UK 8Mb Broadband Fiasco
Today’s post is more of a public information broadcast than an oppinion piece.
I have been hassling BT recently because although I’m on a premium ADSL package and applied for an upgrade from 2Mb to 8Mb some months ago I’m still sitting in the slow lane of the information super-highway. However after scouring the web I came across this enlightening thread on the state of the BT exchange upgrades. Here is a sample :
I live in the city. When I was paying for 560kb I always got 560kb. Then I upgraded to 2Mb, and was very happy to download at 2.2meg most of the time. In April I was offered a free upgrade to ‘up to 8Mb depending on your BT line’.
During the 10 days calibration period I had speeds of up to 5.5Mb, brilliant, I thought, then on the tenth day speeds plumetted and are now beween 120kb and 260kb! I’ve had a long correspondence with my ISP - check your connections, they said; check your modem, they said; do speed tests, they said; email them to us, they said; we’ll raise a fault with BT they said, then - it’s all because your line is still being upgraded, they said! (All this in emails sent after midnight - distant call centre I wonder?) Give me back my 2 Mb! I wouldn’t mind so much if their emails weren’t so patronising in tone. Time for a change I think.
There are 140 comments of a similar venacular and most of them are considerably more vociferous.
I’ll think I’ll keep my 2Mb line for now. You have been warned.
That “depending on your BT line” bit alone should be enough to raise suspicions for most people. I probably wouldn’t pay extra to upgrade my service because of all the factors involved, but when it’s supposedly a free upgrade, I’d be very tempted!
It’s bloody odd that the line and speed should vary in quite the way which it has in that situation though, and one can only assume this to be an isolated incident related to the user’s local exchange.
According to my research these cases are far from isolated. The DSL upgrade has been a fiasco and its sure to hurt Britain’s ability to do business in the future. I wonder what happened to all those promises the government made two years ago to ensure that we would not be pushed to the back in the technology infrastructure stakes? Broken like everything else I’ll wager.
I don’t think all ISPs seem to tell the customer the same story. I think the comment: “your line is still being upgraded” is simply an excuse because they are passing the blame rather than dealing with the issue.
I recently read a page on an ISP web site that gave some good comments about acheiving 8mb broadband speeds. I found it far more believable than the kind of excuses some ISPs seem to give.