Paul.G

Hello All,
In some of the other posts NTL seem to get a bashing, I have searched the posts but cannot find reference to this.
I cannot get BT ADSL in my area, but can get NTL broadband.
Can anyone enlighten me to the problems?

Paul.G

ScoobyJawa

Just hope you never ever have a problem and need to contact them.....they're customer service is amongst the worst I have ever experienced

If you saw the slagging letter, it was pretty darn close to the truth........

fast bloke

Paul,
It generally takes an hour or two to get through to the connection line. If this is the best they can do for prospective customers, think of what happens once you have signed up. Once it is up and running it is excellent, so probably worth the hassle

Bajie

I asked for an unmetered isp and they directed me to net4nowt.

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

I have been with NTL in my last house for about 4 years now. I have not found the problems really that you guys have come across and I would like to say that the Cable Modem Service, at least where I used to live, was top notch performance-wise. It has has has it ups and downs with failures, 5 days of downtime once, but I have heard the same stories with ADSL from freinds. I find that the actual speed sails past the ADSL that I have now and I am in good range of my local exchange. You won't regret the NTL cable modem. I would still have it, if I could.

Jerome

following are "tip of the iceberg" details of one of the (many) problems I had with them. Well, you did ask!

I used to live in a shared house with 8 self contained rooms. NTL came and installed an NTL line into each room and 5 of us signed up and got the decoder box with a phone line, terrestrial TV and all the free Sky channels.

After about 18 months, I suddenly lost access to all the (free!) Sky channels. When I phoned up to complain, I was told that I had cancelled the TV side of the service and sent the box back. Convincing this woman that I actually hadn't cancelled and still had the decoder box in front of me (and was using my NTL phone line to speak to her!) was hard work and almost caused me to explode with rage. It turned out that the original engineer (read "to$$er with a screwdriver") had muddled up the serial numbers of the 5 decoder boxes. This meant, that when a girl moved out of the house and cancelled her entire service (decoder and phone line), they disabled my decoder box by mistake - 7 months after she'd moved out. I actually worked this out and tried to explain to 3 different NTL people, and each of them had great trouble comprehending. Anyway, apparently NTL can disable the set top decoders remotely, but not re-enable them (!!!!!!). That requires an engineer I was told. After 2 no-shows from the engineer (and me wasting a Saturday and also a days leave) I gave up with getting the a new decoder and the free Sky channels. Numerous further phone calls just enabled me to experience a broader spectrum of stupidity, jobs worthiness and incompetence. All this was just ONE of the problems I had with them...

BigGT3Fan

I'm with Telewest, not NTL but I think the issues are the same. I've had occasional outages (usually late evening or weekend when they are running on skeleton staff, presumably). Even when the outage is really basic, like I can't get an IP address the process is the same - you ring them up, it takes 30 minutes to get through to the monkey on the support line, they can't help you and you have 3 options:

1. Complain - this involves having someone call you back 1-2 days later as the complaints are handled differently, by which time the problem has been fixed
2. You can be referred to 2nd line support who call you back 1-2 days later, by which time the problem has been fixed
3. You can wait until the next working day when it is fixed by the first bloke back at work to notice it.

I've tried having conversations with individuals on the support desk (complete waste of time), and higher up the management chain into the complaints/customer service department about the fact that if I proposed network systems to my clients that were not fault redundant with evidently lots of single points of failure, without adequate backup or support staff I would deserve to be sued, but without success.

I agree with Mr Footlong that the performance f cable is excellent, you get downtimes, but if you do complain, you get compensated financially (which for me is not the point, I want the service!). The best thing about the cable is the performance, 512 in both directions, rather than 512 one way, 128 the other.

Also, if you have Cable TV already, Telewest at least, and possibly NTL offer it at £25, compared to the cost of a dedicated phone line and ISP connectivity, given much higher speeds in both directions, this is a good deal.

The one line summary is given the problems I have had, but currently don't have (touch wood), I would not be without it.

HTH,



Alex

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

As far as I still know, the NTL broadband service is rated at 512down/128up. Unless you are running games servers, then the upload rate isn't really super important. It sustains about 16K per second upload. The downloads can fluctuate. I frequently got upto 700-oddkbps download rates. They are currently testing 1024k links I believe........

Cheers,


Nick.

