From NTL to ADSL - advice please...

[yodaferret]

hi themelon..nice to hear someone else enjoys telling bt where to go...i wonder if you can help me with a problem i have trying to set up an auto dialler to get past ntl's tight wad 2 hour limit...it is driving me mad..heeelp

[Anastasis]

Very interesting debate on the pros and cons of NTL & BT. Thanks for taking the time to post your experiences in such detail.

As it stands I will be staying with NTL for a while at least, but actually at this stage not for any reason for which cable or ADSL is better.

The reason is I telephoned NTL to cancel our telephone with them as we route most of our calls (apart from 0845 & 0870 numbers which I cannot find alternatives for on saynoto0870) through Call18866, and routing via BT makes it easier and marginally cheaper (although even at ½p per minute I can't complain).

Anyway, when asked why I wanted to unsubscribe our telephone, I told the lady it was mainly because using BT was cheaper for us (not mentioning Call18866 though). At that point she said that as I also have BB with them, she could offer me the same package they are offer new customers, namely free line rental for a year.

So get this: since using Call18866, we now spend no more than £2 per month on NTL-routed phone calls, so NTL are waiving the £9.50 per month line rental to get £2 per month back. Whilst of course, they are still getting my BB payment, I made no mention of my thoughts of going with ADSL, so they waived the line rental solely on the basis of retaining my phone calls.

Bizarre, but as my phone bill will now be about £60 for the whole year, compared to the £300+ it was last year, I'm quite gobsmacked.

How many billion is it that NTL are in debt?

[mutty_w4rez]

Hey, I'm thinking of changing from ntl phone line to bt for 2mb tbh.

I currently have the full package, tv/ broadband and phone.

Can I just cancel the phone and get BT then adsl and keep my tv package for the cost it should be without any other "added" costs?

Thanks.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by mutty_w4rez

Hey, I'm thinking of changing from ntl phone line to bt for 2mb tbh.

I currently have the full package, tv/ broadband and phone.

Can I just cancel the phone and get BT then adsl and keep my tv package for the cost it should be without any other "added" costs?

Thanks.

Unfortunately not


If you have ntl cable TV, you *have* to also have an ntl phone line.


If you want ADSL, but want to keep your ntl TV, you'll have to still keep the ntl phone line, even though you'd also then have a BT phone line for ADSL.


The other option is to ditch ntl TV too & get Sky.


This enforced TV & phone bundling is, IMO, very stupid.

[mutty_w4rez]

Originally Posted by Matt D

Unfortunately not


If you have ntl cable TV, you *have* to also have an ntl phone line.


If you want ADSL, but want to keep your ntl TV, you'll have to still keep the ntl phone line, even though you'd also then have a BT phone line for ADSL.


The other option is to ditch ntl TV too & get Sky.


This enforced TV & phone bundling is, IMO, very stupid.

blast, so would going through all the hassle of changing everything be worth it for 2mb plusnet?

I mean how good are sky in comparison to ntl?

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by mutty_w4rez

blast, so would going through all the hassle of changing everything be worth it for 2mb plusnet?

Heh, I don't know. Although plusnet are meant to be very good.

Originally Posted by mutty_w4rez

I mean how good are sky in comparison to ntl?

Not really sure, tbh. I don't have either (just have phone & BB).


I think the prices are comparable. It does sound like the Interactive on Sky is better though.

There are a few threads around here somewhere comparing the pros/cons of ntl TV & Sky.

EDIT: Here's a couple -

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=15819

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=14076

[DeadKenny]

Originally Posted by mutty_w4rez

blast, so would going through all the hassle of changing everything be worth it for 2mb plusnet?

I mean how good are sky in comparison to ntl?

I went for Sky telly vs NTL long ago because NTL took so long over digital TV (anyone remember "coming soon?" ). Years of broken promises, lack of proper widescreen and RGB support (at the time), no interactive, etc. Sky was the easy answer.

I've never regretted it in the slightest.

Now all that's left is NTL phone and Cable modem, and if my switch to a BT line works out and ADSL is a go ahead, then it's bye bye NTL forever (and I can't say I'll be sorry to miss them).

