Avanti

I think you are all going a bit over the top. The reality is if they turned off your broadband and told you to go back to dial up.... You would all want it turned back on.

Satellite is very different from adsl/cable have you read the wikipedia article? http://tinyurl.com/4694nm

I work in finance and it's not rocket science to me that satellite isn't good for voip and video streaming


Score of 5 is neutral as I'm not a customer

also from what I've read you shouldn't use speed test website because of the latency you should download a test file and measure that way. Thinkbroadband have download test files.

Avanti are useless not woth the typing on a 3meg package might as well be on dailup.

Mine was installed as part of the Scottish Government package, and even with reductions in costs, it has proved to be an expensive and stressful farce.

Firstly the system itself is badly affected by the weather. The wind has shifted mine on several occasions and now it hates the rain. This is probably due to the fact that early in the New Year (after it had been out all over Christmas) the engineers repaired it but put the old tape back over a connection. It went out twice after that, and me having to wait nearly 3 weeks EACH TIME for repairs, only to be told at the end of it that the fault was due to water in the connection.

It rained last night ... lost the connection over and over again.

Customer service is practically non-existent, you have to phone many times, then it literally takes weeks to get somebody out here (it's expensive you know) and besides living in a remote location you have to expect these problems ... come on Avanti, regions like this are where your business is based, it's what you promote your marketing at!

Now we are in the sticky position of paying for our repairs (the ones that are caused by the engineers and take weeks to happen) Brilliant.

My marks are based on the fact that 1 is low and 10 is high. It doesn't allow me to put minus points in.

Under the scottish gov. contract there should be enough capacity at the start of the project and throughout. I don't believe there is!

Connection speeds should be 512K they vary from 23K (no that is not a typing error)- half what you might expect from dial-up up, to 2-300K.

That is problem No.1

Other problems are due to data handling/processing. Web pages take over 5 minutes to load or simply time out, downloads may terminate prematurely but look 100%. VoIP is not possible. Video conferencing is even worse. Online gaming is impossible due to latency (although to be fair there is a "hidden" web page on their site that states this. Some web sites appear to be blocked for periods of time (dodgy sites like TESCO home shopping). Last three months have seen three crashes of their servers. Oh and the BBC watch again streaming video won't work. You have to download using the BBCiPlayer which they (Avanti) tell me is P2P - about 12 hours for the last episode of No.1 Ladies Detective Agency!

Why do I rate their support so highly? Because Renee has a cute Australian voice AND they can seem to have a magic button that prioritises your connection when you phone them. (OK so it doesn't last) They can show you that you can download a redundant 5Mb bin file really quickly from THEIR computers, or maybe even a 10Mb redundant bin file - whoopee doop! I didn't sign up for a broadband connection to download redundant bin files!!!!

My wife and I sat with out two laptops. Gun fight at the OK Coral - 30K dial-up v 512K Broadband! It was a draw - 30K had the edge over text, 512K had a slight advantage over graphics.

Add in all the problems above and 30K wins on points!

If you want to download redundant bin files from Avanti - this is the service to beat all others.

My home community is forced to use the Avanti satellite solution because BT refuses to upgrade either the Henley-on-Thames exchange or to put in a more powerful booster (I am not a tecchy!) at the required point on the line.

The Avanti solution does work well up to a point. It is unobtrusive - certainly compared to my previous satellite system; delivers fairly good speed; and is normally not subject to downtime as a result of poor weather conditions.

However..... Avanti's customer service is appalling. My community is currently suffering from a problem at the base station which, we are informed, cannot be fixed until Friday at the earliest (5-working days from now). This is a totally unacceptable position for those in the villge who rely on internet connectivity to run home based business or who study from home.

I am disgusted at the company's attitude to this predicament as it has said it doesn't have the engineers available because they are all busy on installs for new customers. WHAT ABOUT YOUR EXISTING CUSTOMERS AVANTI???

So anyone considering Avanti would do well to seriously consider other suppliers before signing up to the service. If there are options, look at them very closely.