[Horatio]

I've had enough with TalkTalk again. I'd managed to defeat their P2P traffic shaping by switching to encryption, but it looks like they're throttling encrypted traffic now. Well I'm out of the 18 month contract this time round, so provided I can find a better option, they can go stuff 'emselves

And of course it's easy to switch broadband providers these days, isn't it? Well apparently not if you've been LLU'd. I fancied Sky Broadband Max, but they couldn't help. Tiscali were my second option, but they don't seem to have a clue what to do either.

I've asked on the ThinkBroadband forums, but have a hunch that I might just get a quicker response here. Surely at least one of our members must have attempted to leave a broadband provider after being LLU'd. If anyone has successfully managed it, I'd love to hear how they did it. And if it turned into a complete nightmare, I could do with knowing about that too. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

 

[hondo]

Hello our kid :d

I don't know what LLU'd is, but doing a quick Google I found this on the PC Adviser forum, the first forum I ever used, I think.

I dunno if theres anything there that will help you in this post, if not try posting one yourself from what I recall return posts seemed pretty quick, providing the peeps in there have some idea of what the problem is.

Forums - Help My orange broadband - PC Advisor

 

[selwonk]

LLU = Local Loop Unbundling...

Local loop unbundling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[hondo]

LLU = Local Loop Unbundling...

Local loop unbundling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanx for the explanation selwonk. I know technically this won't be the same, before I moved to my present ISP I was with Gio Internet OMG what an outfit that was. :steam:

Not long before they went into demise I'd already made my mind up they must go, I wrote to them and told them to turn the service off and supply me with my MAC code, nothing happened at all, so I contacted my credit card company and told them to stop the payments, they refused without I got Gio's written permission. I couldn't believe this, they should have been providing me with the service not Gio Internet, within 10 mins I was back on the phone to the bank and reported my CC was either lost or stolen this put the blocks on all outgoing payments :rofl: including Gio.
It Wasn't long after that they turned my part time DSL off.

Because by now I owed 2 outstanding payments they said if I paid up they would supply the MAC code, I made them do this, but the other way round, I had the MAC code first. Oh BTW after this I kicked the bank into touch too, bassaards.

 

[Horatio]

In a nutshell LLU means that BT no longer owns your line. Nothing physically changes, and you still have exactly the same wires running to the BT exchange, but other companies can now install their own equipment at the exchange to route voice and data over their own networks.

The problem with this is that the MAC system only works on BT lines, therefore there's no straightforward way to seamlessly migrate once you've been LLU'd. Short of moving to cable or getting a second phone line installed, I can't see a way of leaving TalkTalk and joining another provider without suffering broadband downtime of an unspecified duration. If I'm lucky, it'd be a couple of days. Realistically, it'd probably be about a week. Cynically, it may well even take months.

I know I could live with going back to dial-up in the meantime, but I'm wondering which is the lesser of two evils. Should I stick with TalkTalk and their highly irritating 'traffic shaping' policy, or vote with my feet but accept that I'll lose my broadband altogether for a while?

 

[chris m]

Tough one Horatio. I'm on Virgin Broadband and what with the loss of Sky one etc and the fact that my bills have slowly crept up I was thinking of changing. Trouble is no BT line to the house and looking at my options it was limited i.e. to change broadband I would need BT line, then the TV and phone package is bundled so it was looking like a nightmare. Fortunatly I ranted at Virgin and got a better price and the full channel package for the next year.

 

[Horatio]

I was looking at Virgin, but their broadband only packages aren't remotely competitive. I know their service tends to be better than ADSL for P2P users, but I really can't justify the price.

Sky Broadband Max is looking good. I've seen some negative comments about customer service (and judging by their standard response to my technical question that didn't even address the issue, I can see why) but then I'm with TalkTalk - I'm used to being with an ISP that doesn't even answer the phone.

