NTL as a tv/phone/broadband supplier?

Hi-

I'm planning to move next year to London suburbia. I currently have BT
phone (~£25pm), Sky basic (£18pm) and adsl 512 (£23pm) which totals
up to about £66 per month.

The area I'm interested in moving to is serviced by NTL. I've heard a
lot of bad things about them in the past, but was wondering if they'd
cleaned up their service somewhat.

Is there anyone here who gets tv, phone and net access through them?
(I'm looking for minimum 512kbps uncapped), and if so, can they let me
know what they pay?

Does anyone else have any other suggestions for a combo provider, and
what kind of costs to expect?

Thanks for any replies.

On 9 Dec 2004 11:03:04 -0800, "Jim" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>The area I'm interested in moving to is serviced by NTL. I've heard a
>lot of bad things about them in the past, but was wondering if they'd
>cleaned up their service somewhat.

For what it's worth, I've been with ntl and had, at various points in
time, analogue TV, 2 phone lines and cable internet. Apart from the
odd service outage which sometimes took a while to get stable again,
I'd recommend them if there was no other alternative.

>Is there anyone here who gets tv, phone and net access through them?
>(I'm looking for minimum 512kbps uncapped), and if so, can they let me
>know what they pay?

As above. During all this my monthly bill was around ~£55, excluding
call charges. Internet was 600Kbps, now 750Kbps.

>Does anyone else have any other suggestions for a combo provider, and
>what kind of costs to expect?

Home Choice for TV and internet, not sure if they do voice services,
but their website offers "free calls" so I would take that as a yes

www.homechoice.co.uk

On 9 Dec 2004 in uk.telecom.broadband, "Jim" wrote:

>I'm planning to move next year to London suburbia.
>Is there anyone here who gets tv, phone a

no idea whether the whole of London gets equal good/bad service, so maybe
a bit more on where you plan on moving to would help narrow down whether
they've found good/bad service and what they're paying/offers etc.

"Jim" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote

I'm planning to move next year to London suburbia. I currently have BT
phone (~£25pm), Sky basic (£18pm) and adsl 512 (£23pm) which totals
up to about £66 per month.

> It'll cost you about the same with NTL ... maybe a little less.

The area I'm interested in moving to is serviced by NTL. I've heard a
lot of bad things about them in the past, but was wondering if they'd
cleaned up their service somewhat.

> I've been with NTL for 3 years and can only remember 3 occassions where
any service went down. Once during the day for a few hours for a fault and
twice at night for maintenance. That said Ex C&W and Videotron areas are
supposed to be older technology and problematic although I know these are
being upgraded gradually.

Is there anyone here who gets tv, phone and net access through them?
(I'm looking for minimum 512kbps uncapped), and if so, can they let me
know what they pay?

> Next year there will be no such thing as uncapped.

"Use.Netuser.de" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Jim" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote
>
> I'm planning to move next year to London suburbia. I currently have BT
> phone (~£25pm), Sky basic (£18pm) and adsl 512 (£23pm) which totals
> up to about £66 per month.
>
> > It'll cost you about the same with NTL ... maybe a little less.

i am in n manchester which is ex C+W and ex Nynex

i started with analog TV and phone, then went to digital, then added
broadband. Been on broadband for 3 or 4 years.

i pay £25 for 750k b/band (with a 1 Gbyte / day "cap" that is only looked at
if you exceed it 3 days from 14)

TV is about £28 for a pack with some options - what you pay will depend on
the package.

phone line is free with the other services.

set top box is Pace and provides internet via an ethernet port on the back.
>
> The area I'm interested in moving to is serviced by NTL. I've heard a
> lot of bad things about them in the past, but was wondering if they'd
> cleaned up their service somewhat.

phone is plain old analog phone, and never had an outage that i noticed.
1 thing is that CPS (e.g. divert to your favorite cheap phone co) is not
available, and the voicemail is OK, but a bit basic.

Call centre seems to be a bit variable quality, but i havent had any of the
horror stories that periodically come up.

When i have had a fault it has been well handled - in one case 1 logged a
fault, scheduled an engineer visit, then got a call a day early to say they
had checked the head end, decided there was a signal problem, it was now
fixed, they had scrubbed the engineer visit, but to re-log if i still had a
fault - which i didnt.

set top box can lock up now and then (maybe once every 1 to 2 months) -
seems to depend on how much interactive stuff it get used for.

Mail servers and proxy servers have caused the odd issue, but are not bad
compared to anecdotal evidence from work (i work for a telco, so a lot of
others there use various broadband systems).

News servers were pretty bad, and still dont seem to sync the article
numbers that well - but the feed does include some binary groups.

NTL dont seem to respond well (at all) to email or usenet based Qs etc.
>
> > I've been with NTL for 3 years and can only remember 3 occassions where
> any service went down. Once during the day for a few hours for a fault and
> twice at night for maintenance. That said Ex C&W and Videotron areas are
> supposed to be older technology and problematic although I know these are
> being upgraded gradually.

similar here.

it has been pretty good - most of the early issues with the set top box
seemed to be s/w related and have gradually improved. Only ever had one that
didnt clear with a power cycle on the STB.
>
> Is there anyone here who gets tv, phone and net access through them?
> (I'm looking for minimum 512kbps uncapped), and if so, can they let me
> know what they pay?

The bandwidth will go to 1 or 2 Mbps soon - but i suspect the cap will stay.

