COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[chinatyke]

Here in the UK they'd have charged you £60 or more for that!

£60? I was expecting to pay something because it was my fault. Usually we pay about £3 for a call-out.

We get restricted bandwidth when something important is going on, like the annual China Asean Expo in Nanning, or the Americans interfere in Hong Kong or other government sensitive business. That's why I took it for granted that it was their fault, although I did reboot the modem several times.

[PanBiker]

Nowadays there is not usually a lot of difference in price between standard ADSL and fibre broadband. That's the case with Talk Talk anyway.

[Big Kev]

My ADSL has dropped from 20mbps in Barlick to 11 in Foulridge. I'll give it a week to sort itself out to see whether I need to upgrade to fibre. There are only two of us so usage isn't high.

[Tripps]

Nowadays there is not usually a lot of difference in price between standard ADSL and fibre broadband

Correct - I've just rung Plusnet - (got a person immediately!) I pressed the 'I'm thinking of leaving' button, and they've offered me fibre broadband for two years at £29.99 per month with unlimited downloads , which includes line rental. I think they said the speed would be 38 - 40 Mbs. An email with it all in writing to follow. I think that's fair, it's just £1 more than I pay now so I'll do it.

[Big Kev]

I currently pay £30 a month for unlimited broadband, line rental and unlimited calls. I'll have to do a bit of research into fibre prices.

[Tripps]

If it sounds too good to be true. . .

The emails arrived, and it seems I didn't include the 'Any Time' call package which took the cost to £41.98. Immediate Stewards Enquiry, and a bit of vigorous haggling, including actually telling them to call it all off - result as a compromise at £34.98. pcm - fixed for 2 years.
That'll have to do.

Remember-
'No deal is better than a bad deal' - Mrs May
'The threat is stronger than the execution ' - Aaron NImzowitsch

[PanBiker]

Other providers are available.

[Tizer]

We pay Plusnet £32.98 for the same sort of deal as Tripps gets but it ends soon so we'll have to see what they offer then. Am I correct in thinking the companies now have to contact me and warn me when a contract is near the end?

[Tripps]

Other providers are available.

Only until Mr Corbyn and his chums nationalise Open Reach.
But at least we will all have fibre and it will be free of charge.

[Wendyf]

Other providers are available.

Only until Mr Corbyn and his chums nationalise Open Reach.
But at least we will all have fibre and it will be free of charge.

So looking forward to getting fibre, even better if it's free!

[PanBiker]

Who owns and runs the network is irrelevant. I should have said other ISP's are available.

[Stanley]

You all triggered me into checking my speed, 37+ down and 9+ up. Ping 13ms.

[Stanley]

You and yours on R4 are doing a piece about Netflix scams. Worth looking up on Iplayer.

[Tripps]

On the day that I'm supposed to change over to fibre broadband (fingers crossed) I get a letter from a private company County Broadband saying that the village has been chosen to be fitted with hyper fast ' future ready, fibre to the premises ' FTTP broadband.

They say they are privately funded ' by Aviva investors' and they will aim to provide it free to local public facilities. No mention of time scales or potential future costs. I wonder how many other villages have been 'chosen' or are they just flying a kite to see how many replies they get in the prepaid envelopes.

As I am personally slowing down by the week - I think hyper fast may be a step in the wrong direction. Besides Jeremy says he will do the same for nil cost, I'm sure that thrilled the Aviva investors. I think I'll wait

[Tizer]

Aren't you already `on fibre', Tripps? You're paying the same as us and we are on fibre to the cabinet.

[Tripps]

No - I'm on ADSL at the moment for about £29 pcm. Actually tomorrow is the big changeover to fibre to cabinet, with a copper tail, for about £35 pcm. Must read emails more carefully.

The newcomer looks to be established County Broadband - a bit more than I'd pay though after the first six months. It'll be interesting to see whether they cable me up on spec. Not the easiest property to do.

[Stanley]

I'd be a lot more impressed if there was a promise to give all consumers a viable connection before giving people like me with an adequate connection full fibre.

[Tripps]

Well it's done - I'm cooking on gas. All a bit of a saga which is fairly standard for me.

Phone call at 9.30 " Open Reach here, can you connect your new modem?" Did so, and everything stopped working. Waited 20 minutes and rang Plusnet customer services on my mobile. "be patient and wait a while" was their advice.

10.00 am: Big van pulls up. Open reach technician rings the doorbell. (Deus ex machina as I'm feeling a bit pompous) It's the guy who rang me earlier and was worried about me. Still not sure what the problem was, but in 10 minutes all was fixed. Now 32Mbs down and 8.9 Mbs Up.

I had thought I was happy with the status quo, but this is definitely better.

[Tizer]

It get even faster when it's settled down.

[Stanley]

Important thing is not to power the modem down at night, leave it on 24X7 David.
(You knew that but worth mentioning!)

[Stanley]

I had another go at BBC Sounds and found the problem. There are two options, 'Listen Live' and 'Pop up player'. I have always used listen live and it worked. I hit Pop up player this morning instead and lo and behold, I was on line again. Why the hell didn't they tell us about the change?
Also, I clicked a link that took me to facebook this morning and Firefox informed me the site was trying to track me and it had blocked it. I like that!

[Tizer]

I'm finding that pages on the BBC news web site are increasingly not available unless I `Sign on or register'. Annoying!

At least I could read this one without signing on...
`Russian network used BuzzFeed's Community site to spread false news stories' LINK

[Stanley]

One thing I note is that if you Google a subject, the BBC report is only occasionally flagged up. You have to go the BBC News to find them. Bias?

[Tizer]

And yet the BBC News web site's search engine is not fit for purpose. If I want a BBC page on a topic I now always use google and write BBC then the search keywords. On the BBC's search engine I often can't find something that was on their news pages the day before but it comes up immediately in google.

[Stanley]

BBC IT is a mess, full stop.