The Sky Max package is a tenner a month as long as you're a Sky TV subscriber. For that you get unlimited bandwidth subject to an AUP. The AUP seemed fair - if you're identified as an excessive user, you will receive several warnings before having your service downgraded or terminated. TalkTalk didn't even have the decency to do that (even though the contract says they will) - they just enabled traffic shaping on my account instead.

I really liked the look of Tiscali's AUP - P2P is nobbled during peak periods, but unlike most, they actually leave it un-nobbled for most of the day and night. I think P2P traffic is only throttled between 6pm and 11pm. TalkTalk on the other hand only give you unthrottled downloads between (I think) midnight and 6am. Besides, judging by the length of time that some stuff is taking to download these days, I don't even think they're giving me that.

Unfortunately, Tiscali can't do anything without me moving the phone line back to BT first. I can't get any straight answers, but it looks like it takes 5 days for the system to process that I've moved, and then I can apply for broadband on it. So by my reckoning, that's a minimum of a fortnight that I'm likely to be offline if I move.

 

[hondo]

Is there anything in any of the here's that helps? :d

here,

here,

or here.

 

[Horatio]

Well the first one certianly put a big smile on my face! Two days down-time I can live with, and while I'm tempted to go for it at the end of June, maybe I'll hang fire a little while in case there are any early teething troubles.

Anyway, I can see light at the end of the tunnel now. Sky Broadband Max, here I come :d

The other two relate to existing regulations on the prompt issue of a MAC. Unfortunately for me, the MAC only applies if your ISP hasn't LLU'd you and are instead re-selling the BT broadband package (which is what most of them do.)

But just for that first one, I owe you a :beer:. Excellent detective work, and the rep points are in the post (if it'll let me leave you any.)

 

[hondo]

Thanks for the rep points Horatio. :beer:

Have a good goggle around Google before you make a final decision, without really trying too hard I just found this. Clicky

This reminds me of cars, none are trouble free.

 

[Horatio]

To be honest, I'm not really expecting top notch service for a tenner a month. Sky is my first choice because
a) It's cheap
b) It's unlimited (subject to their AUP)
c) It's not TalkTalk

Interesting reading though.

Customer services appears to be premium rate. I don't like that for starters, but hopefully I won't need them much, and at least I'm not subsidising the call centre for the hundreds of users who phone up every time their computer goes 'beep' when they think it should have gone 'ping.'

I've only ever had to contact TalkTalk over incorrect billing and their taking over of my line without first giving me a user name and password. Both problems were their fault, therefore if they'd been charging for the calls, I'd expect not to have to pay to get it sorted. I'd be sending a letter of complaint if I'd been billed more than a couple of quid for the calls.

Other complaints suggest that the service 'moofs' quite regularly. Well Demon used to do it now and again, and TalkTalk used to do it at least once a night for a while. Even now, if I reset my router, it takes ages for the synch light to go green. As long as it doesn't typically do it more than once a day and the service comes back within a reasonable period (a fraction of an hour rather than a whole one or more) I can live with it.

Latency isn't really an issue. The last video game I played with any significant degree of interest was Doom II

As we keep saying about our flakey Renaults - a lot of people only post when they've had problems, and the silent majority might well be happy customers in the main. Besides, Sky haven't been running their broadband service for long, so maybe it's just taking a little time for them to get their act together.

Then again, maybe not. I might just go with Tiscali after all.

 

[hondo]

Horatio

I dunno but maybe of use to Horatio.

Ofcom’s Approach to Complaints and Disputes | Ofcom

10. Ofcom recently announced the establishment of a new independent office, the Telecommunications Adjudicator. The role of the adjudicator is to help accelerate the implementation and delivery of fit for purpose and appropriately industrialised products and processes for LLU. Where a dispute about LLU products and processes is submitted to Ofcom under section 185 of the Communications Act and the parties have not made use of the Adjudicator Scheme then Ofcom may consider that alternative opportunities to resolve the dispute have not been fully exhausted.