However, NTL TV vs Sky... it's not that much different when you compare on prices and the major channel content. Sky does have hundreds more channels though, but it's mostly junk (though there are some good channels that Sky has and NTL doesn't).

Plus...

Sky have L!veTV now (classic cable channel from CableTel days that NTL single handedly killed off in protest of having to carry it. So now Sky have it ).

Of course NTL vs Sky+ is another matter

For me though it's not whether one is better but the simple fact that Sky is not NTL. That's enough for me

Oh, and in my experience customer service with Sky (and BT) is a million times better than NTLs.

[themelon]

Originally Posted by Matt D

This enforced TV & phone bundling is, IMO, very stupid.

I also dont see why you should have to pay £10.50 for line rental to BT every month if you only use a line for ADSL.

[themelon]

Originally Posted by DeadKenny

Oh, and in my experience customer service with Sky (and BT) is a million times better than NTLs.

Errgggggggghhhhhhh

Sky and their beloved 0870 rip off number have to have single handedly the worst customer service I have ever dealt with! Constantly trying to sell you stuff you dont want, they are cluless, ignorant, arrogant and completely unhelpful, I dont think Sky Customer service ever solved one of my problems, it was always 'well send you an engineer for £60' even for something as simple as rebooting the box. Unless they have improved dramatically recently.

Ive also had a poor time with BT, and ntl arent fantastic but at least your not paying for the privilage!

I think the whole customer service issue is down to personal experience.......for me not one customer service centre I have ever dealt with treats customers with the respect they deserve.........they are all as bad as each other.

[DeadKenny]

Originally Posted by themelon

I also dont see why you should have to pay £10.50 for line rental to BT every month if you only use a line for ADSL.

Well as ADSL is totally dependent on a phone line, how else are BT going to get money for the line? The line rental has nothing to do with whether you use it for voice or data (much like with mobile phones, as after all you still pay line rental on a mobile even if you only use it for data).

It's an unfair comparison because cable uses coax and is independent of the phone line. The same can be said of other Internet services that don't use the phone line.


LLU lines are another matter however.

[themelon]

Originally Posted by DeadKenny

Well as ADSL is totally dependent on a phone line, how else are BT going to get money for the line? The line rental has nothing to do with whether you use it for voice or data (much like with mobile phones, as after all you still pay line rental on a mobile even if you only use it for data).

It's an unfair comparison because cable uses coax and is independent of the phone line. The same can be said of other Internet services that don't use the phone line.


LLU lines are another matter however.

Well presumably BT make money from the wholesale cost of the DSL service, as you say for LLU Providers like Bulldog we still need to pay BT £10.50.

BT Sneakily added another £1 forcing everyone whether they want BT or not on to option 1 also making any ADSL package in my eyes ISP+BT=Expensive!

I dont really see what BT would be losing better get some money from ADSL wholesale...than have a line running to a house disconnected, the line is gonna be their either way and BT are gonna need to keep the equipment maintained anyway.

After all a house has to have cable installed the same as a BT cable runs to practically 99% of the UK anyway, it must cost the same either way. Its just a cable it doesnt really matter what it does, if I dont use it for voice calls or Dont want to use BT...I dont use it for voice calls.

There should at least be a cheaper package for DSL users. Why and how they got away with ditching the Standard plan i will never know!

[DeadKenny]

The line has to be connected to the exchange though for ADSL to work and connected to BT equipment, except in the case of LLU.

Even though you're not using the voice part of the frequencies you are still using their network and will depend on BT to maintain it and come out and fix the thing when there are faults. Someone has to pay for it. Okay, you could have the ISPs pay it instead but BT will still charge a line rental to the ISP who will just pass on the costs.

This is all separate to the "wholesale" stuff which is just the base ADSL price and nothing to do with the line cost.

Line costs are for the copper cable, regardless of what's actually sent down it (be it voice, ADSL, ISDN, etc).

I agree though that if you decided to not have a voice phone number it would be nice if BT offered a cut down rental that didn't include Option 1 and knocked a bit off for that part of the line rental that only related to voice specific functionality (though most of that's paid for in call costs).

