Lords blast "buck-passing" BT and broadband firms

About time too!

Well done the House of Lords!

It's about time someone in the legislature started working for the people, it's just ironic its the largely un-elected House of Lords that has done it! :-)

Some heavy hitting words in there (from a political perspective).

Let's now see whether the Commons just railroads things through anyway...

By tonybro on 14 Dec 2009

I agree with everything they've said! Why have they been protected from these sorts of comments for so long, when the points made are what any normal person might expect from a service!

By DaleMiller on 14 Dec 2009

Good for the LORDS

I agree, its about time somebody brought the telcos to book. They are blackmailing the country and holding back innovation by continuing to milk the cash cow that is the legacy victorian phone network. Even where they are building out next gen access they are simply replicating areas that virgin have covered already. We need more fibre, and we need it in rural areas where the majority are still on less than a meg and many on dial up. Mobile signals are also very poor in rural areas, meaning half the country can't engage in eGov or get any benefits from the digital revolution. Small businesses and school children are suffering from lack of accesss. Go for it you Lords, they might listen to you! Even Gordon Brown has been suckered into the spin when he talks about digital britain having superfast broadband. Superfast is 1000meg like korea has for a tenner a month. We in the UK have less than 1 meg for £20. Superfast? nope. digital slow lane that's us, and the country will pay the price when the rest of the world moves to fibre and we are still suffering the copper bottlenecks.

By cyberdoyle on 14 Dec 2009

it's a housing thing...

Korea, if I remember rightly, has turned tower-block living into a national obsession. Making tower blocks run "superfast" is easy. Most members of the House of Lords, on the other hand, are so far out in the country that 512 is all they get, if they are lucky. Our problem isn't a victorian phone system - it's a victorian ideal of terraced or semi-detached living, that holds us back.

By Steve_Cassidy on 14 Dec 2009

Bandwidth

It's not the fact that I only get 1.5Mbs bandwidth to my home that annoys me. It's the fact that i;m paying for "Up to 8Mbs". If I only paid for what I can actually get delivered I'd be 'reasonably' happy. That said, i'd still like to subscribe to BT Vision, but my bandwidth isn't good enough - surely i'm getting "up to 8Mbs"?!!!

By sextonc172 on 14 Dec 2009

@ it's a housing thing...

Surly terraced housing is just a horizontal tower block. Are you trying to say if we knocked down most of the countries housing, moved everyone into tower blocks, BT's Victorian network would then be supplying superfast internet?

By chapelgarth on 14 Dec 2009

Clare

"Chapelgarth" how right you are!! You are giving OFCOM and especially members of their consumer panel too much credit for them having inteligence. Neither OFCOM or BT can think laterally leave alone vertically. Both Virgin and BT are only after money to do what they want with! Your and my money and NOT give it back in either service or repayment. Dear Mandy (like your Noble Lordship friends) - get some impartial advice - and LISTEN - and not from those greedy Directors of the get rich quick, large bonus city types!! OFCOM gets its cash from the Leading industry players - so they wont hurt their friends. Customers arnt friends only Directors plus a few lucky shareholders.

By Clare on 14 Dec 2009

Been there, done that

Nearly six months grappling with Pipex and dodgy broadband elicited a "no problem on the line" when they finally escalated it to BT.

Surprise surprise, with only a small hiccup since then the connection has been solid and faster than before. (But not as fast as it was two year ago.)

So they don't just pass the buck, they also misspeak, or why else would my connection suddenly work?

Of course, I got the usual "problem at your end" tosh. Rubbish. Nothing has changed and I tried three modems and many other variations.

So stop passing the buck!

By ageinghack on 14 Dec 2009

ISPsLie!

I was a Plusnet customer on their "UNLIMITED" account. I found that they throttled my broadband speeds down to under 100k due to load on their network. I stated thatmy account was unlimited and read them the definition of this from the dictionary... after a solicitors letter they released me from my contract at no cost.

All the watchdogs (ofcom, ofgen) are the same, they are supposed to keep the companies in check. Instead they simply sit back and occasionally give them a slap on the wrists. OFCOM DO YOUR JOB and fix the bad practise!

By danrooke78 on 15 Dec 2009

yada yada yada

Heard it all before; stop blasting and actually DO seomthing about it!
We the little people are disgusted, but nothing changes, because we put up with it.
And as for the layout of dwellings...UTTER B*LL*CKS!
BT, OFTEL and the government (surprise) are the Stalwarts holding us back; ALL of them.