Note that NTL claims 20:1 contention - but i have consistently seen the
data rate is a bit better than the "official" speed, and only occasional
slowdowns.
>
> > Next year there will be no such thing as uncapped.

There never was - your line speed and the contention limits you if nothing
else...

I can see the ISPs point of view that they want some constraints. The way
transit works, they get charged for their off net traffic by the Mbps /
month.

if 1% of your users take 50% of the bandwidth (or wherever the break point
is) and they loose a fair slice of money on them, then either they up the
fixed consumer price to compensate, or limit the high users.

A lot is down to how the cap operates, and how strictly the limits are
enforced. an ISP being "reasonable" makes this stuff a lot more tolerable.
--
Regards

Stephen Hope - return address needs fewer xxs

"stephen" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote
> > Is there anyone here who gets tv, phone and net access through them?
> > (I'm looking for minimum 512kbps uncapped), and if so, can they let me
> > know what they pay?
>
> The bandwidth will go to 1 or 2 Mbps soon - but i suspect the cap will
stay.
>
> Note that NTL claims 20:1 contention - but i have consistently seen the
> data rate is a bit better than the "official" speed, and only occasional
> slowdowns.

I've never heard of a 1:20 contention for consumer broadband where did you
get this info?
You say bandwidth will be increased to 1/2Mbs soon but I assure you the cap
will change for the worse and we will all be charged per extra GB.

> > > Next year there will be no such thing as uncapped.
>
> There never was - your line speed and the contention limits you if nothing
> else...

Of course there was ... it's still uncapped although they altered the T&C's
a few months ago and imposed a data transfer cap.
I think we use different terminalogy. Line speed is fixed (or rather
defined as a maximum value) and contention is a variable which effects your
bandwidth (line speed) depending on simultaneous users which is different
from actual caps on data transferred.

"Use.Netuser.de" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "stephen" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote
> > > Is there anyone here who gets tv, phone and net access through them?
> > > (I'm looking for minimum 512kbps uncapped), and if so, can they let me
> > > know what they pay?
> >
> > The bandwidth will go to 1 or 2 Mbps soon - but i suspect the cap will
> stay.
> >
> > Note that NTL claims 20:1 contention - but i have consistently seen the
> > data rate is a bit better than the "official" speed, and only occasional
> > slowdowns.
>
> I've never heard of a 1:20 contention for consumer broadband where did you
> get this info?

consumer ADSL is normally 50:1 - but that is just based on how the ISP
chooses to build their overlay with BT, and whether they use IP or ATM BT
services, or roll their own with LLU.

50:1 is actually worst - most ISPs over provision in practice, since
upgrading the backhaul can take a while.

BT business ADSL was always set to 20:1, and several of the business
alternatives choose to build for 10:1 or less - you can even get 1:1 if you
want to pay leased line style pricing.....

20:1 is documented somewhere - although i have never seen data rates as low
as that implies.

there is a good techie web site for cable: http://www.chetnet.co.uk/
this seems to be run by insiders - and is full of useful info if you want to
know more about cable.

> You say bandwidth will be increased to 1/2Mbs soon but I assure you the
cap
> will change for the worse and we will all be charged per extra GB.
>
> > > > Next year there will be no such thing as uncapped.
> >
> > There never was - your line speed and the contention limits you if
nothing
> > else...
>
> Of course there was ... it's still uncapped although they altered the
T&C's
> a few months ago and imposed a data transfer cap.

Agreed - but the old T&Cs let them decide what to think of as "abuse" so
they always had a cop out clause.

there have been stories of NTL customer getting "cease and behave" letters
for several months.

given 1 Gbyte is around 5 hours at 512k, and the cap is per day. The cap
does get worse as they up the line speed, since they dont vary the limit.

Anyhow - if i had a 2 or 3 Mbps access, i dont think my Netgear firewall (or
the set top box) could keep up....

> I think we use different terminalogy. Line speed is fixed (or rather
> defined as a maximum value) and contention is a variable which effects
your
> bandwidth (line speed) depending on simultaneous users which is different
> from actual caps on data transferred.

cable isnt the same as ADSL, where the bottleneck is often the ADSL line, or
the way it is set up.

User line speed isnt fixed in cable - you share a half duplex, high speed
cable channel with a bunch of other local users (overall speed in 10s of
Mbps). Basically you are using something like a hub based ethernet.

cable speed is then limited per user by capping the data rate inside the
cable network to a fairly small fraction of the channel speed.

downstream bandwidth "costs" fewer resources on the shared cable, so cable
users usually get lower speed uplink capacity than on equivalent ADSL
services.
--
Regards

Stephen Hope - return address needs fewer xxs

After careful thought and consideration Jim typed:
> Hi-
>
> I'm planning to move next year to London suburbia. I currently have BT
> phone (~£25pm), Sky basic (£18pm) and adsl 512 (£23pm) which totals
> up to about £66 per month.
>
> The area I'm interested in moving to is serviced by NTL. I've heard a
> lot of bad things about them in the past, but was wondering if they'd
> cleaned up their service somewhat.
>
> Is there anyone here who gets tv, phone and net access through them?
> (I'm looking for minimum 512kbps uncapped), and if so, can they let me
> know what they pay?
>
> Does anyone else have any other suggestions for a combo provider, and
> what kind of costs to expect?
>
> Thanks for any replies.

I have had all three from NTL. There tv service is rubbish compared to sky.
I would get phone/broadband from ntl, tv from sky. I am not sure if you can
get uncapped from NTL anymore. If l was moving house, l would not go with
NTL again.