Its been a very long month here at Violet Studios and
with quite a few changes.
In between the getting various larger projects built and
tested I have other things going on including the building and restoration of a
new Studio PC with more power so I can create better things.
However, as I reported earlier in the year, I was majorly
upset with the state of my internet service provision.
For years now I have struggled with UK broadband
providers.
My first Service provider was Sky who offered me “Unlimited”
broadband. Who then because I used more than 40 gig a month, capped my usage
and restricted my access.
I then moved to O2 who again promised me I could have
Unlimited internet, only to throw me off their service saying I was using too
much data.
Funny how the word Unlimited works isn’t it?
After that I had to quickly find a new provider and step
up Talk Talk, who promised me Unlimited Internet too, and for a change, they
really did and for near enough a couple of years I was very happy, right up
towards the end of last year when things started to get problematic.
It started with a few niggles here and there.
Every so often, at peak times I found SL was struggling a
little on download speeds.
Then rather than every so often, slowly by November 2013,
it became struggling a little every evening and all weekend.
However as December arrived, the problem was getting alot
worse.
My broadband was rated at 6 mbps however by peak times
the figures were getting down to dial up speeds of around 0.5 mbps.
As I hit Christmas, the speeds were getting terminal and
I was clocking speeds of less than 0.2mbps
Putting that realistically, I hadn’t seen speeds like
that since 1998 on 28K Dialup.
This for me was unacceptable. I was paying for a service
I wasn’t getting, and as someone who designs and works online, I need a stable
connection all day. And that wasn’t happening. I was being forced to down tools
at 4pm in the afternoon, and pack in work for the day, as I couldn’t use SL.
In fact if I crashed, there were times it took anything
up to an hour for me just to manage to log back in SL because the speeds were
so low, the viewer was refusing to run giving error messages.
So, I called Technical Support. Little did I know at the
time this was going to be the start of four months of swearing, arguing and
broken promises.
First few times I got ran through their standard scripts
and was told that there is nothing wrong.
Third time, I got them to come out and look at things.
Took them 10 days to get someone out and after he came, he managed to improve
my connection slightly, but the peak time issues were there.
I called again, and this time I got an engineer from BT
Openreach come out and finally I got the whole story.
Internet in the UK is slightly confusing in that there
really are only two companies offering services in the UK. British Telecom, and
Virgin Cable. All other providers are tied to BT who leases them services. This
I already knew, as it was BT who imposed restrictions of data on both Sky, and
O2 previously turning unlimited, in to limited.
As the Engineer explained, as he lived only a few doors
away from me, the local telephone exchange hadn’t been upgraded for 15 years.
And in that time, use of the internet had gone from 30% to 90% and there had
been 3500 new homes built that it was serving.
The problem was not my internet connection. It was the
Exchange itself trying to funnel thousands of Terabytes of data and not having
the physical capacity to do it hence network bottlenecks and pitiful speeds.
The only ray of sunshine was BT was installing Fibreoptic
broadband. Actually they weren’t. They had deemed the area I live in to be “commercially
unviable” and had no plans to update the network so they could get the UK
government grant to install it. Amazing considering the area has huge
commercial viability and I don’t live in the middle of nowhere.
What surprised me, was September to December 2013, I had
seen them on the street installing it, although at the time I had no clue what
they were doing. So the lines were there, the boxes and hardwear were installed
and all ready to go!
The engineer told me that this was only really happening
because he and some others had gotten so angry, they had contacted both the
local member of the UK government and the head of BT Openreach to come up and
urgently look at this area and it had been deemed critical, and as a result of
poor planning, they were having to bypass the local exchange completely as it wasn’t
commercially viable for them to do the exchange.
So, at last, Fibreoptic broadband was on its way.
However checking the Openreach website my area was coming
up as “Nothing planned.”
Back on the phone to Talk Talk asking one simple
question. When can I get Fibre?
By the end of January this year, I finally managed to pin
them down to getting an answer.
28th Feb – so I put up, shut up, and bit my
tongue and waited patiently.
As the time approached, I rang up to see where we were up
to. They wouldn’t give me any more information and as March arrived, and no
Fibre broadband I called them again.
This time I got a response. “Sorry, but we don’t have
that information, we never have had that information, BT Openreach are in
control of the deployment and whoever told you that should never have given you
a date as they didn’t know.”
Or, if you want, they lied to me just to get me off the
phone and stop me calling them.
