All your eggs in one basket?
 

NTL would like all its customers to take all its services, TV, telephone and broadband. Many customers think the same way and have all three services from them. I used to have all three together with Sky and a BT phone. Over a year ago I decided to go for Sky+ and ceased the NTL DTV service as it had been problematic. I also ceased the BT telephone service as there was little to choose between the with my usage and NTL was offering a 5p per hour off peak tier.

This morning at around 11:00am I suddenly lost my broadband connection. I tried to switch to a dial-up connection to see if there was anything on the service status page but guess what, no dialtone. The phone was off as well. Tried ringing my daughter who lives across the road using my mobile but her telephone was giving a number unobtainable tone. Checked the telephone directory for a NTL number and called this on my mobile but got a number unobtainable reponse. Looking through my NTL file I found a faults number and rang that going through the input telephone number and select option messages and ultimately got a recorded message that my area NG17 had an outage which was being investigated by engineers. Service resumed at around 12:15.

This was the first time in several years that I have had a service interuption that has affected me and I am very satisfied with my NTL broadband and telephone services but it has got me thinking. there were things that I wanted to do today with it being my Grandsons birthday and we are expecting visitors that do not know the area and only have landline numbers. You suddenly realise how much you rely on the internet when you cannot access it either using broadband or dial-up. If you have the same provider for both telephone and broadband you can be stuffed. The ideal situation would appear to be to have cable broadband and BT phonline so that you always should have an alternative.

I will give it a little thought but I will probably end up going back to BT for the phoneline. Friends and Family discounts and fully itemised free online bills being a further benefit.

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

Yeah, we had the same thoughts here (going back to BT) mainly due to NTL telling Chim that caller ID was available/ coming soon etc when blatantly it isn't. It is worth thinking about though as you rightly point out, one major outage and you can lose all lines of communication. Having said that, outages of this magnitude are few and far between thankfully. We have Sky tv but NTL BB and telephone so to be honest if we switch to BT telephone we would be quite well spread in case of problems :)

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

These days, as indicated in the first post, most people do have mobiles, so if there is a loss of the phone line, we do have an emergency alternative. May not be quite as convenient in some situations, and more expensive than the landline but it'll do. There are some who have scrapped landlines altogether. If it wern't for NTL bundling the line free for me (as I have NTL TV), I wonder if I'd bother for the few calls I make.

It looks like ntl knew something had gone wrong fairly swiftly and were on the case. Faults do happen. Is it really the end of the world to be without for a couple of hours? Yes if they don't resolve, or as posted by Paul you need features other providers don't offer, move around, or simply to save money, otherwise it's probably going to cost you the customer simply to address a small possibility.

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

No it wasn't the end of the world and we do have mobiles. It was the only outage like that we have had with NTL in around four years and we can't complain too much about the NTL phone service. It is a little dearer than it would be with BT but not so much that we would consider moving because of the cost. There are times though that a prolonged loss of service could be problematic or maybe an inconvenience that could be avoided by switching the line to BT. It wouldn't cost anything to change and we could port the number back to BT.

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

To be honest, with a BT line you can get some really great deals on phone call charges, 18866 being a prime example, and also talkTalk and many others. Get a BT line and port your number but don't use BT for calls.

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

Might not have read it properly, but it looks like after four years uninterrupted service, the phone line went down for an 75 minutes... That's a pretty good outage rate if you ask me...

Anything that compromises your main landline constitutes a very high priority callout, and it seems that happened... If it will actually save you money to move to BT, then go for it, but I don't think that kind of outage could neccessarily justify it for me...

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

I have no problems whatsoever with NTL and the phone line. Service has been excellent and outages virtually non existant. Loss of the phone and internet were just a minor inconvenience that I could live with. The point I was making was that having all services from one company, either NTL or BT can result in loss of both if there is a problem which would not be the case if the services were provided by different companies. If I moved the phone to BT I could still get internet connection through either NTL broadband or dial-up via the BT line. May seem trivial but the change would not cost me a penny and I could probably save a few coppers on cheaper call costs through the BT line as Mark suggested. Probably stay with NTL for the phone but it gets you thinking when faced with service losses.

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

True, I thought that was the case - It's more of a promt than a reason :)

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

In all fairness to NTL, you will never have a seemless service off any company. Since I have been with NTL I have never had one problem with the phone line not working. When I was a BT customer it went off a couple of times (mainly storm damage).

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

If your electricity went off then you would not be able to use the internet on either NTL or BT (unless you had a UPS or a laptop with a charged battery). There is always a weak link somewhere that can bring the whole lot tumbling down but I see your point about spreading the risk.

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

You are lucky, I have had all 3 services from NTL for 5 years and service is not a word I think should be used alongside NTL. In the last 2 months i think I must have been without BB & TV for at least a fortnight on and off, over periods ranging from 12 hours to 3 1/2 days (starting Xmas day! :mad: ) At the time I think I got through to a call centre (India I think) who told me it was being worked on (NTL paying engineers over Xmas, BS) Funnily enough we came back on line the morning of the first normal working day after Xmas. Called CS later to vent my spleen and the guy told me he could understand my anger, especially with kids over Xmas, and I should call Billing and Accounts for a refund/compensation. Anyway being very busy with a young family it took a while too call accounts. After yet another outage my wife made a call to accounts demanding recompense and they said there was no record of my previous calls and implied she was lying!:mad: :mad: The woman she spoke to said all they would give was 1 month free family pack (£10) and when my wife said that wasn't good enough the bot claimed she was told off by her supervisor for offering that. Thats how much NTL think of their customers. I have since told NTL to stick their TV and Phone and am going Sky and BT/18866. Seeing there proposed caps on BB I am also looking at switching BB provider.

NTL :td:

Re: All your eggs in one basket?
 

Fully Charged Laptop, Bluetooth to a (T-Mobile) mobile phone and you can still surf the web during a power outage (assuming it's not an area wide outage!) - long enough to check yell.com for Powergen's number anyway! (Laptop Bluetooth and T-Mobile allowed me to check Tesco's status page before i went and reset the router to factory settings! - not having a landline phone (i have a BT Line but no phone connected) i couldn't even check for a dial tone.