An end to my intermittent disconnection problems.
 

The ADSL connection on my BT line went live last night. As soon as my new ISP resolves a minor authentication problem I will be cancelling my remaining NTL accounts.

I first joined NTL as an unmetered dial-up customer. When broadband prices dropped I signed up for the full triple-play in 2001.

NTL have consistently remained cheaper than the Sky+ADSL option which has been the main reason I have remained with them. However, for the packages I want the difference has become small enough to encourage me to jump ship for a better quality of service.

Cable TV went about six months ago. I had long been irritated by slow, bug ridden STBs, unpopulated EPGs and a dismal interactive service. Following replacement of a faulty STB my ability to order Front Row movies was lost and NTL seemed unable to fix it.

Three times I sat with my daughter to watch a PPV movie and every time it failed to authenticate my order. These attempts were spread over two weeks punctuated by *long* phone sessions to CS with repeated promises that "it will be fixed in 24 hours."

When a good deal for Sky+ came to my attention I ordered and haven't looked back. The whole family regards Sky+ as the best thing since sliced bread.

As I don't rely on NTL for news or email I have been fairly happy with their broadband. This summer reliability has been awful. Frequent, intermittent loss of service for periods ranging from a few minutes to over five hours.

CS arranged for engineer to visit and as I suspected found nothing wrong at my end. Half an hour after he left my connection dropped again.

No doubt if I had persisted they would have eventually fixed the problem - but only after many hours on hold to CS and a few more fruitless engineer visits. I came to the conclusion I would resolve the problems with my connection more quickly and reliably by switching to ADSL.

The cable network is a wonderful thing and should be the basis of a great business. NTL, however, are rubbish. Every contact I have with them reinforces my belief that the systems and procedures they have in place are broken and don't look like getting fixed any time soon.

I will never buy products or services from NTL again. If another company takes over the cable network I might be interested...