July 24, 2000 - July 28, 2000

News - July 28,2000

New FreeCall ISP

By:mark @ 5:32:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Don't look now but somebody else is about to launch themselves into the unmetered fray with yet another ISP:

"I am writing to inform you that we are currently in the planning and development stage of a new UK ISP that will be offering off-peak and 24/7 freecall access. It Doesn’t Matter Online hope to offer the highest level of service to an internet community that are fed up of engaged tones, poor customer service and high cost.

We are planning to offer a range of packages to suit everyone, from standard lo-call 0845 to 24/7 0808 access, our packages will also offer cgi-bin's on all webspace, free shares in our company and a new flat-rate telephone plan whereby, for a monthly fee, all your local and national calls (to 01 and 02 prefixes) will be free.

Visit our website at http://www.itdoesntmatteronline.com to read the latest news and our preliminary pricing plans.

For more information please e-mail info@itdoesntmatteronline.com or visit our website.
"

Good luck to them, although the wiser audience will wait until the system has been proven before investing more cash.

Breathe Admit The Truth

By:mark @ 4:05:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

This is indeed a day for controversy, rumours and unlawful practices as now Breathe takes the stand and admits what 24/7 freecall really means - The Register reports:

"breathe has admitted that its 24/7 unmetered Net access service was never meant to be used round the clock.

Speaking to The Register today, breathe's COO and self-confessed Modern Urbanist, Sean Gardner, wanted to make it clear that any reference to a 24/7 unmetered service merely referred to its availability and not that it could be used non-stop around the clock.

"When we describe the service as 24/7 we mean you can access it - that it is available - for this time," he said.

"It is not meant to be a fully [always on] 24/7 unmetered access service," he said.

Gardner's admission will, no doubt, generate greater incredulity among those heavy breathing Modern Urbanists who have already been kicked off the service for using it too much.

However, some who were kicked off were business users and this was strictly against the Ts &Cs of the service, said Gardner.

However, Gardner is keen to plough on regardless and is getting ready to launch a new 24/7 unmetered Net access service next month in a bid too recruit even more Modern Urbanists.
"

Sounds to us more like Breathe.Net have chosen to define their own meaning of 24/7 rather than what it means naturally. If you choose to offer a 24/7 service and fail to mention that you can't actually surf 24 hours a day (not possible anyway, cut offs) then it's your own fault and NOT the subscribers.

However we do agree that those who simply use Auto-Redial late at night and 'Anti-Idle Software' to keep themselves live in chat channels should NOT be allowed to do so. If unmetered access were more widespread then it wouldn't be a problem, sadly such activity serves to help no one at this turbulent stage.

Still that aside, if you offer a 24/7 ISP then once again, DON'T BE SUPPRISED IF PEOPLE USE IT AS SUCH!

VisualDepth Update

By:mark @ 3:10:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

You may remember that just over a month ago we began an investigation into the ISP 'Visual Depth'. This was after hordes of people complain to us that they were surfing through EzeSurf on their VD accounts without even knowing.

When asked VD were quick to dispose the rumours and blamed a 'security problem' on the problems, however the fact they claimed to not use Planet Online as their backbone (bandwidth provider) was one of many catalysts that simply didn't ad up.

You can't possibly have a security problem like the one described with two separate networks. Anyway, the investigation began and has proceeded up until three days ago when we privately declared it concluded.

As of this moment we are conversing with Visual Depth (EzeSurf have been of great help in this matter) before making any of our findings public and so you can expect some delay because of this. Rest assured the truth will finally come out in a week or twos time, if no full reply is received from VD then we’ll publish it without.

EzeSurf Respond To Rumours

By:mark @ 2:58:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

At around 12:00 noon today EzeSurf issued a response to the recent EzeSurf history type article which PlanetInferno published this morning. The article was a damning look at EzeSurfs management by an Ex-Staff member and can be read below, their response follows:

"At this moment we would like to advise customers that we are in the process of restructuring Ezesurf throughout all offices. In addition to this we are also undergoing a total staff and management restructure. With so many rumours about Ezesurf we are still committed to providing a service and are in the process of arranging new and further exciting products.

We would like to apologise for the recent article and can assure you of our best intentions at all times. If you have any queries regarding this article then please contact keri@ezesurf.ltd.uk. If you are still encountering problems with our service then please call our Customer Services on 0870 444 5555 (lines are charged at national rate and open 8am till 8pm).
"

It seems as though http://www.planetinferno.co.uk has managed to stir up quite a hornet’s nest in EzeSurf. Lets just hope they maintain the currently good speeds and fix those small engage tone/support issues. Best not to judge them now and instead wait until a couple of months time to see if things have got worse or better.

RedHotAnt Loophole Closed

By:mark @ 9:47:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

There has been a loophole in RedHotAnt ever since the start that allowed Evening + Weekend Subscribers to login during the day (24/7).

