Moving away from BT

jp872303

I have subscribed to dial up and, then, broadband services from BT since time began. All has been well until the last few months where my service has suffered from disruption, faults and poor connection. I am now thinking of subscribing to another service provider but have the following concern.

All the hardware, cable, infrastructure (i.e. the stuff you can touch) involved in providing broadband is owned by BT. If I move to, for example, O2, only the name on the bill is going to change. The stuff that gets broadband to my house doesn't change. So, if there is a fault on the line with BT (as has been the case recently), won't that same fault exist with O2? And, if so, who fixes it? Is it still the BT engineers? Won't they prioritise their own customers when it comes to fixing faults?

Am I right in these assumptions or is my understanding of the system wrong? In other words, is the only reason to switch service providers cost?

Many thanks.

kwikbreaks

The only common hardware between BT and O2 LLU for the delivery of ADSL to your home is the actual phone line so if that has a fault it would make no difference which ISP you were using. Phone lines are amazingly fault free though.

There is the equivalent of your ADSL filter at the exchange and with O2 LLU the ADSL side connects to O2 owned equipment which is connected back to the O2 datacentre by O2 owned or leased fibre carrying only Be/O2 traffic so any lack of capacity on the BT side of things or breakdowns will no stop your connection.

It may well turn out that your past faults were the line but presumably that is now fixed so you may as well enjoy the vastly superior performance and lower costs of O2 LLU.

LLU? yes - I'm only talking about the O2 LLU products. O2 Access does indeed rely entirely on BTw infrastructure so in consequence is a steaming pile of brown stuff.

littleboo

The exchange equipment may or may not be BT owned if you move to O2, it depends if O2 have installed their own equipment at the exhange or are just reselling the BT Wholesale product.

If you move ISP, then the line remains the same and if you have a genuine line fault, that will still exist with the new supplier.

It's down to the ISP to manage BT Openreach to fix line problems. BT Openreach are separate from BT Retail, your current ISP, and are not allowed to prioritise BT Retail faults over other ISP's

You need to ensure though that if you have a line problem, it's on the BT side of the socket and not in the house, where the wiring is your responsibility.

herman2811

jp872303 wrote: »

I have subscribed to dial up and, then, broadband services from BT since time began. All has been well until the last few months where my service has suffered from disruption, faults and poor connection. I am now thinking of subscribing to another service provider but have the following concern.

All the hardware, cable, infrastructure (i.e. the stuff you can touch) involved in providing broadband is owned by BT. If I move to, for example, O2, only the name on the bill is going to change. The stuff that gets broadband to my house doesn't change. So, if there is a fault on the line with BT (as has been the case recently), won't that same fault exist with O2? And, if so, who fixes it? Is it still the BT engineers? Won't they prioritise their own customers when it comes to fixing faults?

Am I right in these assumptions or is my understanding of the system wrong? In other words, is the only reason to switch service providers cost?

Many thanks.

In a roundabout way, I'm kind of in the same boat:

MY ISP is AOL, but I too live in an area that has no LLU presence - ie, only BT!

Despite attempting to resolve issues during the last few months, I've now been told there's nothing more they can do - so I'm now considering switching ISP.

But like the original post, am I likely to face the same problems if I switch to BT, or to another provider that, like AOL, uses BT's equipment.

Any switch is likely to be more expensive than AOL for me - am happy to pay more if I get the service I'm paying for, but really don't want to end up in a long contract paying more than I am now if I still have the same problems I'm experiencing right now.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

kwikbreaks

The ADSL system itself is imo amazingly reliable considering it is using ancient wiring that was designed for 3kHz analogue voice commumicatioons rather than up to 24Mbps digital.

The biggest problems faced by people with BTw based ISPs are the appauling line management system which can slow you down to a crawl for quite a while if there is a temporary glitch and the issues ISPs face trying to make a profit given the astronomical charges made by BTw and market pressures to sell their products at bargain basement prices - usually that boils down to download caps, or traffic shaping, or high contention, or with particularly useless ISPs all three.

jp872303

Would you recommend O2 LLU as a good alternative to BT? I'm on the Kingsland Green exchange and O2 is available (the others being AOL, C&W, Orange, Sky, TalkTalk and Tiscali)

Many thanks.

kwikbreaks

IMO O2 LLU is currently the best value ADSL broadband obtainable unless you are prepared to put up with restricted usage and/or speeds to save a few pennies. Only VM cable is likely to beat it on speed and that will cost at least double if you figure in the phoneline, call costs etc.

jp872303

Thank you. Cost isn't the primary issue for me. I just want to pay for something and for it to "work" - a vague concept but I think you know what I mean!

kwikbreaks

Yes I understand that.

Exactly what sort of problems have you had though - if it really is the line then that fault will follow you.

jp872303

BT did tell me that there was a fault on the phone line but that has apparently now been cleared. The status report on the web site also shows it to have been cleared. I don't know how relevant this is but my phone has always worked, no matter what problems I have had with the broadband connection.

The first set of problems were that the internet connection would drop and a "line check" by BT would somehow clear the problem and it would work again. Then the problem was that no pages would load even though my router showed a connection to the internet. Currently the problem is that some pages load and others don't.

I have had BT for such a long time and it has only been in the past few months that problems have cropped up. I haven't changed anything in my own set up. With my conspiracy hat on, I would think the problems were related to the expiry my 18 month fixed contract but I don't think they're that smart.

macman

Checked your ADSL filters, tested with ethernet rather than wireless, using the BT test socket behind the BT master socket faceplate?
You need to eliminate all the possible internal faults before blaming your ISP.