TalkTalk staff are being blamed for BT Openreach engineers’ errors
March 29, 2011 at 11:54 am
TalkTalk call centre staff are being wrongly blamed by irate customers calling to complain that their broadband connection has gone down without warning. But a crossed line error caused by a telephone field engineer working in the vicinity is usually the real reason for the broadband disconnection.
A solid red INTERNET light on a TalkTalk router can only mean one thing: a crossed line on the telephone supply to the property, disconnecting broadband, and frustrating the householder, in turn. But before TalkTalk broadband users start blaming the company itself, they should realise that a crossed line is never a broadband fault, but usually the handiwork of a BT Openreach working on the phone line distribution box somewhere in the local area.
With a crossed line, a TalkTalk customer’s phone number will change to that of another homeowner (or tenant) close by, with broadband being instantly disconnected as a direct consequence.
If customers call TalkTalk, a call centre operative will take them through the procedure of checking that their broadband settings are all correct. If so, they will then immediately contact BT Openreach on the customer’s behalf. It is then a case of waiting for BT Openreach to correct the fault before a normal broadband connection can resume.
While the error is being corrected (and BT Openreach works hard to do this as quickly as possible), customers will also be unable to receive calls to their landline (apart from ‘wrong number’ calls, of course). The good news is that all landline calls can be diverted to a mobile phone number until the original landline number, and broadband connection, is restored.
TalkTalk Faults helpline: 0870 087 8777 (8am-10pm 7 days a week).
Opt-out rollover contracts could be banned
March 22, 2011 at 11:50 am
Have you ever got stuck in a contract you didn’t sign up for? According to Ofcom, this is happening all the time to broadband and phone customers, and now it wants to put an end to the practice once and for all.
Automatic contract renewals, or rollover contracts, are quite common with broadband and telecoms providers. They work by automatically renewing the contract when it comes to an end, which can sometimes end up tying customers into new 12-month contracts which they did not want. When the customers want to cancel the contract they then have to pay a financial penalty in order to do so.
Customers can easily find themselves in such a situation, and Ofcom does not think it is fair. It claims that as many as 15% of residential customers (3.5 million) are currently on these contracts.
Ofcom claims that rollover contracts are anti-competitive because it is more difficult for competing providers to tempt customers away if they are on such contracts. As a result, “their ability and incentive to create lower cost and higher quality services is reduced”.
BT, which currently provides this type of contract, said that it was disappointed about the proposed ban, with a spokesperson saying that its customers enjoy the discounts available on its contracts and that it does not think there is any evidence that they hurt competition.
Ofcom will now consult the industry in a process that will end in May. During this period, firms will have to justify the existence of rollover contracts, and if they fail then the contracts could be banned later this year.
Ofcom says customers still not getting advertised broadband speeds
March 20, 2011 at 11:47 am
Ofcom has expressed concern that many customers are being sold super-fast broadband services that advertise misleading speeds.
Ofcom’s latest data comes from performance tests it carried out in 1,700 homes in November and December 2010, where it analysed 11 packages from the seven biggest providers. The tests showed that the average speed that broadband customers actually receive is less than half of the advertised speed.
The average advertised speed was 13.8Mbps but this compared to an average speed received by customers of just 6.2Mbps. The worst performing broadband services were those that offered ‘up to’ 20 Mbps over DSL lines. Of these, only 3% came close to their advertised speed, 69% got an average of under 8Mbps and just 14% reached over 12Mbps.
In general, the average speeds were closer to the advertised speeds with fibre connections. But the only broadband service provider that was found to provide an average speed of close to the maximum speed it advertised was Virgin Media.
Despite this, Ofcom also admitted that average speeds have gone up since the last time it tested them, with an average for December 2010 of 6.2Mbps compared to 5.2Mbps last May.
Overall, people are demanding faster speeds from their providers, but this can sometimes lead to misleading advertisements. Ofcom now wants to see a change in how providers advertise speeds, suggesting they should include the typical speed rather than the ‘up to’ speed currently advertised.
The Advertising Standards Authority is currently carrying out a consultation and a report on the matter is due in the next three months.
Internet at the speed of light?
March 16, 2011 at 4:35 pm
It seems strange to think that there was a time within many of our lifetimes that the concept of the internet was an entirely unknown quantity. With even those in their early twenties able to remember a time when IT lessons at school consisted of little more than learning how to create a spreadsheet and make a slide display, the rapid advances in the technology sector, and in particular the boom of the online world over the past two decades, are truly astonishing.
Gone are the days of slow, frustrating dial-up internet, with the majority of Brits now able to take advantage of broadband speeds that allow us to harness fully the unlimited potential of the web, but there is always room for improvement, as researchers at the University of Southampton are about to find out.
The government has handed a £7.2 million boost to the university’s “Photonic Hyperhighway” project, which seeks to take the internet to the next level of its long-term development by harnessing the speed of light. Those behind the project are aiming to evolve hardware that removes bottlenecks in the infrastructure upon which digital communications thrive, whilst revolutionising the fibre optic cables that we currently rely upon, instead finding ways to convey light signals over thousands of miles.
Whether or not the project ends up changing the way we use the internet in the future remains to be seen, but the award of the grant represents just one more example of how the UK really is at the forefront of major technological advances.
LightRadio: is this the future of rural broadband?
March 5, 2011 at 11:39 am
Although broadband speeds are constantly increasing, many rural areas are still missing out on the high speeds that most of the UK can now enjoy. However, things are looking a lot more positive following the creation of a new device which could just prove to be the solution everyone is looking for.
Bells Labs, which is part of Alcatel-Lucent, recently revealed the lightRadio, a new invention that could have a huge impact on mobile broadband.
From the outside, the lightRadio constitutes a small cube slightly smaller than a tennis ball. It might not look impressive, but it’s what it does that makes it so amazing.
The lightRadio is a base station, albeit a lot smaller than current base stations. It can be installed anywhere with an electricity supply, making it highly versatile, and although about 20 are required to cover the same area as a standard base station, it is a lot cheaper to run. The lightRadio can also offer 2G, 3G and 4G network access.
This smaller, cheaper solution will cut costs significantly for mobile providers, and will also allow them to cut their carbon footprints by about 50%. Indeed, the CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, Ben Verwaayen, said that “lightRadio will signal the end of the base station and the cell tower as we know it today”.
Trials will start later this year, and if they are successful things could change significantly for broadband users in rural areas. It would start to make economic sense for mobile providers to provide broadband in places where it is currently not available, and will bring untold advantages to a group of internet users who are still unable to join in with the broadband revolution.