BigGT3Fan

Nick,

Yeah, I heard a rumour that Telewest were about to release a "premium" 1024 service, which is part of the reason they dropped the 512k price to £25, but that was some time ago and it hasn't appeared yet


Alex

Chins

I'll drop Babber in it, as he is a Telewest Corporate Trouble shooter.

He might be able to post some good replies to people on this topic. Its what he lives for

I'm guilty of working in the Cable Industry as well, but not on the operator side.

Jonathan

Paul.G

Thanks for the info,
Whilst deciding whether to go for this service I checked on there web site for availability, there postcode check confirmed that the broadband service was in my area, but when I phoned up the operator said it was a mistake on the web site and it was not in my area yet!
Only after talking to someone at work I decided to phone again to confirm that the web site was wrong. This time I was told it has been in my area for ages!!
I was with BT for my phone and normal cable for the telly so by going to there NTL:Home package I will save money. Added to the fact that I can not get any of the other providers services I have chosen to go with NTL.
I hope I do not have any reason to complain (as it looks like it might be easier to juggle with burning ferrets)
Anyway thanks for the advice.

Paul.G

Charlie H

I work for Telewest in Yorkshire and we have complained internally about customer services as one of my collegues was on hold for over an hour (we left it on speaker phone in the office) We have been assured that they are working on the problem at the moment. It seems to me that it's not just these two companies, it's everyone I have tried recently. I rang TNT yesterday and got put through to 4 different departments, was left on hold for ages then cut off before I had actually found out what I wanted to know! It seems to be the way of the world at present.

mutant_matt

BigGT3Fan,

I am as we speak fuming with Telewest!!! [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img] Like you said, the Cable Modem service (speed) is very good and works most of the time but recently there have been a few outages, usually at night or at the weekend and usually for not more than a couple of hours.

Getting through to Customer Service is a joke (I have not been able to yet!!!) and usually give up after 1/2 and hour on the phone. But it gets worse - it turns out that now the number you phone for Internet customer service is also the main customer service number and I have some billing problems which I can't get fixed.

I found out a month ago that I've been billed since mid-summer for a level of Cable TV service I didn't ask for. I spent 20 mins on hold a month ago and got through and asked to a) downgrade to the minimum package 'cos I really don't watch much and b) get a refund for the months of overbilling.

A month later I haven't heard anything but I can't contact anyone to do anything about it [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]!!!!!

There is no better alternative so they've got us by the short and curlies and they know there is nothing we can do about it!!! [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

I'll write a letter but I can't see it doing any good

Sorry about the rant but I've had it up to here with Telewest!!!!

Matt [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

P.S. Babber, if you can help, please please do???

babber

Been on Holiday!!

BigGT3Fan,

Sorry to correct you but the Cable Modem is 512 kB (64KB) downstream and 128 kB (16KB) upstream. We are capable of increasing the bandwidth, but at present a faster service isn't available.

All,

NTL, like us operate using a RF return path for communications with the headends. A weak point as the cable TV network is much like an antenna, we pick up some the inference from the surrounding air. There are also directly connected TV, and poor installation that leak RF noise onto our return path. As it all must combine somewhere, it can cause a piece of equipment (i.e. Cable modem) to resend information that has already been sent, and could cause the modem to miss information that is being sent to it. The modems become slow then eventually if the noise is that severe stop.

I can't comment for NTL, but Telewest have monitoring equipment that can tell us if a piece of equipment isn't happy, and roughly whereabouts on the Network it is. We then send the BIT (Broadband Integrity Tech) to go into an area, disconnecting non-active customers and checking active customers for noise. Unfortunately the BIT techs are a new group and are quite small at present. I have been involved with trailing the way they work and getting the Senior Management to buy into the concept. I have the full backing now, and we will be scaling up the workforce. The RF return paths availability is now being measured and Key Performance Indicators is published as a guide to management.

I understand your Frustrations as customers, trying to call the customer contact centres, as I have the service, including the Active Digital and Telephony. Over the past few weeks, Telewest has moved and consolidated call centres, and may not be up to the required staffing levels to cope with the volume of calls. Staff is being recruited and trained to make the waiting time less, and the quality of staff much better.

Telewest understand that there are unhappy customers out there, but there is a larger proportion that is happy. We know this as we do surveys, etc. The faults rates have drastically reduced on Digital and HSi nationally.

We are working on a SNMP manager that will eventually monitor all CPE (customer premise equipment) in the Field to proactively fix faults before they happen, or that’s the idea.

