Avanti Broadband as a supplier?

[Hambleden Grump]

Hi -- have not used one of these forums before but wanted to see if any other subscribers to Avanti satellite broadband around the country have experienced similarly shocking levels of customer service and response as we have in our village? Quick background: Hambleden cannot get conventional bband so has to use a satellite based solution. Avanti Communications Group plc provides that service. The system is down and Avanti will not get engineers to fix it for 5 full working days.

[Mark.J]

Hi, I've not heard anything about this but I'll chase them up for you and put a little media pressure their way. Meanwhile you can add a review of their services here:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/products/552.html

[wireless]

Originally Posted by Hambleden Grump

Hi -- have not used one of these forums before but wanted to see if any other subscribers to Avanti satellite broadband around the country have experienced similarly shocking levels of customer service and response as we have in our village? Quick background: Hambleden cannot get conventional bband so has to use a satellite based solution. Avanti Communications Group plc provides that service. The system is down and Avanti will not get engineers to fix it for 5 full working days.

Avanti won a government contract to replace BT as satellite broadband providers to NI. Since there service went live on 1 April, the quality of my service has dropped significantly - breaks in transmission, slow download and upload speeds, dramatic cut in quality of images on web pages etc. Have complained by email and awaiting a reply promised within two business days.

[Graham Service]

I got my "upgrade" from the BT satellite service to Avanti 2Mb pro service on Thursday.

It is rubbish! More often than not, the service has dropped and it takes 2-5 minutes to re-establish connection. Downloads are slow and forget about uploads. I tried unsuccessfully to contact Avanti all day Thursday - the helpdesk lines were constantly busy. And then they were off Friday through Tuesday for Easter - no support whatsoever. What am I paying for?

I have ran speed tests and once it reported 1Mb download speed, but only that once. I have had several readings less than 100k speed. And about half the tests don't even get past the latency test!

Has anyone else got Avanti replacement for the BT service? I would love to hear how you are getting on!

Angry!

[Graham Service]

By the way, I had to submit this post 5 times to get it on here!

[leprechaun]

I too have been switch over to Avanti Sat and my experiences to date are not good at all . I am on the 3 meg package and have to say that BT's 512k service was like fibre to the home compared to Avanti. I get very bad downloads and uploads as the other member in here has said uploads hardly worth talking about and forget about browsing . I have been on the phone to customer support now for the 2 weeks now I have had this service sometimes waiting in excess of 20 mins and been told that they would call me back with updates which hardly ever happened. I am now told that after two weeks that there is a problem with some of the customers in N.Ireland and that the engineers are working on it . I am awaiting on a call and will let you no what happens . Life would be so much easier with fixed line BB maybe someday.

Lep

[scottish Avanti]

The service started fairly well, a few niggles but it was OK. UNTIL 9th February when a server crashed - downhill ever since!

Some websites refuse to load on what should be "broadband" - if I check on dial-up there is no problem with the sites it is purely an Avanti issue.

I believe they were approached by Moray Firth Radio - but were unable/unwilling to provide any sort of spokesman.

They had 1,000 customers here in Scotland (January) and it was working OK. They added another 500 (by April) and it is falling apart. There are another 2,000 to be added to this system that is not coping at present .

VoIP breaks up dreadfully, pages sometimes need to be refreshed after 5 minutes, some pages just do not loaded at all!

February - connection went down
March - email failed Friday to Monday
April - connection went down again

Oh and connection speed - lowest I have clocked so far is 23K - see the evidence at www.ambamail.com/~emhor (I had to use their webspace for something )

[scottish Avanti]

P.S. I am really struggling to load pages and post (Avanti) as one of my neighbours put it loading a page is a coffee break. Even then you might have to reload!

[prasad]

Yes another spanking new Avanti user grump.

Absolutely appalling browsing over the weekend. Unable to open complicated websites (tennis) and having to try at least twice for simple ones. Today (Monday) it is reasonable.

My question is to the other guys having problems. Which package have you bought?
I am on the cheapest (£23.50) but at least one of you is having problems even with the 3Mb option.

Incidentally if i go to Network and Sharing Centre (Vista) and click on View Status i always get a 100Mb speed! I don't understand that.

I couldn't send e-mails from Windows Mail (Vista equivalent of Outlook Express) so had to call up Avanti and after a 10 minute wait got hold of someone who could help. So apart from the actual working of the broadband itself my other gripe (minor in comparison) is the support. There are no Avanti web pages that help. Now i know the Outgoing SMTP is mail.ambamail.com i could Scroogle it.
and found this page
http://www.ruralwings-project.net/po...lcome-pack.doc
which is actually an official Avanti official document and has everything that would have saved me major headaches over the weekend.
Why is this not on Avanti website! Sorry if it is but i could not find it!

[prasad]

Originally Posted by scottish Avanti

Oh and connection speed - lowest I have clocked so far is 23K - see the evidence at www.ambamail.com/~emhor (I had to use their webspace for something )

I couldn't even access your URL or even www.ambamail.com