Contractually there's probably some need to have a physical land line of some sort, and maybe for legal reasons (to be sure you're not some fraudster who's renting a line for ADSL and doesn't live at the address and has some mobile number as their 'contact' where they can't trace where you live... well, maybe something like that). Also, you need a line for emergency use and someone has to be paid to maintain that (these days, if you don't pay the bills you can't even dial 999)


Personally I'm not fussed. I don't use NTL TV so I'm not forced to have an NTL line and a BT line is the same cost to me as an NTL line, so I'm happy to switch to BT to get ADSL and still end up paying less for broadband and line rental combined than I am with NTL.

*If* I can get it that is... we shall see as it may end up getting rejected

[Thorny]

I have just spent a good deal of time reading through this thread as I am switching to ADSL from my pathetic cable by NTL.

Some of you must of been extreemly fortunate to not have problems with NTL. Customer service is terrible, they dont know what they are tlaking about and just want to get onto the next call as quick as possible, so often cut you off then writing on their logs as " caller disconnected". Every other month this year I have had to call out for an NTL engineer, who always seems to make me wait untill 3pm before turning up, this is while im sitting in my house with no TV, cable or phone due to the fault, those days really drag on.

Cable network is in good condition? that is really laughable, the company that installed the network before it became NTL did a terrible job, even an NTL engineer said that. instead of laying the cables underground at a reasonable lenght to each house, they took the easy route and just did 1 very long cable round the whole close, causing my house, near the end, to have a bad signal.

On those occasions when I actually get a cabel connection its pritty good, ping in games is great, download speeds are great, browsing is fast. But once that connection starts to go bad after a few months, it gets worse and worse untill an engineer comes out and fixes it.

My experience with BT has been relativly good. I call them alot at work to test lines ect, they are really fast, they dont have hours of being on hold like NTL. They sound believable when they are talking, even if they are telling a small white lie about your line, it doesnt bother you much because they sound like they know what they are doing. NTL customer service actually sound like they are reading these excuses from a book.

I will be switching to ADSL now, NTLs cable TV is worse than freeview digital TV. and the phone is basically exactly the same as BT so no loss there.

I would rather have a constant 1 meg line from a BT based provider than a dodgy crap 1.5 meg NTL line.

due to my experience in the last few years i very much doubt that I will ever return to NTL or reccomend them to anyone ever again. When they finally merge with telewest i hope they ditch the NTL name and start a fresh with telewest.

[mutty_w4rez]

hey, im thinking of changing my complete ntl package to sky/bt/plusnet.

On plusnet site it says I need to pay 58 quid one off fee, will I have to even though I'm changing from ntl? (I mailed them about this as well)

Also when I get my bt phone line swapped back over, I wait 2days max then apply for adsl right? How long does adsl take to come after that? And do I need a second line to have adsl not interfere with my phone line to recieve calls?

Also all I need is a router right to get internet on my pc from adsl? (so my mate says who has plusnet).

I know theres alot of noobie q's, just wanna make sure my change is gonna be secure

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by mutty_w4rez

hey, im thinking of changing my complete ntl package to sky/bt/plusnet.

On plusnet site it says I need to pay 58 quid one off fee, will I have to even though I'm changing from ntl? (I mailed them about this as well)

Also when I get my bt phone line swapped back over, I wait 2days max then apply for adsl right? How long does adsl take to come after that? And do I need a second line to have adsl not interfere with my phone line to recieve calls?

Also all I need is a router right to get internet on my pc from adsl? (so my mate says who has plusnet).

I know theres alot of noobie q's, just wanna make sure my change is gonna be secure

You will have to pay the activation fee, because ntl is cable, and plusnet is adsl.

You will not need a second phone line, but you will need filters so to connect to your phone sockets.

Also, you will need an adsl modem, some providers supply these, but they are usually usb versions, not ethernet. If you want to share the connection you can either connect your existing cable router to a standalone ethernet adsl modem, or purchase a combined adsl modem and router. It is advisable that you check first that any equipment you buy is compatible with your adsl provider.