My Cable modem and active digital has been fault free for many months now. Shame I can’t say that about my Scooby.

Mutant_matt,

I have raised your issues to the CEOs office for the billing and packages to be resolved. I have also arranged with the Head Of HSi to send an Engineer to look at your Cable Modem service.

Chins,

You’re a w**ker!!!!

All,

Please understand that I am writing this note so you can understand the problems we have and bear with us. It’s not the views of Telewest.

Many thanks, and I hope you all take this note the way it was intended. Phill C.


[Edited by babber - 11/8/2001 6:46:54 PM]

mutant_matt

Phil/Babber,

Thanks for you mails and your response here. Along with the guy in Client Liason (Complaints), you two are the first voices of reason (in fact the only voices I've been able to get) in Telewest in over a month.

Service is up and down like an up and down thing tonight so I hope you actually get to see this post

Thanks once again, here's looking forward to a reliable service ('cos it rocks when it is!!! )

Matt

ScoobySnack

Hey Babber,

Better not mention that Cable Modem is a shared bandwidth service, that is very CM on the same bit of coax shares 5Mb bandwidth. So if the service is popular & everyone's streaming video the b/w gets used up & the overall service rate slows. Unlike DSL which has dedicated bandwidth to each user over the dedicated copper pairs. The DSL people in the US use this to their marketing advantage . Role on HFC...
J

IanW

Scooby Snacks,

All DSL conections go through a DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer) and they have a contention ratio of approximatly 1:50 for home users in the UK. The way i read you post was that eash DSL connection has its own bandwith, and thats not true, think of the network infrastructure that would be needed to carry all the information. Hence they use the DSLAM to minimise the bandwith that they need. Also DSL you are VERY dependant on the distance that the copper runs from the exchange. The Cable infrastructure is (if i remeber correctly) Fiber to the streets, and then it is converted to the Coax connection there.

I am with Telewest using a Cable Modem (VERY VERY painful subject for me! Its taken almost 6 months to finally get things working again!!) I am just waiting for what i would call reasonable compensation, not the joke that they have offered me!

now my CM is working again i'm more than happy with it, my speeds are far greater to friends on DSL connections.

Ian

Robertio

iTrader: (1)

Just like everyone else it seems I have found the NTL cable modem to be very good, and NTL's customer service to be terrible.

Only had one major problem, when they lost my registration details, so rather than contact me, I was just disconnected, I spent over 2 hours on the phone (my mobile as NTL do not have any free lines in the area) before I got to speak to anyone, and I then had to re-register under a different name (as it did not do a very good job of losing my first one) One upside I have never been charged for my cable modem & line rental, just the TV each month

As long as it doesn't go wrong you'll be happy

babber

ScoobySnack,

Sorry to correct you but the channel that carries your downstream information is a 6 MHz (NTSC) QAM that has a payload of 36 MB/sec. Not 5 Mb, so yes you are sharing a 36 MB/sec channel with others. We currently aren’t using Euro-DOCSIS standard that will ensure, if you capped at 512 kb/sec that’s what you have available (all the time). So you can have a maximum and minimum bandwidth throughput guarantee. Currently we can just cap the maximum throughput.

This channel is segmented to a couple of nodes, when the amount of CPE (customer premise equipment) increases we re-segmented. There could be an issue with to many CPE per UBR (Universal Broadband Router) but this is monitored regularly. Infact the DCC in Knowsley are fully aware of UBR bandwidth and loading.

Also mentioned is the copper cables length from the exchange to the home, over a certain distance and the DSL connection simply won’t work. If there are any conditions on the line (i.e. Earthing / low insulation) then once again, will slow down and not work.

I had a point to point 2 MB link from work to home a few years ago, and being honest the Cable Modem is a cheap solution to internet access, the 2 MB link would have cost thousands of pounds per year.

I love my cable modem, so to coin a saying "live broad!"

Cheers Phill C

ScoobySnack

Hi Phil,

My apologies on assuming that. It seems you've got a pretty good network if you can run QAM. Most (Continental) European CaTV operators can only utilise QPSK which gives about 10Mbps I think. But the 'shared' acccess medium is still relevant. The solution, as you say, is to segment the nodes but this does become costly as it means additional CMTS (UBR) hardware & re-engineering of your HFC network.

