Damn you BT, damn you all the way to hell and back

[LordKhaine]

This thread will probably mean nothing to most of you, but i'd thought i'd express my opinions on British Telecom, the most evil of all organisations. Forget Microsoft, BT are MUCH, MUCH worse. Most people in the states pay around $15 a month for unlimited internet access. Here in the UK, we are charged by the minute for internet access. As a result $15 would get you about 16 hours internet time for this price if you are on at the weekend. I bet most of you out there are online longer than this in a week. This means that if you are online 16 hours a week you would pay about $720 a year. At Peak times (weekday 8am to 6pm), the yearly cost would be nearer $3600 a year compared to $180 to you people in the states. Before you complain about the costs of the internet feel sorry for us brits.

If you combine this with a ping of over 400 and having to put up with being disconnected every 5 minutes, you can get the picture of life online in the UK for someone in an average town with an average PC and an average connection (56K modem). Feel free to agree or disagree with me, any feedback to this thread would be good. More accurate figures would be good as well, my currancy exchange sucks. Come on Zaccix, Im sure you can add to this thread.

[Wingznut PEZ]

You have my sympathy.

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Wingznut [PEZ]
ICQ #29598363

[Haplo]

Those of us stuck in the UK are however not stuck with BT.

Localtel's Screaming.net service offers free calls to the internet if you change your service to them from BT.

I know you have probably heard bad things about screaming.net but i have to say the free calls far outweigh the 3 hour cutoff and you can reconnect right away anyway so hey what the hell and as for playin me and stc_wacky both use localtel and there aint no difference.

Plus you get to keep your bt line same number bt are responsible for repairs and faults and the calls are gauranteed to always be 10% less than bt. check them out at: www.localtel.co.uk (http://www.localtel.co.uk)


I Love children....But I couldn't eat a whole one.

[STC_Wacky]

Yeah man....if BT are too fu<king tight then move over to screaming.net
I've been using them for months with no regrets /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif


"People tell me to ignore the voices in my head, but the voices tell me not to listen!"

[LordKhaine]

Thanks for the reply guys, I'll look into. Frankly anythings better then my current connection.

[RiEvEr]

Sorry to rain on your picnic guys but I dropped LocalTel after they failed to give me a correct bill after 3 months! They billed me for my "free" net calls then expected me to pay the bill and try to reclaim what I "thought" they owed me. Needless to say I told them to feck off!

Bt are bringing in (if it's approved by OfTel) a 3 tier system of prepaid unmetered net access ranging from 7 quid pm for cheap rate access up to 35 quid for 24/7... I think I'll wait and see how that pans out.

[LordKhaine]

BT aint gonna introduce flat rate charges till next spring, and I cant wait that long /~unreal/ubb/html/frown.gif

[-HAVOC-]

Man that must su*k. I can't beleive that a company has not dove on the opportunity to provide net service over there at a reasonable price. That's friggin crazy.

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S*ck my Muzzle

[STC_Wacky]

I know that there are more free services out there too, screaming.net is not the only one. I couldn't tell you their websites or anything 'cause I haven't been paying any attention to free servers since I switched to screaming.net. Stick in there though and hunt around....they are definately out there.
Sorry to hear about you bad fortune RiEvEr, but nothing like that has ever happened to me or Haplo.....$hit happens bud /~unreal/ubb/html/frown.gif


"I love animals......especially in a good gravy"

[Voyd]

what a minute....let me get this straight. are you saying you pay for every single local call (wether it be using a regular phone or dialing up to the internet) by the minute?


[This message has been edited by Voyd (edited 01-18-2000).]

[Quitch]

Don't worry, we only have to survive until the Spring when the free access offers start to come out.

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Quitch
"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees"

[STC_Wacky]

Yep Voyd....we have to pay for every single call....even local calls. There are some companies with a few exceptions but only a few and their offers still generally suck.

[a dumb@ss]

that sux dick.

[Zaccix]

LordKhaine is right. BT are THE most henious company ever to exist on this earth. They could've introduced unmetered local calls as far back as 1994, but decided to let it run for a while 'till the net got popular. Only now, because of pressure from OFTEL (the Office for Telecommunications) and the goverment are they finally starting to take the hint.