We never posted about it until now because we knew RHA would be slow to fix it and thus more people would hammer the ISP, totally screwing it up! Yeah even more than it already is, if that's possible =).

Thankfully now we can as the loophole has been closed, if you're not already restricted from access outside of the set hours (unless 24/7 account), then you will be or you'll be charged for it.

Personally I blame it all on Ian (never mind) but at least this should mean Peak Hour surfers finally get slightly better performance - unlikely since it's so bad anyway!

Thanks to Darren for the heads-up.

BTOpenworld Goes Live

By:mark @ 9:35:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Despite the site actually being dead on the 26th, BT now tell us that their ADSL operations @ BTOpenWorld did go live on that date (two days late). The following is a quote from their recent members E-Mail to us:

"Thank you for pre-ordering BTopenworld. You will be pleased to hear that the BTopenworld multi-computer service was officially launched on the 26th July, while the single computer service will be launched by late summer. If it does take us a little longer to connect you, I can promise you that BTopenworld will be well worth waiting for.

Now find out how the lightning speed of BTopenworld - coupled with the video rich content you will be able to access through the dedicated portal - is going to change the way you use and think about the Internet...
"

Good news? Well not if you're signed up with anybody other than BTOpenWorld thanks to those strategic delays that we've mentioned time and time again. Not such good news for those living in rural areas even if you are a BTOpenWorld user, the service simply doesn't exist in the country yet =(.

Oh and don’t forget, just because they’ve gone live doesn’t mean you’ll have the system installed for a while anyway. Anybody remember the Home Highway delays! (6 months we had to wait).

*Update*
BT seem to have lost their HTML index file for the website as it exists, but you can't load it from the domain - instead try:

http://www.btopenworld.com/update?email3a

EzeSurf Fact Or Fiction

By:mark @ 9:29:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Well it seems as though some members of the EzeSurf staff are still alive as we've been in contact with them regarding the Visual Depth investigation. That aside and Ben from PlanetInferno has posted shocking revelations about EzeSurf today from an Ex-Employee.

We've known about the following story since early 2000, however never posted it as we were not able to investigate the style of allegations portrayed. Not to mention the legal issues that could be involved, still that's out of our hands now as Ben has taken the risk for us.

This is supposedly a letter from an Ex-EzeSurf employee that portrays their history from the watery grounds of 08004u to the more stable EzeSurf we know today. There's a lot of it so we'll quote the bottom:

"Well the energis/planet deal (EzeSurf Starts) went through and we all celebrated Ezesurf launching and the first few £199 signups went straight to our wages - NOT! but first he bought himself (Matt - Owner) a new state of the art PC and a new car then paid us in dribs and drabs. Well everything went well and we increased or staff size to about 22. Then he decided to cut back and the staff has gradually been shortened to about 5 in Dundee and he started to travel to move to his scene in Manchester and left us with no head at all and no authority to do anything. Our pay began to get later and later in the month and now the Dundee office is all but closed, the staff there now turn up on Mondays to be told by Keri that you are on holiday for re-networking of the office. Something that does not need to be done as or tech wiz kid has already installed a great network that worked fine. Now we find that our wages have been getting taxed Matt's idea of emergency tax 33% or something and the inland revenue have not even seen a penny of it. Most of money will probably never be seen again! As yours may be! The amounts outstanding to the employee's is great and ranges from about £100 to £1000 in tax money overpaid!

He is currently being investigated by the inland revenue, trading standards and the employment services for mis-use of new deal funds.

Do you stay in Nottingham as he has started a new office down there at the broadway business center, he tried to hide this from the Dundee office and he still says that the Dundee office has a future. There are rumours today though because of supposed letters of suspension to one or more of the Dundee employee's. Your share certificates, forget them it was a gimmick he though of in order bring in more interest, ezesurf has no real way of knowing who has what. I doubt he will ever get that part together. All the files are still on paper.

I feel sorry for those poor new employee's down south, they don't know what they are getting into.

We wait and are due to be paid on the 4th will it happen we will wait and see.

Don't get me totally wrong, Ezesurf is has great potential but with Matt in charge be wary be very wary. With the right leadership and right frame of mind towards the customers Ezesurf could be the next biggest corporation in recent years. But in Matt's hands is more likely to spiral into the depths of oblivion.
"

ISPreview cannot vouch for these rumours even if much of it does seem to fit the facts (staff shortages etc.). However with the exception of poor support and recent increases in engage tones at peak hours, EzeSurf is a super fast and stable ISP from our view.

No matter what happens, they are still go for at least another 6 months as the Planet Online deal was paid up-front, thus it can even run without anybody being there =). Although the door swings both ways, EzeSurf is starting to get mildly (emphasising it's only MILDLY) congested, but they might be unwilling to spend the money to upgrade in the future when it gets worse.

