Another call to TS this morning.
Had a bit of trouble convincing the TS chap that the problem was with the modem.
Of course, I waited for it to crash before ringing them up and when he tried to run his diags, he asked me to reboot my modem. I explained that rebooting will resolve the issue... ...for a few hours. Once rebooted, of course my net connection was fine.
"So the problem has to be with the connectivity or configuration of your PC, sir".
Hohum! After explaining the situation, and reiterating that lots of people are having the same issue so it has to be an NTL issue, not a personal config problem, he agreed to send an engineer round. I now have one coming next Saturday to replace my modem.
Wonder what I'll get and whatever it is, I just hope it sorts out the problem!
BTW, I've never had to replace my CM before. If they determine your service speed by MAC address, how long do they need to update their databases? I hope it would be a plug-in and go exercise, but maybe they need a few hours to update before mine comes active? Or can they have two on the go so I won't experience any downtime?