In message <41517b17$0$17950$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Kráftéé <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>Are you sure about going to NTL, 1gig a day cap, email & usenet servers
>continually on the blink, constantly falling over (non)transparent proxies &
>depending on your area possible over subscription. I was with them for over
>5 years & non of their promises of upgrades/improvements came to anything,
>even the supposed speed increase only took my connection/thru put speeds up
>to where they should have been before hand.
The web proxies are the biggest drawback of ntl:. I could add a few more
comments to the above list:
* only 128k upstream on the 750k service (for 256k you need to take the
1.5Mbit service)
* only one DHCP allocated IP address (two if you have console service)
with no option for static IP or a routed IP block - this, in turn,
means you can't choose your reverse DNS
* no UPS protection of network side kit (even if you have a UPS, your
ntl: Internet connection is dead during a power cut)
* AUP / T&C limit on the number of computers behind your router (not
sure how they'll enforce this, but...)
* AUP / T&C limit against any business use - so homeworkers are on
potentially dodgy ground
* AUP / T&C rules allowing ntl: to stop you from using VPN if they
regard your usage of VPN as disruptive
>Oh I forgot, their 24 hour support is only available during office hours as
>well, if you can actually get thru to someone who can actually deal with
>your problem.
Support has definitely been eroded over the years - these days, they'll
only take telephone faults out of hours, and reporting a cable modem
fault can be extremely awkward.
Meanwhile, their telephone deal isn't all it's cracked up to be. If you
take an ntl: TV package which includes a phone line, the cost of the TV
package is usually about the same as an equivalent Sky package and BT
phone line rental.
ntl: phone call charges tend to be a little bit higher than BT
(especially because ntl: levy a connection charge, rather than BT's
minimum call charge - a connection charge doesn't buy any talk time).
ntl: phones can't access many systems that provide cheaper calls.
Caller ID isn't available in some ntl: franchises.
For years I've had ntl: "Family Pack" TV, an ntl: phone line and ntl:
600k (now 750k) cable modem service.
I've long since stopped making all but the most trivial use of the ntl:
phone line. We only had it installed because it was a cheap way of
getting a second line for Internet use. Our main phone line remained
with BT.
When BT Highway came out, a few spreadsheets showed that ntl:'s (well,
in those days, Cabletel's) call charges for 0845 were so expensive that
I could upgrade the BT line to BT Highway and use that for Internet
access for a similar total monthly bills - the extra BT rental was
cancelled out by cheaper call charges.
When ntl: launched cable modems in this area, we eventually went for one
of those - and started to use the BT Highway as two voice phone lines,
using the ISDN capabilities only for calling the Internet when the ntl:
system was down. BT didn't ADSL enable the phone exchange for over two
years after ntl: cable modems became available.
A couple of months ago, my exasperation with ntl:'s cable modem service
grew to the point where I and the other users here had had enough. We
decided to convert the BT Highway to two PSTN lines (in the process
dropping from Option 2 to Option 1, as we don't make enough off-peak
calls to justify the Option 2 charge now that the first hour of off-peak
calls is capped at a low figure). This produced a phone bill saving of
around 9 pounds a month, less maybe a pound of call charges (shame about
the 125 pounds of installation costs...).
Zen Home 1000 ADSL (with a routed /29 IP block) is being activated on
one of the BT lines next Tuesday - this is a significantly more
expensive package than ntl: 750k, but the BT bill savings cancel out
about half the difference.
If I had my way, we'd get rid of the ntl: TV and phone line as well.
ntl: really haven't made full advantage of their digital cable TV
platform IMHO, and, if it weren't for the bin lid on the side of the
house, we'd go to Sky in an instant. The Sky equivalent of the ntl: pack
we have is around 9 pounds per month cheaper - though it doesn't include
a phone line.
The ntl: phone line these days is simply used as our published fax
number, but doesn't get that much traffic and could probably be replaced
with 0870 fax to email (such service can be acquired free of charge
these days).
I may well start giving out 0870 fax to email numbers soon to migrate
users away from the ntl: number - so that if I eventually got rid of it,
it wouldn't be missed. This parallels the way that I ran email on
domains I own alongside my old ISP email address for a couple of years
before silently withdrawing the ISP email.
David
--
David Wood
(E-Mail Removed)
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