Make what you will of all this, we chose not to post what Ben has along time ago as it was too risky in the fact or fiction stakes and legality.

NTLWorld To Cut Cable Modem Prices?

By:mark @ 8:52:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Cable Modems are becoming the leaders as far as monthly costs are concerned and it looks like NTLWorld are to drop their prices following Telewest’s cut.

CableNEWS has posted details of a conversation between a customer and an NTL World support assistant. It claims to show the possibility of a price cut:

"When ordering the service call etc, I asked the man at NTL if the monthly charge will be decreased in the near future. He said that they are looking at the pricing structure and the current speeds available.

According to him they might be bringing down the price of the 512 connection to £30 a month. They will also introduce faster connection speeds at £40 and £50 a month. He was unsure of what would be available in terms of speed. I sure hope it would be something like 768 or 1Mbit or maybe even more?
"

If that goes ahead then ADSL might almost be out of the running all-together, the longer BT takes the less people will choose it. Even cheaper Satellite systems are rumoured to launch soon that'll make both mediums look expensive.

News - July 27,2000

Breathe E-Mail To Customers

By:zeon @ 6:34:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Net4Nowt have managed to get hold of an e-mail sent to breathe users about the recent removal of customers:

You may have seen in the press or on the web that we have taken action to remove users from the breathe freely service. We have taken this action in the interests of retaining the quality of service for the vast majority of users who do not use unmetered access in a manner that affects the service levels of other subscribers.

The breathe freely service was developed to provide toll-free access for customers at any time of the day regardless of peak or off-peak hours. This was intended to enable a reasonable level of free access to the Internet for home and personal use. Some users have operated businesses using breathe freely, others have used complex software to emulate activity while they are away from their PCs. This in turn has created a situation whereby the service suffers from artificial capacity bottlenecks in our switches, reducing quality of service for all users. We have taken the decision to discontinue the service to individuals with extreme usage levels for the good of the wider majority.

Maintaining a high quality of service is dependent upon your goodwill in continuing to use the service sensibly. We will not seek to impose limits per user because this is artificial and not in the spirit of our relationship with you. Equally though, this spirit needs to be two-way in that excessive usage affects the ability of everyone on breathe freely to enjoy the service.

breathe do not wish to follow the recent actions of other ISPs who have had to withdraw service due to excessive usage patterns. We will continue to take positive action against those users who are affecting the service levels of others.

We look forward to your continuing support of breathe and hope that you will feel that we have taken a responsible approach in maintaining a quality product for all our users."


Although they are covered on their T & C's it isn't a good idea to cut customers off without first warning them then cutting them off if they continue to abuse.

LineOne Replys to ISPA

By:mark @ 5:11:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

You may remember that two days ago the ISPA (Internet Service Providers Association) formally contacted LineOne about their recent unmetered service cut-off.

ISPA called on LineOne to offer a cash refund to those people who forked out £20 for a dialler as part of 24/7 unmetered Net access, it is also demanded that LineOne considers offering compensation as well as the refund.

Today numerous sources have told us that LineOne has replied to the ISPA, however neither the ISPA or LineOne are saying what's in the letter. Whether or not the details will be revealed we don't know, but hopefully their reply spells good news and not the opposite.

CallNet0800 To Suspend Freecalls?

By:mark @ 4:58:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

One of our readers (John) has reported to us that the latest issue of 'Practical Internet Magazine' (Issue 44 - August) claims CallNet0800 plan to end their 0800 service and introduce a 1p per min service from September!

This is the first we've heard about actually cancelling the 0800 service. Perhaps they mean add a 1p per min service and switch to always using the new 0808 number? One way or another the article is written as though they will cancel free calls completely.

If anybody can clear this up then please do.

*UPDATE*
John has sent us a further e-mail with the text from practical Internet:

Callnet0800 have decided to scrap its freephone service. It will introduce a 1p/minute service this summer and three unmetered pay services in October. Speaking to Practical Internet, a Callnet 0800 spokesman explained that existing users are using the service for hours at a time but not the telephone operation which funds the free Net access. Callnet0800 cannot afford to continue operating its current deal. The Isp declined to reveal how much it will charge users from the autumn.

Fibernet To Sue BT?

By:mark @ 10:05:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

One of the many operators planning to make use of BTs unbundled local loop has struck out at BT over delays for not completing the task by the end of the year - Yahoo News reports:

"Telecoms company Fibernet Group on Wednesday said it was considering legal action against British Telecommunications over its delay in opening up access to the last mile of wires into homes.

Fibernet spokesman Nigel Pitcher said the company and other operators believed BT should compensate them for not complying with a European Commission directive that it unbundle the local loop by the end of the year.

BT plans to unbundle -- allow competitors access to the last mile of copper wires into homes -- only in July 2001.