Its fair to say I was fuming however checking the
openreach website again, I saw that in mid March the partnership that was
funding Fibre Broadband Deployment in my area was doing a “Public awareness”
campaign with a local meeting so I booked that in my diary for mid March.
Perhaps I could finally break this Talk Talk Blames BT,
BT Blames Openreach (ironic as its their own company), and Openreach has no
contact details!
The meeting arrived, the website was still saying “no
plans” and I got there only to find BT Openreach were too frightened to send
any representatives leaving only the partnership staff to answer the maddening
crowds of angry people.
So I asked them the question I had asked Talk Talk. When
can I get fibre?
“oh, we arnt sure as it is openreach and it will be ready
when its ready, but I would say you are looking at June”
Cue near enough Nuclear meltdown.
I got back in from the meeting spitting blood but the
next day something changed.
Openreach’s Website says “coming soon”.
Called Talk Talk Support again to be as usual hit by the
wall of ignorance and apathy.
But it seemed something was finally moving.
Over the next few weeks, I checked the Open Reach website
until on the 5th April, I logged on to find the words “Accepting
Orders”
Finally... Its over. I can use the internet on an evening
again!!!
Rang Talk Talk.
I had already checked their website and it said “not
available” but it was probably due to them not being up to date.
Wrong. They told me they didn’t have fibre broadband end
of story and call back next week – maybe it would be up and running.
Called up the a few days later to see what the deal was
and if they had it.
Again I was told to go away, but there was something else
I was doing at that moment. I was checking out their rivals out of curiosity to
see if they had Fibre available.
Talking to the salesman on the phone, I went on to Plus
Nets website, typed in my details and how odd... they were showing that they
had Fibre broadband available.
Salesman tried to shrug that off saying oh they must have
a deal with BT or something as BT own them.
So I checked Sky’s website while on the phone. Accepting
Orders.
He didn’t know what to say.
I checked EE’s website – Accepting Orders.
Oh... errr. I don’t know. We should have the service too
if they all have it.
He then confidently said to me “Right, I am going to
raise this with our back office as a priority case and I am going to take
personal ownership and responsibility for this. I will guarantee to give you a
call back at the latest next Friday. I know that you have had so many problems
with our service and this isn’t fair on you, but if you could give Talk Talk
this last chance I will sort this out for you and get you a really good deal”
I can be stupid sometimes, but I took him at his word. I
put the phone down, and I waited for a week off the back of his promise.
11am the following Friday – when he said he would call, I
sat by the phone waiting eagerly.
Nothing
11.30am, I got sick of waiting and called Talk Talk.
Oh... I am sorry, but the issue was raised with our back
office. It seems that because Talk Talk don’t have access to the exchange to
put our own equipment in it, we arnt able to offer you Fibre Broadband
services. Its simply not possible.
I ground my teeth and then asked these questions.
Why didn’t the salesman who promised me to take personal
ownership on this call me back, when did he find out, and when did the back
office actually give that information?
They actually answered honestly for the first time in four
months, probably knowing already at this point they had lost me as a customer.
The guy had read the note from the backoffice 3 days
before on the Tuesday. And the Back office had issues their response to this 7
hours after it has been put through – at 7pm on the Friday before.
As for the lack of response, they had nothing.
I cancelled my services with Talk Talk 20 minutes later,
went back to Sky Broadband and although the transfer didn’t go smoothly, I
finally, at the start of May, 6 months after my internet became unviable on an
evening, moved to the basic package of 38mbps Fibre broadband.
The results so far have been stunning really.
Day or night, regardless of when you check, I have a
stable speed of 37.5mbps
I could go for an even higher speed of 78mbps, but I
decided to see how I get on with the introduction speed and upgrade if I need
to but so far, I have acres of bandwidth to spare. SL runs like lightening, day
or night, and I managed to download software patches for my daughters PS3 games
in minutes.
Previously I tried to download a 1.2 Gig patch for a
game, and it failed after 4 hours
The same on Fibre shockingly took less than 15 minutes to
download and install.
I was needless to say a very happy camper.
This does mean a significant change though at Violet
Studios.
For the last six months, I have been forced to down tools
around 6pm, and go watch TV as SL was effectively unusable.
I couldn’t build, I couldn’t upload and at times I couldn’t
relog in.
With Fibre, I can build, I can now upload at 9mbps
(previously at max 0.3mbps) and I have a fast stable connection.
So... PC is upgraded and working at ultra fast speeds,
broadband is stable and extremely fast.
Time to get back to working like a maniac.