Localtel run a pretty close second place though. I (actually my mum /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif ) signed up to screaming.net when the whole thing first started last April. We left in September and went back to BT simply because Localtel don't know how to properly bill someone. They charged us too for "free" net calls and couldn't set up a direct debit to save their life. I don't think there is a "free internet calls" offer that hasn't got a string attached somewhere. Even if BT overcharge through the nose, at least they can send out an accurate bill most of the time.

I just can't wait for ASDL which should be out this spring. The way my bills are, I'd gladly pay around 50 quid a month for a 24/7 net connection. Better than a phone bill 3 times that.

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Raise your face to the sun, put your arm in the air, but you fall to the ground, and it's time to wake up and scream.

[This message has been edited by Zaccix (edited 01-18-2000).]

[LordKhaine]

Yeah, it looks like ASDL is gonna solve all the problems. £50 a months a hell of a lot better deal than the current deal. Plus I'll get a chance to become an LPB. Next spring cant come sooner.

[DM]

I don't like BT, mostly because they keep ringing me up & relentlessly "market research" me. Maybe its because I give them completely different answers that sound more & more like bollox I just made up.
Anyway, I heard a thing that OFTEL or whatever actually prevent BT from giving free local calls because that would give them an unfair advantage over smaller companies, thus putting them out of business, thus giving us less consumer choice.
Three cheers for the champions of us gormless consumers. Merchant Bankers.

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"They might look the same but they don't taste the same"

[Sy]

If i had 1p for everyone who complained about BT i would have free internet use for a whole day at the rates they charge. Scum

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"I ain't got time to bleed"

[Neo[PuF]]

Hey, I respect BT. Any company who can hold 60 million people to ransom, making - you won't believe this - over £120 (about $300)of CLEAR PROFIT every SECOND, deserves the respect of everyone. If they started giving free Local Call that Profit might drop to ONLY £100 per sec!!!

Aren't Monopolies great. No (crap) choice, high prices, ****e service. AND it Rains a lot here too!!



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For Queen and Country.

[Evil_Gal]

Anything that ain't free sucks. But I dont really mind paying that hard earned money to those demons at the phone companies...but its the *@#($& lag when you play UT that (*@#&$(* sucks. Damn you ISPs. Damn you all to hell. And dont ever come back!

~Evil*Roooarr*Gal~

[The Gravedigger]

Come on, it's bad enough being stuck using a modem anyway - I couldn't imagine using a "Free Calls" ISP - I'm sick enough of pings about 200, and I can only guess that these "free" ones give you even suckier pings.

Oh, and don't expect BT DSL to be anything but a crock of sh1te. £50/month gives you a 512kb/s line SHARED WITH 50 OTHER PEOPLE - if everyone uses it at once your speed will be 1/5 the speed of a 56k modem...

[LordKhaine]

I think your confusing ADSL with cable modems. One of ADSL's main advantages is that it dosnt suffer from bottle necks like cable modems. This means that the connection should stay roughly at the same rate at all times.

[DM]

to The Gravedigger...
Ha! "Suckier pings"!
I just love that.

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"They might look the same but they don't taste the same"

[Neo[PuF]]

Yeah, but don't forget that BT know what situation we are in. When they bring out their ASDL lines they WILL be ****e.

They have already halved the bandwidth AND the overall speed. But get this, they then increased the line rental for this service by 33%. They won't give us what we want until they HAVE too.

Move to the US, its the easiest option!

(I'm already practicing my American).
Color.
Fender.
Elavator.
Fanny means Bottom?!

Its all so strange!

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For Queen and Country.

[Shagnasty]

Deutsche Telekom sucks wad bigstyle too. They refuse to introduce a 24/7 flat rate for local/Interent calls, claiming ... wait for it... "the population isn't ready for it yet!!". What a bunch of jerks! They easilly have the capacity to handle it and the infrastructure's already in-place. I believe they're launching a "Sunday flatrate" sometime this year. I'm fortunate enough to live in a particular part of Cologne that ran a cable pilot project a coupla years back that's now in regular operation. Cable ISP's are extremely few and far between over here.

[XmichaelX]

telewest are offering unlimited internet access for £10 starting feb 14th!

BT are a gang of w****rs and i hate them - i heard a funny wav sample of some guy getting a phone call from a BT telemarketing guy and he gave him hell over the phone! very funny!