"We're of the view that there's absolutely a case to be made," Pitcher told Reuters. "It's six months of lost revenue for competing operators."

Fibernet was talking to other operators about bringing a case, although no decisions had been taken.

Unbundling will allow BT's competitors to deliver Internet and television services over fast, "always-on" telephone lines. BT and industry regulator Oftel have insisted they cannot move faster despite the possibility of legal action by the Commission.

A BT spokeswoman said on Wednesday the Commission directive was only a draft and the company was on track to comply with existing UK regulations.
"

It's fair to say that both sides have a firm case, in BTs hands are the fact that the EUC bill is not 'finalised' and that Oftel actually back them up on the timeframe. In Fibernets hands we have the unfinished EUC bill (doesn't mean to say it can't be acted on) and the belief that it is possible to make it by X-Mas 2000.

Lets not forget that any action taken to bring the 2001 date forward is also of benefit to us thanks to competition. Lets just hope Oftel don't allow the market to become congested with Telco’s all out to try and make a quick buck =(.

RIP Bill Passes Into Law

By:mark @ 9:53:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

After yesterdays final commons debate, the RIP (The Regulation and Investigatory Powers) bill finally passed into law. Despite numerous quotes that the systems could be bypassed by clever individuals, parliament was keen to knock down such rumours and it continued on ahead - Yahoo News reports:

"The government, after a long parliamentary struggle, enshrined in law a bill to allow police and security services to trawl private e-mails.

The Regulation and Investigatory Powers Bill went through its final stage without a vote but only after months of wrangling and numerous government concessions.

Opposition Conservatives in the House of Lords have had their teeth into the legislation and forced the government into a string of amendments in parliament's upper house.

The bill returned to the Commons to ratify those changes. With the government accepting them, its passage was assured. It now goes to the Queen for the formality of Royal Assent.
"

Another interesting piece of information is the cost, set at some £20 million it seems awfully expensive for 600 odd UK ISPs. Works out at around £30,000 per ISP, we wonder what that includes.

Freeserve Handing Out Passwords

By:mark @ 9:40:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Well it looks like the mighty Freeserve ISP has done a RedHotAnt and become rather lax where handing out user passwords is concerned. An article over @ The Register sights the following information:

"A couple of years back, a firm of surveyors dipped its toes into the waters of the Wibbly Wobbly Web with Freeserve. The person who signed them up left the company without telling anyone else the passwords, and rather unfortunately, no one thought to ask him what it was as he left.

Then one day the computer forgot the mailbox password and no one could connect to access their emails. A call was made to tech support, our reader tells us, and the ensuing conversation was along these lines:

Me: We've lost our password. What is the procedure?
Operator: Can you give me your username?
Me: Yeah, it's (username)
Op: Can you tell me the name of the person who set up the account?
Me: No, but I guess the name you might have could be (I take a stab at the name of the founding partner of the firm).
Op: No sir, that's not the name I've got here.
Me: Oh, hang on a minute, I'll have a word with someone and find out the guy's name.
Op: No, that's okay. It would appear that your account has been suspended, as you haven't logged on to it for 90 days.
Me: Okay, fair enough. What can we do about that?
Op: Er, I need to get you to the Freeserve website
Me: That's okay, it's open in front of me ATM.
Op: How?
Me: I'm logged on via another ISP


At this point the operator proceeded to talk me through retrieving the account, to complete which he read me the password over the phone. I said thank-you and goodbye.

The partners of this firm were far from happy once I'd explained exactly what had taken place. At no point was my name or any proof of my identity requested, nor was any proof sought that I was a legit user of the account in question.
"

To be honest this still isn't anything new, a lot of ISPs are lax with their security because they simply don't think anybody would actually steal a password by the phone. There's no point in asking for a persons name, address or phone number as ID because all those can be found without hassle (so long as you know who to target).

We believe ISPs should use better checks, mothers maiden name, pet cat or anything that's easy for the individual to remember, but isn't so obvious to a remote person trying to get in. The Freeserve and RedHotAnt case should have us all on our toes; this is nothing new.

News - July 26,2000

Freedom 0800 & SMI

By:Daniel @ 9:47:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Remember the good old days when Freedomi and SMI were going to offer Free internet. But the launch date was always delayed. Anyway we decided to check out their webpage to see what was happening.

As for freedomi their webpage still looks the same but SMI has registered the domain http://www.3internet.co.uk/ . Perhaps they may still offer it after all only a year or so after they promised they would offer it :-)

Click here for SMI groups webpage

Click here to go to Freedomi's webpage

WAP Mag

By:Daniel @ 9:16:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We have found this piece of news over at The Matrix for people who have WAP phones:

If you're interested in WAP, then you may well be interested to know that Futurenet (the publishers of .net, Internet Works, PC Plus to mention a few) are releasing a new magazine aimed totally at WAP.

Click here for more info.