By BaseII on 16 Dec 2009

Been there, done that

I left Virgin after the all the same problems as ageinghack. A friend still with Virgin, who advertise 10Mb for £14, charged her £17 for 0.6Mb. Vigorous complaints and request for upgrade and the wireless router, which is free to new customers, eventually got one. Then she was charged for it. This brought the speed up to 1.6Mb. So much for their customer care.

By misceng on 17 Dec 2009

Minimum Speed

I would like a minimum speed on my local roads too. The speed limit signs say 30, 40, 60, etc. Why can't I be guaranteed those speeds? And my car speedo is calibrated up to 140 mph. Why can't I do that too?

Presumably these wise and noble lords are unable to see analogies between broadband speeds and everyday phenomena such as the speed of traffic on roads. What was their education, then? Ancient Greek fables? Are they chauffeur-driven so they don't have to figure out speed limit signs for themselves?

Time they had some remedial education so they can have better-informed views. Perhaps a primary school child could be allowed into their chamber to teach them some elementary mathematics or logic? Or perhaps there should be some sort of test that they have to pass for getting into the chamber in the first place?

By fogtax on 17 Dec 2009

BT Line testing

There is another nasty little trick BT pull on you.

"We have tested your line, it is fine" they say. No they have not tested it, they have only tested it as far as your connection to the nearest pole or junction box. The line from there to your house is untested and if you want to have that checked you have to promise to pay £130 if the engineer can not find a fault. Fortunately my line did have a fault but I spent a week on the merry go round between broadband Uk, broadband India and BT local. The folks at broadband India are useless when it comes to line faults because they do not realise how line checking in the UK is not a full line check. However they will waste an hour of time getting you to check out your computer which you know works very well indeed.

BT and BT broadband have, I guess, about 100 html help pages all interlocked and many are linked by links with cryptic abbreviations which many people will be clueless about. Not one of these pages even came close to telling me that I probably had a dud line but they were quite incensed when I told them to stop telling me to read all this usless sh1t and do something because my broadband was poor, intermittent or stopping altogether.

By fred1066 on 17 Dec 2009

Common sense

As usual the lordsare onthe right track but will get dragged off by the Telco PR story.

In a sensible country with a sensible regulator advertising up to's and unlimiteds would be strictly controlled just like 'take our vitamins and live up to 110 years' would be.

Secondly the deal should be that the provider declares and agrees a peak time weighted throughput profile that they propose to offer and guarantee to their particular prospective customer. This profile should then be verifiable online in the future and logged/disputed using a downloadable tool from the ofcom website.

Where the actual throughput is less than was proposed the line rental payable on the Entire bundle (!!!) purchased should be reduced pro rata and the customer should be freed from any contractual tie-in.

This is of course too fair and obvious to happen.

By B_Avis on 17 Dec 2009

@ fogtax - Minimum Speed

The limits on the road are imposed limits for everyone's safety. I think a more applicable analogy is good old fashioned weights and measures. What the UK broadband industry is doing is the equivalent to your local pub advertising beer at a price for "up to a pint" ... then serving it to you in a shot glass.

By otherroutes on 17 Dec 2009

Good Lords!

Well done Lords! Long live the Upper House!

We desperately need Ofcom to insist that we are told not the "up to" speed but the "at least" speed. This should take account of any traffic shaping, contention or capping. We need a guaranteed minimum speed available under any circumstances.
Anything above would then be a bonus.

By prm14 on 17 Dec 2009

@otherroutes - Minimum Speed

The point I was trying to make was that broadband like roads is capacity-limited and used on a first-come-first-served basis.

Speed signs do not show charts of likely speed versus contention factor, that is left up to the motorist to figure out.

If broadband suppliers reported a no-contention speed and a contention factor, that surely is about all they can be expected to do.

What they cannot do, and what the Lords seem to think is possible, is to provide a fixed speed regardless of the number of other people sharing the service. Anyone who wants that needs to pay for a dedicated line, which is expensive and, for home use, utterly pointless.

While cable technology might be somewhat predictable, ADSL is a kludge, and always was. Any idea that you can reliably predict what someone will get, is a bit unlikely. It depends on too many hard-to-control factors, including the main one, distance from the exchange.

There will always be a proportion of ADSL customers who will not get anywhere near the average speed and will be unhappy. It might be fair to let them cancel their contracts if the ISP is unable to do anything about the line. What they can't expect is major intervention to fix their speed if the infrastructure of copper wires et al is simply not up to the job in their neck of the woods.

ADSL is an opportunistic technology whereas cable has dedicated lines. But both share the contention problem, and different ISPs use different contention factors. You typically pay more to get something better.