I agree that DSL is nasty with all sorts of implementation problems (it's taken BT about 5 years to get it launched) & ultimately it's data gets concentrated back in the network.

Will be up at SmallHeath on Weds for meeting on the dialup side of business

Cheers

J

druddle

My ntl cable modem has been superb since installation in March.

BUT it was not a smooth install. Got the cable modem 2 weeks after the line went in and spent 1 1/2 hours (mainly on hold and speaking to ****wits who could care less) trying to get a refund or credit on account for 2 weeks.

Then they activated the MAC address for the modem and all was sweet.

JUST MAKE SURE THEY GET IT RIGHT FIRST TIME !!!!!!!

As for digital cable TV, i added up all the time on hold and it totalled over 11 1/2 hours. It was installed, one box was faulty, channels were blocked I had paid for, and after asking 3 times and 2 engineer visits it was still not fixed so i found the name of the UK Customer Relations Director and mailed her, and funnily enough I got a call within 10 mins from a very helpful chap who sorted the account probs out over the phone. Does it need to be that difficult ?

Dave

ScoobySnack

Hi Phil,

Work for Nortel..... but am the Voice & Data Act Mgr for Telewest. Weds will be the closing mtg for the project so a chance for a curry and some beers. Attendees will be Jim Corden, Tim Griffiths, Bill Ironside etc................


Which dept do you fit into?

J

ScoobySnack

Hi Phil,

Yep its a good time when a project closes for the year... Chris won't be attending but Ops will be represented by Tony Wells.

Not had much to do with CATV in my previous roles. However, over the last few months we have been doing some work with Ed Allfrey exploring the potential of new services combining interactive digital TV and telephony for cable media. Telewest have loaned some equipment to us and we have been able to put together a "proof of concept" demonstration using digital TV equipment and a lab DMS100.

Cheers

J

babber

ScoobySnack,

Maybe I didn't explain myself that well, and thought you were talking about downstream comms. You’re right we do use QPSK for upstream comms to the headend. This modulation format is used presently whilst we do much work on the return path, as it is more robust. This work involves disconnecting non-active customers, and changing all connectors, and passive devices inside the customers home.

Downstream Modulation scheme is a 64 QAM, hence the 36 MB/sec I first quoted.

There are plans to switch from 64 QAM to 256 QAM downstream, and from QPSK to 16 QAM upstream.

I know we have a good RF network, but we are trying to make it better.

The UBR re-segment has been planned for months, and will help us to manage the shared bandwidth more efficiently. The HFC network is constantly being updated and re-engineered.

Where is your meeting in Small Heath? And whom do you work for?

Cheers Phill C

PS I have tried to comment to the BBS in a non-Telewest biased way.

Edited cause I'm having a blonde day

[Edited by babber - 11/12/2001 6:31:39 PM]

babber

druddle,

Can't speak for NTL, but can relate to the problems that they may have had. The early part of this year was a learning curve for all the industry.

Telewest did launch the HSi product to market a little before we should have, and this would have had a negative impact on customers (i.e. HFC MAC address not being provisioned correctly, and taking two weeks to fix them) It’s a fine balance between launching a product when it’s ready or launching a product to satisfy consumer demand. I can remember news groups from five years ago, with customers just wanting the HSi product, not really caring if we have tested it properly. This was after a small beta trial in Basildon around that time.

I can say on behalf of Telewest that we have learnt a crucial lesson. We don’t beta trial with customers anymore. Our CEO has committed to not launching any further products until the equipment, systems and training is in place to support them.

Cheers Phill C

PS No it shouldn't be that difficult....

[Edited by babber - 11/12/2001 6:52:41 PM]

babber

ScoobySnack,

I remember we discussed what you did before.

An end to a project, what a lovely time that is?? All the stress over, until the next project starts. Will Chris Bird be there?

I work for Customer / Field Ops consulting (amongst many other things) to senior management in the consumer division. So I represent the customers, and have the authority to stop anything that would impact on our existing customers.

I tend to get involved with new product rollout and support, interfacing to vendors, and resolving issues with them. If you worked for CATV based company, I would be getting on your case!!! I sort of get involved with everything really, any major dramas in TW, and you will usually find me there, shouting at Andersons and HP, etc.

Been working on an SNMP manager for the set-top box, so we can be pro-active in fixing faults.

Cheers Phill C

Edited cause I'm a dick head.

[Edited by babber - 11/12/2001 7:44:35 PM]