Source: The Matrix

World Online Losses

By:Daniel @ 5:10:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

It seems as though World Online hasn't made any profit this quarter!

Analysts were expecting a net loss of 89.7 million to 94 million euros.

The number of active subscribers rose in the second quarter to 2.4 million, up from 2.2 million in the first quarter. Active subscribers are defined as those who used the service in June.

If World Online is target to a takeover, as many analysts expect, the subscriber numbers will be key to how much a potential buyer will pay for it.

The new strategy will see World Online reorganised into three units offering Internet access, portal content and e-commerce activities and a third unit for business services.


Well other unmetered ISP's don't make profits for a bit (e.g. Visual Depth). So perhaps the new re-organised World Online could make some profit for them in the next quarter.

Read the rest of the article at Yahoo News

Snooping Bill To Become LAW Today

By:mark @ 3:57:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Well today’s the day our beloved 'privacy killing' RIP bill (not likely to be R.I.P after all) goes into parliament to be passed or failed as law. After recent amendments the government are confident it will pass, much to the dismay of just about anybody who actually uses the NET.

"The government expects a bill to allow police and security services to trawl private e-mails to become law after it returns to the House of Commons today, officials have said.

"We are not expecting any trouble. It should go through the Commons today and on to the statute book," a Home Office source told Reuters.

Conservatives in the House of Lords have had their teeth into the legislation ever since it was hived off a broader e-commerce bill and handed to the Home Office.

They forced the government into a string of amendments in parliament's upper house. The bill returns to the Commons later on Wednesday to ratify those changes.

"We have made amendments and we are happy to live with them, so there should not be any problems," the source said.

Given the government's huge majority, the bill looks set to become law before parliament starts its summer recess on Friday.

The government says it merely updates police powers to intercept and monitor communications, bringing them up to speed with technologically sophisticated criminals. People who refuse to yield encryption codes could face up to two years in jail.

The government has conceded that in most cases, companies will be able to hand over printed text rather than encryption keys needed to unscramble coded e-mail. The home secretary will have to personally approve all interception warrants. But business chiefs warn the law could still drive e-businesses away from Britain in droves -- not only on cost grounds, but also over the issue of commercial confidentiality.

Civil rights groups are also up in arms about potential infringements of personal privacy and the bill is being watched closely by European countries yet to legislate on the Internet and e-mail.
"

You can read more @ Yahoo News, sadly my office doesn't have a TV, so I won't be able to inform you of what happens. It's not likely that the bill will be stopped; the only hope is that security services don't slip up on their promises. If they do then doubts from the word go will have been proven correct, just one mistake is all it takes.

BT Overcharge For Surftime

By:mark @ 3:48:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

It's almost as though a day can't pass without BT once again showing their total and utter incompetence, today we see yet another show of stupidity from the mighty British telecom provider:

"I signed up with BT Surftime when it launched in the middle of June and have only just received by first 'Surftimed' bill."

"The monthly bill came to £154.20 - £30 more than my previous non-Suftime bill," he said.

"I'm told by a BT customer services advisor that they have incorrectly charged Surftime customers for Surftime, plus the cost of the Surftime calls."

"A credit is being applied to all affected accounts, but this won't help those that have ended up in the red due to this particular bill," he said.

Asked about the scale of the problem, a spokesman for the telco said: "I'm not aware of any problems."
"

You can read the rest @ The Register, this is truly a show of big business loosing the plot. ISPreview has been around for such a long time that we've managed to build a disturbing picture of our trusted telecom provider. One of regular incompetence, lack of communication, ill informed sales and customer services - the list goes on.

BT Release New ADSL Dates

By:mark @ 3:39:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Well we know, you've heard it before and yes, you're going to hear it again. Only days after the last deadline was missed, BT have announced some rough new launch dates for its ADSL services through BTopenworld:

"The multi computer (Ethernet) service (aimed primarily at SMEs) "should be up and running by September or October", although the very first Ethernet customers should be hooked up this week.

The single computer (USB) service "should be online by October or November", according to Deschamps, which isn't quite the same at the "late summer" timing touted by BT spinsters.

Both of these products and dates only apply to those 100,000 or so people who pre-registered their interested before June 30.

But if you think this is bold coming from BT, think again. Deschamps opens his epistle with the promise: "We never release a service until it has been thoroughly tested. Which is not to say that the underlying technology hasn't been proved. Quite the opposite. It works like a dream..."
"

You can read more @ The Register, but don't you find it interesting the way BT push the dates ahead another two months every time we reach a new deadline. Most people don't realise that its been going on this way for close to two years, more if you include the initial estimates (4 years anyone?).

With Cable Modems recent price cuts, ADSL is looking to be an increasingly uncompetitive product for consumers and business alike. We don't hold out much hope that they will make the latest dates either; these delays are starting to cause serious damage to future businesses thinking of adopting the new lighting speed service.

