Fixed-line broadband

Posted on 14 Aug 2007 at 14:52

The winner of last year's PC Pro Reliability & Service Award for broadband, Zen Internet, claims it's among a handful of ISPs that don't have a traffic-shaping policy, although it does cap its residential broadband.

There are only a handful of providers that continue to offer truly uncapped services: among these are ADSL4Less (www.adslforless.co.uk), which claims to offer "completely unlimited" 8Mb/sec access for £27.99 a month. UKFSN (www.ukfsn.org) offers a service with no usage limits or shaping, but it comes at the considerable premium of £79.99 a month for 8Mb/sec. EFH Broadband (www.efhbroadband.com) offers an unlimited deal for £17.99 a month, but that's only on its 512Kb/sec service.

Caught in the local loop

ISPs are increasingly piling their own equipment into local telephone exchanges as part of the LLU process - indeed, companies such as Sky and TalkTalk have built their entire business model on LLU. Unbundled lines potentially offer faster connections at a reduced cost. However, many people are transferred onto LLU without their knowledge, and then find themselves in a nasty predicament when they want to switch provider.

The complexity of the migration process means that only a handful of ISPs will accept customers who are on LLU lines - all this despite new Ofcom rules that came into effect in February, which were meant to make migration easier. More often than not, people who attempt to move from a LLU service back to a normal BT ADSL-based line have to go through a lengthy process called "cease and reprovide", where the LLU tag has to be removed from their line at a cost of up to £60. This can leave the customer without broadband for weeks.

Industry experts agree that surreptitiously switching customers from BT ADSL to LLU is disgraceful. "The way the process is set up at the moment, by just doing it by stealth, is entirely wrong. You must be upfront with your customers," says Moneysupermarket.com's Jason Lloyd, who claims Orange regularly crops up in user complaints on this issue. "If I was an Orange customer and switched over to LLU without my knowledge, and then upon deciding that I wanted to leave Orange was told that my choice of where I wanted to go was restricted, the MAC code doesn't work and I'm going to be charged £50-£60 as well, I'd be very brassed off." Orange insists it emails customers "when we are carrying out work to improve the service".

Broadband watchdog Thinkbroadband.com agrees it's a "real problem" for end users. "Providers don't want to complicate things [by telling customers they're being switched to LLU], but users do have the right to know," says Sebastien Lahtinen, Thinkbroadband.com's founder. However, ISPs admit to keeping customers in the dark. "Pipex...continually modifies elements of the service to offer an even better service to its customers. These modifications aren't always communicated to customers," the company writes in a statement to PC Pro. Other ISPs refused to comment.

Worse still is the case of TalkTalk, which stands accused of signing up its telephony customers to its LLU broadband service without prior consent. "TalkTalk was taking over the phone and nicking the broadband connection as well. That certainly isn't an isolated problem and users can't migrate back easily," says Lahtinen. TalkTalk denies the accusations: "We naturally take reports of customer 'poaching' extremely seriously. We don't connect anyone to our unbundled network unless our records show that they've ordered TalkTalk broadband."