disappointed by telewest for the first time....

[Dan da man]

more of a winge than anything else,

Up until today i was a great supporter of Blueyonder, recommended it to everyone. of course had the odd little problem, but up till now the worst thing had been me not paying the bill

Well for the last few weeks i have had a high ping (150 to 200+ ms) in the early evenings, by 10 - 11pm it would be back to normal. i'd had this before and they put it down to a faulty node in my area, forcing extra traffic on the node i use. All was ok after 3 days
Now i was willing to accept it was the same thing again so i let it be at first, but after 2 and a half weeks it was beginning to annoy me, i play games online and i have matches at 8pm, right when its at its worst.

Tonight i called them, was initially confronted by a queue but pleasently suprised to be answered in about 2 minutes. The guy was really helpful and for 20 minutes we went through loads of checks and towards the end he was consulting a colleague.

Then it all went to s**t, he came back to me and basically said "It appears we've had lots of reports of similar problems in your area, but because or connection is based on speed not latency we WONT do anything to resolve it, you'll have to wait for the network in your area to be upgraded, this will probably be in 2 or 3 months time." This doesnt fill me full of confidence, i live in Plymouth we were months behind the rest of the country at getting blueyonder in the first place.

So basically, despite having a ping of 150-200ms at times they wont do anything because i can still download files at full speed. great, but i got my connection for gaming.

Thanks Telewest, you've been a great help. Not.

[Tanser_Man]

I was just about to open a thread similar to yours mate.

I too use my connection for gaming (xbox clan matches) but have for the last 2 weeks been getting crap upload speeds when i go to play on it (between 8ish and maybe 10ish).

As you might have guessed i phoned, waited for about 2 mins.... was on the phone for about an hour and then at the end of it he tells me he cant do anything to help!

If blueyonders servers wern't made to hold so many people then why make it available to so many people?

Downloads are fine, and very normal but i dont use my pc for downloads. I too have been getting severe ping times which the operator told me was very very bad.

When i say this to telewest, they dont wanna know, which is just utter crap!

Ive used blueyonder for 2/3 years now and the speed has been fine up untill now and it is not good enough! especially when im paying £35 a month!

Im 2* in all rooms now after being able to hold a server of upto 12 people and now id be lucky to hold myself!

Its simply not good enough, and im only going to ask for help once more before i stop using blueyonder all together.

I too will not be paying my bill untill this is resolved.
__________________

2mb and here are my speed test results

Downstream1416 Kbps (177.0 KB/sec)1529 Kbps (inc. overheads)Upstream171 Kbps (21.4 KB/sec)184 Kbps (inc. overheads)




And there supposed to be

Downstream = 2mb
Upstream = 256kbps


pffffttttt

[Ignition]

Hope you chaps can get it all sorted, for what it's worth it's what you've been told, congestion on your networks, specifically looks like it's on the upstream, which is sadly slowing your downstreams down and messing your pings up big style

[ian@huth]

One of the problems with higher speeds is that it is much easier for congestion to occur. Not being able to get the maximum speed all the time is something we will have to live with unless ISPs have bottomless pockets.

[Ignition]

Been thinking about this some more, are you guys in an Ex-Eurobell area? These areas had a similar type of build to some of Leicester's ntl network which made upgrading more problematic than usual.

[Tanser_Man]

Im from erdington, birmingham.

I understand that i am in a highly populated area and so forth but upload for me is a very important, i might actually ask if they can do me a deal and lower my download speed and increase my upload. Do you think this will be possible?

Other then that i cant see me sticking around waiting for telewest to put up some much needed investment.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by Tanser_Man

Im from erdington, birmingham.

I understand that i am in a highly populated area and so forth but upload for me is a very important, i might actually ask if they can do me a deal and lower my download speed and increase my upload. Do you think this will be possible?

Other then that i cant see me sticking around waiting for telewest to put up some much needed investment.

Nope in answer to your first comment, and as far as the second one goes welcome to the wonderful world which ntl has been in for a while, where money is not the most plentiful thing.

As I've previously mentioned to death in various threads where someone says 'Telewest are coming out with x or xxMbps really soon' they have been powered by pre-bankruptcy upgrades which are now running out, and we have to see now how inately superior they are to ntl when the playing field is a little more level..

Sustainability of uncapped services at like 6 / 8Mbps is even more questionable if they are struggling with existing services.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Tanser_Man

Im from erdington, birmingham.

I understand that i am in a highly populated area and so forth but upload for me is a very important, i might actually ask if they can do me a deal and lower my download speed and increase my upload. Do you think this will be possible?

Other then that i cant see me sticking around waiting for telewest to put up some much needed investment.

Not a chance in hell I would say.

[Tanser_Man]

ahh well... im gonna phone up tomorrow and say either you fix it or increase my upload.


If they dont and come up with more excuses, i think bulldog is a better option.

[Ignition]

They can't increase your upload, and even if they did increase your max upload as you are congested down to a lower upload not sure what you are expecting them to do?

All they can do is fix and it seems clear that that isn't going to happen for a while.

FWIW witholding payment isn't really an issue, they don't guarantee any speeds so aren't breaking their side of the agreement.

[Graham M]

If you are looking for a guarunteed Quality of Service, I suggest you look at 128k Dual Channel ISDN, 64k Single Channel ISDN or a leased Line. Good luck.

[Tanser_Man]

so basically, the customers money dont mean anything.

[Ignition]

Find me a residential ISP that guarantees quality of service will achieve maximum at all times, or indeed a business ISP and I'll be happy to look at them.

You share bandwidth with a number of other users, sometimes there's not enough to go around, that's why your service isn't over £100 a month.

As said previously there's no point in your maximum upload being increased if congestion is holding your speed down..

Not that you'd get a customised service all to yourself anyway, no ISP can allow users to choose their own speeds at the moment, you are offered a defined set of tiers.

Just out of interest, if upload is so important to you why are you paying Telewest £35 a month for 2mbit/256k when 4Mbit download 512k upload with Bulldog along with line rental is about £40 a month, even less with the special offers? Telewest offer a 384k upstream on their 4Mbit service as well don't they? Seems like that deal would suit you better, even if it would *horror* perhaps cost a couple of milliseconds on ping.

Sorry is just weird you complaining about how important upload is with you, yet you neither take the highest tier from your current supplier upload wise, nor do you have what would be the best option available to you upload wise. Odd.

http://www.bulldogbroadband.com/resi...P/NP/index.asp
http://www.bulldogbroadband.com/resi...P/XP/index.asp

[Tanser_Man]

I have actually been looking at bulldog for the last few days, there tempting me.

And telewest actually said to me that the 2mb service was ideal for online gaming and hosting games when i was asking them.

When i signed up they mentioned i would get 2mb and 256k upload... they didn't say to me in letters or whatever that you will somewhere down the line have your upload potentially halved because they have conjection. If they said that to me i would have said on ya bike! like most people i have spoken to, friends and family that live in my area, its getting worse and worse for alot of people but yet all people who work with telewest, BT etc say its our fault basically and they cant help us. Haha

Its there fault for not supplying efficient connections and not thinking about this problem in advance before they supply these amazing 2mb proposals.

And BTW, bulldog are charging £20 for 12 months on 4mb and 400kbs upload.... all you need is to buy a modem(£ 30) and have a phone line from BT of which i have.

Ive never tried adsl before but this seems cool.

[nick.king]

Bulldog is the ISP where your IP changes all time and fu err messes up your downloads. You can pay extra for a static IP though.

I have 2 friends on Bulldog and this is their only gripe, but then again they don't play online games, we use the pub instead as our hobby