Blueyonder Update

By:Daniel @ 1:38:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We have just been in #ukcable on Efnet and noticed one of the regulars said this about Blueyonder Cable modems.

|Scouser| as of August 24th 1 mbit connections will be £50 and 512k will be £34

Well if the August 1st price cut doesn't come then the next date is August 24th. Lets hope this is not another rumour!

News - July 25,2000

How To Hack BT

By:mark @ 8:46:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

No I'm sorry but we're not going to tell you that, besides we doubt anybody would notice a difference anyway hehe. Still The Register has yet another interesting article this evening, it's all about how BT was hacked just recently:

"However, thanks to a reader tip-off, we also came across the latest issue of an online hacking mag which featured a article called "Plague v0.1" written by Datawar and another person with a surprisingly similar pseudonym to one of the emails we received from the attacker.

Plague is, unsurprisingly, a DoS method and coding. It would appear that Datawar had written the original tool, which our man had then perfected - to apparently great effect. Plague's primary purpose "is to create an environment that it capable of effectively coordinating a number of compromised hosts in a distributed attack. The nature of this attack ranges from denial of service to a sophisticated scan of the Internet for potential targets for future compromise.
"

LineOne Gets The ISPA Treatment

By:mark @ 8:37:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Tonight The Register is reporting that the ISPA (Internet Service Providers Association) made a statement to the effect that LineOne is in breach of its industry code of conduct:

"The British service provider has been given seven days to reply to allegations that it has failed to "act decently, fairly and reasonably at all times".

ISPA claims it has received a barrow-load of complaints from users who are incensed at the way LineOne has acted.

Last week it confirmed that it was ditching unmetered access because it was costing the company too much money. LineOne offered unmetered access as part of a telephony deal with discount telco, Quip!.

Not only is ISPA calling on LineOne to offer a cash refund to those people who forked out £20 for a dialler as part of 24/7 unmetered Net access, it is also demanding that LineOne considers offering compensation as well as the refund.

So far LineOne has only offered a £20 refund in voice calls via Quip!.

According to ISPA, this is not satisfactory. Nicholas Lansman, Secretary-General, ISPA UK, wrote: "While a £20 credit on voice calls made via the Quip telecom service has been offered to customers, as well as the opportunity of joining BT's Surftime, many customers are angry that they have not been offered a refund of the initial £20 that was paid for the service.

"Many of the complainants have alleged that they do not use Quip! for voice calls and only signed up for this service because it was part of the package for free Internet access," he said.
"

You can read a lot more on this story by visiting The Register, however we believe any action would be unlikely to bring back the previous service. Although deep down it looks like Quip will escape with all the cards since LineOne has been set as the primary target.

EzeSurf Problems Escalate

By:mark @ 8:30:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

It's no secret that in the past few months EzeSurf has had it hard, but the only people they have to blame are themselves. Rumours of unpaid staff, support staff shortages and possible closure have circulated for months on end.

In the last two months things have got worse, specifically in July, with the exception of one recent service update that we posted, EzeSurf have been next to totally dead.

The paradox is that their service's performance is top rate, despite increased engaged tones coming into effect over the last two months at peak hours, an otherwise useable service is clearly in place.

So when Net4Nowt reported today that EzeSurf resellers Caledonian Internet announced that they will not be accepting any more new customers due to a lack of communication skills on the behalf of EzeSurf, we were still shocked. It's one thing to loose contact with your customers, it's another to loose it with your business:

"Although we at Caledonian Internet Ltd., along with thousands of other individual users, are completely satisfied with the Ezesurf 0808 service when connected, we will no longer be accepting additional user sign-ups on their behalf.

We have taken this decision due to the fact that when there is a problem with sign-up it is almost impossible to resolve. Ezesurf reply to no mail, fax, email or telephone communication and we as a company cannot operate in that environment.

Our customers are more important than that to us.

Our decision to discontinue promoting this product in no way affects customers already signed up.
"

Well there you have it, we've asked Ezesurf repeatedly and openly on ISPreview to contact us over the last two months regarding other matters, yet nothing. Just as Cale and others have tried, Phone, E-Mail and Fax, none of which work.

It's almost as though they had disappeared from the face of the earth and forgotten to turn the power off. Fact is, many of us would hope they leave the power on even if they are gone because service remains good. EzeSurf has been second choice for our 'ISP of the Month' nearly every time, yet they fail due to an inability to resolve the above issues.

Perhaps it's time for them to come clean, people aren't stupid and it's blatant that something’s wrong, please contact us guys!

RedHotAnt Update

By:zeon @ 3:55:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The latest update on the RHA site:

There is currently a congestion issue at busy periods (evenings & weekends).

