their charts comparing themselves to BT, they said that on their network 95% of people were within X distance therefore NTL wouldn't suffer the same problems as BT. Wouldn't this suggest that NTL do suffer from distance problems too even though this isn't an issue for most of their customers?

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

NTL do not suffer distance problems like BT do. Simple as that. The only reason you would get less that your proper speed is due to modem/hardware issues or congestion on the network.

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

I'm not doubting you at all, i wish i could find the report as it just puzzles me why NTL wrote it like they did in their comparison to BT. They wrote something like (these are not necessarily the correct figures) 5% of BTs users are within 5km whereas 95% of NTLs users are within 5km. This does them a diservice if distance is not a factor at all? I will see if i can find the report, sure there was a link on this site some time ago.

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

I suspect your friend is just mistaken - perhaps one of those people who mishears something on the phone - e.g. the bloke at NTL said it's 'upto 10mb' so sometimes you will get 5mb.

and perhaps he's one of those people who wont listen! even when you tell him you know there is no 5mb service he thinks he knows better!

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

all they are saying is that most of NTLs customers are within 5Km and BT is only 5%. They are not saying they have distance issues just that their customers are a lot closer to the network.

They are just boasting about how many of their customers compared to BT are closer to the main network, (I think it makes sense).

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

That's great thanks for clearing that up.

As an analyst though it doesn't make sense to me, i think any analyst worth their salt would rather state that 100% of their customers would see no speed loss, rather than leave a doubt in someone's mind (who doesn't understand their network like me) about the 5%. People don't read lengthy reports in their entirity they read headline stuff.

Anyway... back on topic.

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

The reason that ntl have said this is because they intend to to offer ADSL2+ and they are saying how good their network is for doing that because the way the network is built means that they dont have long copper drops back to exchanges like BT do, they have much shorter cable back to street cabinets.
The cable modem service is a completely different technology. If you were too far away from the cabinet your modem wouldn't be able to sync with the network and you wouldnt get anything at all, but as the network was built with this kind of stuff in mind that doesnt happen.

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

Bleh, i typed a longish reply and it said invalid thread. That's not a reason for NTL to say it still though. I already understand the copper issue. All i am saying is that it left a reasonably intelligent person thinking that 5% of people might not get full whack.

Anyway, let's not hijack this thread. I want to know about this 5mb!

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

That is true, 5% of people would not get full speed on ADSL2+ if NTL offered it! ;)

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

OK, I've been round and had a look, turns out NTL didn't even know what service level he was suppose to be on, when I got there the network cable was still plugged into the STB and had stb-light.cm on it.. They just told him to insert the cd and enter his details.

When I reset the STB, it changed to no-bia.cm so internet was completely lost.

I spend a hour on the phone to ntl trying to get it work, (passed between 2 different departments). It was decided that he would go on the 10Meg service.

I couldn't get access to the cable modem web page. There was a loose connection in the longer network cable ntl installed which only started causing problems when I started moving it around. I had to get a temp cable to get everything working. When I got it working it gave me an Internet IP immediately, I didn't have to register the MACs address even though it was a different device, is it normal to do this, I had to re-register the MAC address when I moved to the far more reliable CM.

He was also concerned that his old email address may be deleted. Will this happen. It did happen to me but that was a while ago.

I've learnt one important lesson about NTL a while ago, if it ain't broke don't changed anything...Ever.

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

Not true. If NTL do the ADSL2+ the way i think they will then there will be no customer on a copper cable more than 800 meters from the fibre cab. If they do it for me where i live then i will be 200 meters from the fibre cab. So NTL bring it on and trial it in my area PLEASE.

Re: 5Mb bb for £29.99
 

seems fairly obvious to me, the guy moaned he was only getting a 5meg service and as such they altered his price accordingly. I would guess it is one of those things where its pot luck what the CS agent does who you speak to.