Supplier change period

A friend wants to change supplier from Virgin to Tiscali, but Tiscali
BB is stating that the Virgin service has to be discontinued first,
and that therefore there will be a 7-10 day transfer period with no
BB.

Is this normal for a transfer between BB suppliers - and if so, why?

Forgive the newbie quetion, but I my understanding to date is that
unless you were with a supplier that had actually unbundled at the
exchange, the ADSL suppliers were all simply reselling a BT variant.

BTW - nothing against Virgin here - he's just looking for different
options on the package

"> Is this normal for a transfer between BB suppliers - and if so, why?

Tiscali is one of the suppliers that do not support migration to another
Broadband ISP. Another good reason for not using them!

Peter Crosland

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 17:03:52 +0100, "Peter Crosland"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Tiscali is one of the suppliers that do not support migration to another
>Broadband ISP. Another good reason for not using them!

....presumably also migration 'from' other suppliers...?

So - next obvious qusetions...

1) What are the other good reasons?

2) Which suppliers do support migration to/from?

The reasons we are looking at Tiscali (business branded offering) on
basic searching so far are: 1Mb; unmetered; 20:1 contention ratio;
static IP address; POP accounts

> ...presumably also migration 'from' other suppliers...?

Correct!

> 1) What are the other good reasons?

They have an abysmal reputation for poor/non existant customer support

> 2) Which suppliers do support migration to/from?

Lots of them A look at the various websites will tell you.

> The reasons we are looking at Tiscali (business branded offering) on
> basic searching so far are: 1Mb; unmetered; 20:1 contention ratio;
> static IP address; POP accounts

Widely available form others. PlusNet for a start

Peter Crosland

Kit wrote:
> A friend wants to change supplier from Virgin to Tiscali, but
> Tiscali
> BB is stating that the Virgin service has to be discontinued first,
> and that therefore there will be a 7-10 day transfer period with no
> BB.
>
> Is this normal for a transfer between BB suppliers - and if so, why?
>
> Forgive the newbie quetion, but I my understanding to date is that
> unless you were with a supplier that had actually unbundled at the
> exchange, the ADSL suppliers were all simply reselling a BT variant.
>
> BTW - nothing against Virgin here - he's just looking for different
> options on the package

Virgin IPstream, Tiscali datastream possibly???

But it does sound like an out of the frying pan & into the fire
situation....

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 17:11:08 +0100, Kit said:

> The reasons we are looking at Tiscali (business branded offering) on basic
> searching so far are: 1Mb; unmetered; 20:1 contention ratio; static IP
> address; POP accounts

Tiscali dont do 'unmetered' 'unlimited' anymore.

I kick myself on a daily basis for going with them, any money you save you
will pay them back in support costs and loss of hair and down time.

L.