We are still waiting for our "telecommunications" provider to deliver additional lines to our modem racks, these lines were requested some 12 weeks ago now and we are still waiting. Our "telecommunications" provider has assured us that the installation is nearing completion and just as soon as we have a definitive "go-live" date we will publish it on our web site.

However we are still working with various other telecommunication companies to improve the current interconnect & switching problems, which are steadily being resolved. We do hope that at least some users are seeing a steady improvement.


They point out two problems about not having enough lines and call routing problems. The routing problem is regional but the lack of lines will affect everyone at peak times. It still looks as if there will be a longer wait until RHA engaged tones disappear.

New Review & Article @ ISPreview

By:mark @ 11:55:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

ISPreview has been up to no good again, not only do we have a review of the 'FreeBEEB' (BBC TV's ISP), but we've also got an article titled 'What is WAP?', which is four pages and explains all about WAP (Wireless Application Protocol).

FreeBEEB - http://ispreview.co.uk/reviews/freebeeb/

What is WAP? - http://ispreview.co.uk/articles/wap/

Quote (What is WAP?):
"The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an open, global specification, which gives mobile users with wireless devices the opportunity to easily access and interact with information and services. The protocol is developed by WAP Forum http://www.wapforum.org/, an organization of some of the most powerful Internet and telecom companies."

Worlds First WAP Browser

By:mark @ 10:07:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

WAP is the technology used to transport specialised Internet pages to your mobile phone and some clever Joe has introduced the first Windows based WAP browser. The following was included in the two weeks late ISN (RedHotAnt) newsletter this morning, which did NOT contain any further RHA updates =(:

"WINWAP WAP BROWSER 2.3 - The world's first Wap browser for your Windows desktop. If you intend to add functionality to your Web site, you will love this program. It allows you to preview Wap pages from your desktop rather than having to upload the files first and then check them using a Wap-enabled mobile phone. It includes a handy feature, which lets you change the viewing size of the browser to emulate the screen size of the most popular Wap phones (Nokia 7110, Ericsson R320, Ericsson MC218 and Motorola Timeport). This gives you an accurate representation of how the pages will look when uploaded. If you’re interested in Wap, this is a must-have.

For more information. or to download, please follow this link:
http://www.winwap.org
"

Can't see this as being of that much use to anyone unless you either develop WAP pages, like to preview them before popping links onto the phone or have a VERY slow computer =).

PS “Keep an eye on ISPreview today for a special WAP article”

Telewest C-Modem Price Cut - UPDATE

By:mark @ 9:54:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The Cable Modem news site CableNews has posted some slightly more up-to-date information on Telewests pending Cable Modem price cuts:

"A cablenews:uk reader has reported that the Telewest price cut for its 'blueyonder' cable modem service will now not take place until August 1st. The price is expected to be within the range of £30-35.

This information is reportedly available by calling Telewest Customer Services on 0800 953 5000.
"

It finally looks as though the might of Cable Modems will finally be able to pull ahead of future ADSL offerings. £30 or £35 is an extremely competitive price and makes some newer freecall ISPs look highly overpriced.

BarrysWorld Dialup Test

By:zeon @ 8:55:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

BarrysWorld are testing their new dialup system. Here are some of the details:
  • 0845 dialup with MPPC compression and multilink for both ISDN and modem connections - unmetered access will be coming as soon as it can.

  • Direct connection to the BarrysWorld 256Gbit/sec switched backbone.

  • Direct connection to the BarrysWorld 100Mbit/sec switched Internet connection (soon to be 1000Mbit/sec).

  • Fast, stable game pings with low packetloss

  • Other stuff. Once we`ve worked out what it is.

More info HERE
Signup HERE

News - July 24,2000

Breathe Delete Breathe Freely Accounts

By:Ross14 @ 8:38:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Breathe have been emailing some of their Breathe Freely customers about their prolonged use of the service. Users who have been been surfing with the Breathe Freely service heavily will lose their accounts at 1pm on Wednesday 26th July. Part of the email is posted below:

Dear breathe customer,

You may have recently received an email from the breathe billing
department regarding your use of the breathe freely service. At the time of writing, we had serious concerns about the extremely heavy demand put on the service by the highest users.

The continued heavy use by a small proportion of users has now
resulted in the need for us to withdraw the breathe freely service from these customers to sustain the offer to the majority of customers who are not using the service to the same extent. Whilst this is not a decision that we have taken lightly, we believe other providers would choose to undermine the service for everybody by restricting modem ratios and bandwidth until the whole service becomes unusable. This is not a measure we were willing to undertake.

The terms and conditions of the breathe freely service allow us to
disconnect users if we feel that their level of use puts our ability to supply the service at risk. It is with regret that we are writing to inform you that you fall into the group of highest users and we will no longer be able to provide the breathe freely service to you from 1pm Wednesday 26th July.

However, in recognition of your disappointment at this news and your need for a continued service, we are able to offer you up to £50 towards your call charges if you revert to using the breathe everywhere local call access service (0845 dial-up numbers). Details on how to claim this will follow shortly.

