right to me this doesnt look like such a good deal there are several things that concern me with this excuse me for sounding negative but i will make these points
1. there is an 18 month contract if you get poor service seems your stuck
2. 40gb download sounds good but i wonder if there will be traffic shaping with it if not in the future cos of p2p apps
3. you buying this for the phone essentailly whats to stop them once on board from changing there tariffs on the phone lines once you are happily using away just a thought
some info for those that didnt know the reason the networks gone to 8mb is cos BT is launching later on in the year an on demand tele service which if you want buy a box for about 200gbp so there network needed up grading to carry the streams for that you will get some downloads free and the rest they will charge
The reason the LLU only went to 8mb not the 24mb a friend of mine works in the internet control room for telewest was telling me to go 24mb need a router that costs 60,000gbp and needs 8 cards costing about 10,000 each so for every exchange you looking to spend in the region of 250,00gbp thats alot of money to recoupe and the odds are bt will not upgrade this for at least i reckon about 7-10years unless they need to costs are too high on equipment
I personally was looking going with pipex 27.99pm 2months free for migrating have to buy 3000mins for phone 4.99 instead of 11.99 but there are NO download limits NO traffic shaping etc 12month contract so overall for me better deal till i cant get 24mb from only 2 suplliers in country
www.bethere.co.uk and
www.ukonline.co.uk unfourantely for me i dont live in london i reckoning at least 2yrs away from me may be far as 5 but personally i'm all for price wars there are too many isp providers atm most of them still only offering 2mb as fastest available when my exchange has been already upgraded to 8mb thats the reason i will be leaving bulldog they say cannot upgrade me to 8mb (even though bt says my exchange is now capable of running at that speed and has been upgraded) this is the crucial time over the next year who you will see stands out from the crowd for price with service
Personally for me bulldog has gone totally down hill since cable and wireless has taken over a communications company who does not even have power to do internal transfers between departments and says sorry not my dept you need to phone this one happened 5 times with average call about ten mins to give name etc explain what was going on
Friends of mine are with ntl and say is very rare they get 10mb have done line speed tests etc as for customer service had dealings with them few years ago they had no back up then so they got kicked out of my house long long story i will probably never ever use them again because of such poor customer service and lack of techincal capabilty
as someone once said to me there is nothing such as a free lunch its true
I rather pay a little more for alot more service and no caps
Before i buy from anyone these days i always phone there helplines/customerservice first to guage a real prostective of a company first see how long it takes them to answer and then secondly see how helpful they are can answer questions etc you'd be amazed how many isp provider sales people dont even know what LLU is or some of them cant even tell u if they block some ports etc if fact it scares me that i know more than they do and they are supposed to be the professionals
The only thing i think alot of firms could all do better is to have a proper roadmap of how and when they expect to roll out there own exchanges even if was only rough guide because atm i have found no company to do this only 1 has said please leave your details and when we do your exchange we will conatct you and that was bethere i would say for me that has become the frustration so for the next 2 yrs or so i reckon for me will be pipex anyway i have said my bit i hope this is of help to some of you
Basil
