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Reliability?

I have used both BTOW Sat and Aramiska and cannot say there isd much to choose from the similar packages the 1 and 2 Mb packages may be different.

I understand that users will be offered a new contract which includes maintenance albeit at a price hike. I will say no more.
 
Well I can't really comment on the BT equivalent package as I've no experience of it. But the Aramiska community package is a lot better then the BT solution... at least shared among my neighbours... :) Perhaps that's the way people should go if there are no other options.
It's certainly a lot cheaper! I'm just delighted I don't have to deal with BT and their "service" anymore... :)
 
Joe so long as you are happy and receiving value for money that is all any of us can ask. :) I am very pleased for you and hope the situation does not change.

Like you I am not happy with BT Sat and whilst a change in their (BT's) supplier may seem a good move but unless they allow proper usage it won't help anyone. Then of course the more connections there are to supplier A or B and unless the bandwidth is increased that service will also slow down.

The problem with BT and it's current platform is x amount of bandwidth was taken for 'a' number of users when that number of users increased the bandwidth did not.

Currently on average I use 90Mb a day on BT and told that is too high ask BT the figure we should keep under and all you get is that is 'subject to the data protection'. I am not a downloader.

So unless the bandwidth is addressed with whatever supplier the BT Sat situation will remain the same.

I have been on 2 way satellite since December 2001 so no novice and on the BT Sat platform seen the service go down and down.
 
Are you on 500/1? 90Mb a day doesn't seem like very much. When I was discussing bandwidth limitations with BT they were saying something like effectively 1GB/week on 500/1 and 2GB/week on 500/4. They did add however that this is averaged over a month so if you were on 500/1 and downloaded 1GB one week and nothing the next you would not be penalized.

The thing is that the above limits are not realistic. Perhaps they are for a home user but BT were selling their service as for business use.

As part of my business I generally deal with emails and web development traffic. However, I do also have to shift multimedia content around and that can run into quite high amounts of traffic on occasion. It's not unusual for me to have to download a CD from time to time meaning 650MB are gone... Under the BT regieme I really had to watch this - which I think is UNreasonable for a business service.

Not to mention the lack of any maintenance support as I found out when there was a suspected fault (which turned out not to be a fault at all but the backend network).

So I am not surprised you are unhappy.

You said you tried Aramiska - did they penalize you on bandwidth as well as I was given the impression when I spoke to them that this would not be the case (unless you left something running 24/7).
 
Joe

90 time 30 comes out at just under 3 gigs a month which I understand is the monthly limit. I average 150 Mb a day which is over :( Certainly no good for my business.

No Aramiska do not run the same type of capping restrictions its worked out on a percentage system of the whole system.

I understand BT starts it's move to the new platform from May 1 not sure how long the whole process will take and what the new monthly cost will be. Also I am not certain if BT will take it's Fair User Policy over with it. As I understand the restrictions currently are not what the hub demands but what BT request from the hub. We all know satellite bandwidth is limited and expensive but as the hub say there are/were other ways to restrict the heavy users and offer a professional business bandwidth to those who need it for ligitimate use.
 
What made you leave Aramiska? Was it the cost?

Interesting that you were told 3GB a month - as I said I was told 1GB a month for 500/1 and 2GB a month for 500/4. Mind you then they have this stupid thing about slowing down your connection if you exceed that. Perhaps 3GB a month is where they stop your connection altogether.

The problem with all this is that they applied these limits after many people had joined the service - so they essentially changed the terms of service. If they'd said these limits existed up front then we could've opted not to join if it was a issue. But they didn't do that. I daresay there is some small print somewhere that says they can change the terms of service - but I don't think that this makes it any more palatable!

I would also debate whether that kind of capping can be applied to a service and it still be properly called a business service. If you look at ADSL capping this kind of limit only applies to the low end home consumer oriented deals and even then they are often more generous.

It could well be different limits apply to satellite bandwidth but that's no excuse to describe it as a business service. If it genuinely can't be provided at this cost/setup they should rename it a home/consumer connection and offer a more expensive package with a proper bandwidth allowance as a business service.

IMO anyway :)
 
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I would also debate whether that kind of capping can be applied to a service and it still be properly called a business service. If you look at ADSL capping this kind of limit only applies to the low end home consumer oriented deals and even then they are often more generous.

Since March 1 my speed is consistantly 48 down and 19 up and as such the system is totally unusable, BT however still want the full 70.49 pounds per month. Gilat say my use was not excessive. Can't say anymore as I have a formal complaint lodged. Other than to say BT Support suggested I got a dialup to connect to the sites that time out because the satellite is so slow.

I Gig a month is ridiculous that is only 30 Mb a day. The annoying part is I had no idea these restrictions were put in place no letter no contact whatsoever Support say it was my responsibility to check with the T&C's on the website on a weekly basis to see if any changes have been implimented.

Feel sorry for all those going to sell their equipment it won't be worth a dot as soon as BT switch platform.

I had Aramiska on a grant without the grant it was just to expensive and offered nothing better than I get with my 500/4 service at a quarter of the cost.

I am moving to a private wi-fi connection in August a one to one connection like a leased line whilst many more times expensive than the satellite at least I shall be on a 1:1 and upset no one only the 1000's of sheep around us.
 
Hmm bit confused here maybe you can clear it up:

You say you paid 70.49 a month and you were on 500/4. Well I was on 500/4 and was paying 110.00 a month. Did you have some special deal?

Also you say you got 48KB/s down and 19KB/s up - I never managed better then 6KB/s up and complaints only got excuses that this was the best it could do and they were working on it (though it never changed during the almost 2 years I had the service). Typical download for me was around 35-40KB/s.