[LordKhaine]

/~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif

[DM]

I have the .wav file that xMichaelx mentioned and it is great. If you remember "Mr Angry" from the Steve Wright radio show and imagine a shorter fuse & almost total swearing & abuse then you're nearly there. If anyone wants it (you do) then post here and I will e-mail it to you, it's about half a meg.

It didn't stop BT from sucking though.

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"They might look the same but they don't taste the same"

[RichieJarvis]

Oh, and now the bad news... I was reading in PC Pro last month that BT have already offered a free internet connection to many ISP's - the way they want to work it is to have the ISP's pay through the nose to signup to the connection, and the ISP's would then charge the clients more for the service - but guess what, as with *every* BT offer, there's a catch - the amount that BT want to charge the ISP is slightly MORE than the same local call rate for an average user, and the ISP's would have to take a slice too. That's why all the ISP's turned BT down flat.

On the good side, in my area (Camberley) NTL is offering cable modems for £40 a month, with 128K uplink and 512K downlink. Now I don't spend that much time on the net, but my modem charges are about £25-£30 a month via NTL, so I am seriously considering getting a cable modem and playing online lots /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif

Oh, and I *HATE* BT, they are a bunch of money grabbing b**stards who should be blasted from the face of the earth!!! I have to deal with them at work, and they suck, their service is crap, and they charge more for their services (leased line) than most other countries in the EU. You also don't get good fault resolutions from them either, as far as they are concerned, they just couldn't care less.

And from a home standpoint, I was p**sed off with my other cable op in my old town, and looked at changing back to BT, but they were going to charge me £9.99 for the privilege, and £125 to add a second line - when I told them that if they wanted me to come back (bear in mind that it cost me nothing to go to cable in the first place, and £15 for the second line) it would have to be for free, they hid behind OFTEL rulings saying that they had to charge that much - I later found out that this was bullsh*t, as they scrapped the £9.99 for ppl moving from cable to BT, and *HALVED* the second line costs, since then I think they might have reduced it further, but to be honest, I would not touch them with a 12 foot pole with a govt. health inspector on the end of it!!!

Right, I think I have got that out of my system,

Cheers,

Richie

[Stamp]

All this is true. I have a hard time liking BT as well, but I still use them for voice calls. I use my cable service (telewest) telephone line for internet access , so that i can keep control over costs.

All this talk of unmetered access is interesting but I'll believe it when it happens. As for getting a cable modem; So far all my queries have been met with absolute silence from telewest.

With an average ping of 360 I've learnt a lot about patience.

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Fair is Fun.

[Haplo]

The unfortunate thing is that as long as people continue to be prepared to pay for allegedly faster internet connections i.e. home highway etc then bt are going to continue to be able to rake in the cash all at our expense.

I have now been using LocalTel since Around July 99 and have only been billed for voice calls and net calls b4 6pm.
e.g. 6447 mins in a month net access cost = £1-80 about 3 bucks so so far they aint billed me out of the ordinary.

Like has been said b4 there is ALWAYS a catch with BT summat that makes getting a new service (allegedly better)but then having to pay more......And ALL high speed lines from bt are charged!!!!! Some as much as 4p a min cheap..

[CHRYSt]

Hey, Neo...ummm... not to be picky, you spelled elevator wrong. /~unreal/ubb/html/wink.gif

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"Who's up for the donkey show and some unholy butt sex?!" -- Lloyd Kaufman

[Zaccix]

I suppose there's nothing else for it. We'll have to get Anne Robinson and the Watchdog crew involved /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif

Just think though. If they give half as much hassle to BT as they did to British Gas a few years ago, we'll be sorted hehehe.


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Smooth like a rolo, cool like a polo. We commin' out wid da bad bwoy flow! Inside!

[Sy]

Even better get Vanessa Feltz from Watchdog.The new slimline version Vanessa will destroy ET and the evil BT once and for all. /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif

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"I ain't got time to bleed"

[XxBonesxX]

Boy these post get weirder and weirder as the days go by /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif

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Come play in my Graveyard!!!
XxBonesxX

[LordKhaine]

Yeah, if we get watchdog involved we'll have free local phone calls in a matter of days. Three cheers for democracy. /~unreal/ubb/html/smile.gif