For your information we will be launching new subscription-based free
access services during August that will offer 24 hour free access and
free off-peak only access options. New terms of use will apply to these services. Please consult the breathe.com websitefor further information in the coming weeks.


Well not exactly another Lineone copycat, but quite a few Breathe surfers will be angry with this move. A £50 reimbursement for the charge they paid in the first place is a start though.

Source: Sunjeev

AOL Hit Back & Deflect Anti-Trust Accusations

By:mark @ 6:00:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

AOL have been the centre of some serious Anti-Trust allegations for the last month over their Instant Massager software. Well today they decided to hit back with allegations of their own in order to deflect attention from the primary issue:

"This, of course, is all about instant messaging and the interesting blocking/hacking around it. AOL's Instant Messenger is a pretty darn good bit of kit and since it got in there first with a good product, has taken a good chunk of the market. Needless to say, others produced their own messaging systems but were unable to cut into the market without it working with AOL's version.

So they asked AOL if it wouldn't mind telling them how it worked exactly. AOL stroked its chin, flipped them the birdie and a war was born. Caught up in the horrible irony of being faced with a protectionist, market-controlling company that it didn't run, Microsoft naturally decided to hack into AOL and borrow the relevant code for interoperability. It wasn't successful.

AOL was unimpressed so it filed complaints and for good measure (remember we all pretend to love competition in the Internet world) came up with a PR ploy to deflect anti-trust accusations. You see, AOL is only too delighted to hand over its successful, profitable control of the market, it's just that it's worried about security. It loves us all so much and is so concerned that it's buggered if it'll give the code to anyone else until they can conclusively prove security will be tight. And guess who gets to decide if this standard is met? But in the meantime, the wise, genteel AOL will just keep working on a common standard while the others muck about.
"

A clever approach indeed and you can read more about it @ The Register, now what is it about big business and the way they feel it necessary to put their stupidity on show for all to see?

Microsoft, AOL, BT and many more seem to end up in the same boat, that's why we have laws to stop them growing bigger or they could potentially take over the world =). Now isn't that a worrying thought.

BT To Launch ADSL This Week, But Will It?

By:mark @ 5:49:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

BT seemed poised to finally roll out their much-delayed ADSL service this week. It was supposed to go Online via BT OpenWorld today, Monday, however as of this moment the site remains completely dead.

VNUNet also has some slightly more detailed information on the subject:

"The single business user service is priced at £39.99 a month, with an installation fee of £150. Multi-user businesses will need to pay £99.99 a month, with a £260 installation fee, to connect four PCs and have up to 10 email addresses. More PCs can be connected using a company's own cabling, and download speeds will be increased from 512Kbps to 2Mbps in December.

The telco last month blamed internet service providers (ISPs) testing its ADSL equipment for not providing enough candidates to see how back-office issues, such as the running of billing and ordering systems, would cope under pressure.

BTopenworld's consumer service will be priced at the same rate as the single business user service.

Other ISPs, including Freeserve and Thus, also plan to launch ADSL services to compete with BTopenworld.
"

Not loosing sight of the fact that those not on BTopenworld are still going to have to wait until late August or early September no matter what. BT seem to be making one blunder after another in all of their various departments, but is it really a blunder or another stealth method for trying to earn more money? "How can you earn if there's nothing to sell", a man cries.

ISPreview Feedback Request

By:mark @ 12:29:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We've been wondering, how many of you (if any) would like to see us doing reviews and previews of technology, or more specifically, Internet related hardware and software.

Such things as Modem Round ups, ADSL adaptors and all sorts of other ideas come into play with such a topic. If you think we should then please feel free to include any suggestions or ideas.

Note we'd be sticking to Internet related hardware and software. Please make some comments on this or send us a mail / post in the forum. Also how many of you would be interested if we added a fax and voice mail system to ISPreview (for complaints / general advise and help etc.).

New Stuff @ ISPreview

By:mark @ 12:23:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Another slow news day and so we'll try to make it a little more interesting ourselves. We've just updated the 'ISP Listings' page on ISPreview with a more up-to-date unmetered / freecall UK ISP list.

However the big news is that Richard (Zeon) (with a tiny bit of help from me) has finished putting the initial touches to our Broadband (Cable Modems / ADSL / Satellite etc.) list. It's still not quite complete, but if you have any suggestions then send them over to Richard HERE and he'll look into them.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/list.shtml

WAP Sites Help!

By:Ross14 @ 9:18:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We will shortly be putting-up an article on WAP. We are no experts in this field ourselves, but we have managed to get through most of the article. The only thing is, we need our readers help with finding the Top 5 WAP sites. If you could please email us your opinions on the best WAP sites to ross.fleming@lineone.net.

Thank you for your trouble.

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