A question about maintenance of LLU

Legacy_user

Having been reading up on broadband since the announcement that UK Online have reduced their monthly price from £19.99 to £9.99 as I am tempted to move from a £9.99 dial up account, I have discovered from entering my phone number & postcode, that I am able to receive the supply. I'm also aware that a free modem or router will be provided and that it is free customer support. There is a 12 month contract which I have no problem with and if asked, would pay up-front.

So, why my apprehension ?. My understanding is that this LLU thing, means that UK Online, are responsible for maintaining the supply via BT's equipment, so if there is a break somewhere along the line, UK-Online have to "fix-it", unlike the others where BT are on site and are readily available. Is it something I should worry about ?, maybe not, as I am only a silversurfer/pensioner with all day to myself, so were there to be a break in transmission, I could find something else to do. (sad old sod). My current ISP is suggesting a "buyer beware" approach. I wonder what any of you might like to add ?. islandman

Browntoa

the answer is :-

how many times has your phone line been down for in all the time you've had it ?? touch wood i've never lost mine in 30 odd years !!

with LLU the ADSL provider puts their own broadband equipment in your exchange rather than buy BT's wholesale Broadband...I expect at the moment the repair side of that is an unknown at the moment

the other qusetion i suppose is their bandwidth from the exchange to their network, maybe a problem early on if this is very popular

System

Damn and flippin blast !. The postcode thingy said i COULD get broadband but I failed to notice the feint print that said this particular service was NOT available and would have to be via BT's equipment and would cost £19.99, huh.

bunking_off

So not of interest to islandman anymore, but I think the answer is that there are more companies in the "value chain", but it *shouldn't* present an issue.

When a line is LLU'd, ultimately BT retain ownership of resolving faults on it. However, any faults you report are to the LLU provider, who then sorts it out with BT. There has been a dispute going on between some LLU providers and BT, because the response times BT were offering themselves for their own lines didn't tally with what they offered LLU providers. Don't know what the status of this is, but ultimately it's inevitable that the two will converge (ie Ofcom/the telecoms adjudicator will informally or formally make BT fall in line).

Things are slightly different with UKOnline (I think) because I seem to recall that they don't LLU themselves, but buy it from a 3rd party - more than willing to be told I'm wrong on that. Therefore, if you log a fault with them they liaise with the LLU operator who in turn liaise with BT. Sounds complicated, but there's no reason to suspect that it won't work - e.g. with any other ISP, you routinely log a fault with them who in turn deal with BT; likewise if you get telephony service from OneTel, the Post Office or Tesco etc they actually buy the service from a 3rd party so there has to be fault management processes.