By fogtax on 17 Dec 2009

@fogtax: However, if a road is continually, that is 24/7, so congested that the maximum speed achieveable on it is say 20 in a 60 limit, the Government would most likely upgrade its capacity, or possibly drop the speed limit. What the telcos are doing is essentially false advertising; its like selling a car as capable of 155, when it could only achieve that speed if dropped off a cliff. I say this criticism is a vindication of the role of the Lords in scrutinising legislation and providing the counterpart to the MP's, in their London houses, for whom slow internet is not a concern.

By qwertyqwerty87 on 17 Dec 2009

2Mbyte - Only a dream

I am lucky if I get 0.5Mbyte with BT even though I pay the same as somebody who gets 8 Mbyte. The line is plaqued by intermittent faults - cross-lines. BT comprehensive fault finding includes asking if I can recognise the voice on the cross line !! - high tech fault finding. Tried Talk Talk who said they would take responsibility of the line and give me 2Mbyte - blatant lie - they just ring up BT to go and find the fault - what is the point of that when BT don't have the ability / inclination to fault find. What we need is fibre-optics to the home.

By RobertG14 on 17 Dec 2009

THANKS YOUR LORDSHIPS

Ironic, isn't it, that the most dedicated defenders of civil liberties in the UK are the unelected Lords, not the elected Commons. The Lords need more powers, not less, to protect ordinary people against an elected dictatorship.

By Hedgehog253 on 17 Dec 2009

@qwertyqwerty87 cliff-drop speed-ratings

I agree with you that Telcos don't advertise sensible speed ratings but there needs to be an acceptable and fair metric that they will all accept and as I suggested it needs to be in terms of a no-contention speed and a contention factor, and then the public need to be told how to interpret that. Specifying just a 'minimum speed' won't work. But I wonder if the Lords are up to understanding this, and the evidence does not suggest so.

By fogtax on 17 Dec 2009

Bring the infrastructure back into public ownership

It just seems to be getting clearer and clearer, to me at least, that in Britain, the private sector is useless at managing key pieces of large infrastructure. The fact is, we need to fibre up ALL of Britain if we are to remain a competitive economy, be somewhere that businesses (big and small, profit and not-for-profit) can do business and be somewhere that people can go about their on-line business without hinderance (be that researching, shopping, booking tickets, enjoying culture and entertainment, interacting with their government or their employer, whatever). As Dick Pountain commented in Idealog 177, computing is THE industry of the 21st century. It underpins our society, commerce and culture.

Because of this, I feel that the future of telecoms in the UK is far too important to leave to the market to sort out. Investment in the network will always have to compete with the delivery of profits to shareholders in a plc. What we need is to reinstate the notion of such infrastructure being viewed as a Public Good, again a subject visited by Mr. Pountain in Idealog 163. I propose that the infrastructure be taken back into public control yet operated at arm's length from government (no interference). A public company with a clearly defined charter/constitution/raison d'etre. Unlike say, railways, telecoms infrastucture should be inherently profit making, so there should be no need any state support. Income should pay for operating expenses, maintenance and some investment in upgrades and new technology. The new company should not be hindered from raising money from capital markets (like the railways were when they were in public ownership) for investment in the infrastructure (these markets usually offer favourable rates for public institutions as governments do pay their debts) or from receiving grants from government (it is a Public Good after all). The private sector can be left to do the billing and customer service, retailing telephone and data services they buy wholesale from the infrastructure company. You'd need a few tweaks of the system to make sure that there was always a provider of the universal service obligation for telephone and of the proposed obligation for broadband.

The debacle of BT laying fibre where Virgin has already laid cable has also been played out in the mobile and mobile data arena. Here many companies duplicate coverage in densly populated areas whilst remote areas go without 3G data and some even have no coverage what-so-ever. I don't buy the excuse that these locations are remote, we are the 4th largest economy in the world (well, probably 5th now) and our island isn't enormous.

By iclbmc1 on 17 Dec 2009

@iclbmc1 maybe

As long as it does not turn out like when the Post Office ran the phone system. Maybe you're not old enough to remember that.

It was a monopoly with no motive to change. We have got used to the diversity that competition provides, and it is easy to forget that a monopoly smothers innovation.

That said, the national electricity grid works well.

By fogtax on 18 Dec 2009

Some ISPs do this already

Some sensible comments.

At AAISP we take a hard line with BT and do not allow any buck-passing when getting faults fixed. We even offer to fix faults other ISPs have abandoned or your money back.
We do 2Mb/s everywhere you can get broadband, it just means more than one line some times.
We say likely sync speeds for your postcode or number to avoid misleading anyone.
We do a line+broadband one-stop-shop already.
We are always open and honest with customers.

Some ISPs do all of this already. www.aaisp.net.uk

By TheRev on 13 Jan 2010