BT

My review here is not directed at BT per se, but rather at Broadband speeds in the UK generally.
I think i've worked out why we in the UK and Western Europe have such crummy speeds. And the answer lies over the Atlantic in the USA.
If you check out almost all broadband suppliers over there, they are even slower than ours or the Europeans.
So what i think is going on is this:
Because it was largely American money that got the world out of the financial schtuck 2 years ago, they have requested that the rest of the world do not upgrade their broadband networks before the Americans have upgraded theirs, thus not given us in the UK and Europe an unfair competitive advantage, as we all struggle our way out of reccession.
I can't prove any of this naturally, but it does seem rather strange that we in the West all suffer from atrocious speeds, while those lucky folks in South Korea, Japan and even Eastern Europe, have broadband speeds that we can only dream of.
This might be a bit of a conspiracy theory, well actually a lot of a conspricay theory, but i wouldn't mind betting that as broadband speeds start to increase, that we in the UK, Western Europe, and the USA will all receive increased speeds at roughly the same time, and of course it will all be due to 'advances in technology'. Yeah right.
If that were the case, why is it that Germany which is sitting on pots of money and no longer in reccession, still has lousy speeds and is no where near installing fibre optic networks.
This is all politics, and a bit of Ricardian economics thrown in to wash it down, all nicely masked under the chocolate topping that is technology.
Who says there are no smoke filled rooms left in the corridors of power ?
Of course there are.

So, based on this, when can we expect fibre optics here in the UK as standard?
Well, given that the Americans will first have to replace about 5 trillion miles of copper wiring first, i would estimate that we will be getting FTTC around about 2050. LOL.

Moved from ADSL24 expecting better results on 21CN though BT but no good really bad, moving to BE unlimited from next week.

My experience over the past 2 weeks with BT (time-wasting, lying etc) has driven me to review BT Total Broadband.

I am getting 1.1 now, although I was previously getting 2.7 for months without problem.

There is no way you can talk to anyone sensible at BT tech support and they will tell you any lie to get rid of you.

Fuming.

BT are categorically the worst ISP I have ever had in my life. I've had Virgin and Tiscali in the past, hardly the greatest I know but leaps and bounds better than BT.

I'm bang in the middle of central London. You would think on BT's best package (Option 3 - 20mb unlimited) and at £30 a month I would have an internet connection that was not only super fast and reliable but could also make the tea!

It's so far to the contrary it's unbelievable. Their so called "unlimited" broadband option is subject to a draconian fair usage policy.

THE FAIR USAGE POLICY IS STRICTLY LIMITED TO 100GB per month. If you go over 100GB they immediately, universally limit your connection to 2mbps. Downloading HTTP the speeds are shockingly bad, averaging about 150kbps from a variety of servers, local and overseas. Even when I was not limited the speed was averaging around 300kbps with a maximum of 1mbps from one server which is nothing special at all.

WORST OF ALL THEY THROTTLE ALL P2P - I REPEAT AVOID THIS ISP THEY THROTTLE P2P!!! That goes for Bittorrent/Emule or any other file sharing. It's written in to their fair usage policy. The maximum speed I can get with uTorrent, all forwared properly on a torrent with 20,000 plus seeders is 30KBPS - I REPEAT MAX BITTORRENT SPEED IS 30 KBPS!!!! I think after midnight they reduce the P2P throttle but it is still only maxing at about 150KBPS download on a highly seeded torrent.

PLEASE, IF YOU LIKE YOUR P2P AND YOUR SANITY - REJECT, REFUSE, BOYCOT, AVOID THIS AWFUL USELESS RIP OFF ISP!!!!!

I understand the call centre is somewhere in India ? How can this be for such a megalithic monopoly ? Fortunately the set up has been stable enough to avoid contact so would have to give the half way balance of 5 out of 10 there.
Have to put my cards on the table and state i know very little about the world of computers and interwebbyness.
My previous first experience was with what has been called on here "AoHell" - a several pint job in a pub to explain in itself !
In my opinion BT excells in duplicated, slow, wooden complexity. There is this strange accolyte called "Yahoo" as if BT feels awkward, embarrassed or incapable of solely relying on it's very own mainpage.
It seems impossible to have more than one window open at any one time, unlike AoL even allowing for the seven year vintage of my Hewlett-Packard machine. There is the feeling a neighbour has lifted a manhole cover to dump a freshly bagged bulging dog turd down the four inch soil pipe but lo, there has to be a back bollocking pressure of more turd to instil any kind of speed into their wire system.
Then there is the clumsy enigma of the thing called "Outlook Express" which has to be gone through as like a split brain entity which devolves off the main page, in my opinion tediously. Hate to say it but AoHell was streets ahead on email for simplicity.

Most annoyingly, BT imposed what i think was called a 'fair use policy' on many subscribers after they signed up so the monthly payment became £20 rather than less on signing up.
To me this is far too much for the small use i place upon their service and pay rental for telephone line - which ought to have been paid for many times over even in the last decade !

No more big providers for me with hideously long contracts - had enough of that and am going to find a smaller ISP. If they take old fashioned cheques, that is even better.