I agree with the ridiculousness of the terms being changed too. I hadn't a clue there were restrictions in place until I hunted around the net for other people having problems and read about this. You would think a change to terms would at least merit an email?

Suddenly I realized why sometimes my system seemed to crawl for extended periods (I was probably having my bandwidth forced down due to "overuse").

Ok on the Aramiska explanation though it did offer one thing better from the sound of it and that was the lack of the bandwidth capping at these very low levels.

I'm not sure that the Gilat Skystar systems will be worth nothing when they switch platforms as BT are not the only providers to use that equipment and I can imagine that in a more professional set up it probably performs quite well. The 500/4 boxes (from reading the specs) should be able to manage more then the speeds BT was running them at and in addition some may want the dish and LNB / transmitter for other projects anyway.

I'm not sure BT would've installed with second hand Gilat gear anyway - maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
 
My BT account finally closed

My BT involvement finally came to a conclusion today.

I sent them a long letter of complaint detailing the many ways by which they had not provided the service as advertised and griping about the extensive downtimes etc. I suggested that it was too late now to fix things but perhaps they'd see their way to writing off any remaining moneys owed as a gesture of good will.

They responded by sending me a bill for £10 which I apparently still owed them.

I forgot about this bill but wasn't too concerned as I thought I would get a red reminder. Instead I got a county court summons threat from CCS on their behalf. I paid immediately as I didn't feel £10 was worth making a stand over but I felt it was a very appropriate end to the BT experience and sums up their whole attitude.

Well never again with BT as long as I can help it!
 
Me Neither ( especially not the satellite part anyway). I would have had them over a barrel, but as they have more money to spend on solicitors than I have, i may be stumped although I have not exhausted all avenues yet. It costs £15,000 a day in the Sheriff Courts in my neck of the woods, so the prospective disgruntled customer has this to think about before taking legal action. However it doesn't cost this amount in the small claims court but the claim amount will be much less.
 
It just seemed ridiculous that they would immediately pass a £10 bill for bad credit collection without any "final demand" - perhaps it says something about how many disatisfied customers they've had for this service (now they are just assuming you will give them a hard time whether you intend to or not).

If it didn't mean attracting a bad credit rating and so on I may have gone to small claims just for the satisfaction of taking a tenner along with me and after arguing for as long as possible simply giving it to them :) (though they would also then charge me solicitors fees etc). Childish as it may seem - BT treat you like dirt under the wheels which propel their monopoly (for it largely still is a monopoly) forward. You never seem to get any personal attention and anything but the most trivial problems soon get lost in the machine where nobody seems to quite know the details of what they are doing.

I will never use BT again as long as I can avoid them. Even their wired ADSL service which I had before I moved was nowhere near as good as what I've managed to find now through local alternatives. I think BT will now be a last resort when no other options are available.
 
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Joe said:
What made you leave Aramiska? Was it the cost?

Interesting that you were told 3GB a month - as I said I was told 1GB a month for 500/1 and 2GB a month for 500/4. Mind you then they have this stupid thing about slowing down your connection if you exceed that. Perhaps 3GB a month is where they stop your connection altogether.

The problem with all this is that they applied these limits after many people had joined the service - so they essentially changed the terms of service. If they'd said these limits existed up front then we could've opted not to join if it was a issue. But they didn't do that. I daresay there is some small print somewhere that says they can change the terms of service - but I don't think that this makes it any more palatable!

I would also debate whether that kind of capping can be applied to a service and it still be properly called a business service. If you look at ADSL capping this kind of limit only applies to the low end home consumer oriented deals and even then they are often more generous.

It could well be different limits apply to satellite bandwidth but that's no excuse to describe it as a business service. If it genuinely can't be provided at this cost/setup they should rename it a home/consumer connection and offer a more expensive package with a proper bandwidth allowance as a business service.

IMO anyway :)


Any clause in a contract that says they can change the terms of the contract at anytime and without notice and without permiting you to cancel the contract would break the Unfair Terms and Contract Directive. In general that directive permits favorable changes to be made but any significant adverse change would not be permited.

Unfortunatly as with much of UK consumer law there is no effective enforcement of it. Your only real means of getting redress is the Small Claims Court

Its alls usefull especially if a number of people take them to the Small Claims Court to get the Local Press interested. In general companies don't like the adverse press it will get them.
 
I suspect like most big conglomorates if it bothered them enough they would buy your silence... not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Certainly better then spending time composing a email catalogue of disasters in the hope of at very least a "we're sorry" and instead winding up with a £10 bill shortly followed by legal threats!
 
Web Buddy said:
Any clause in a contract that says they can change the terms of the contract at anytime and without notice and without permiting you to cancel the contract would break the Unfair Terms and Contract Directive. In general that directive permits favorable changes to be made but any significant adverse change would not be permited.

Unfortunatly as with much of UK consumer law there is no effective enforcement of it. Your only real means of getting redress is the Small Claims Court

Its alls usefull especially if a number of people take them to the Small Claims Court to get the Local Press interested. In general companies don't like the adverse press it will get them.

Its the Unfair Contract Terms Act and courts will act in circumstances where there are terms in contracts which breach the act, by striking out the term, making the contract void or voidable etc.

The original terms and conditions did state the notification period for any changes to the terms and conditions and also allowed for either party to cancel the contract should either party be unable to accept the changes to the contract.

@Joe
The limits on the old Gilat system BT was using were 1gb per week for the 500/1 system and 2gb per week for the 500/4 system.

On the 500/1 system, there was a capped applied at a total of 6gb per 4 week period at which point the user's speed was slowed to 20KBytes/sec between 8am-11pm ... between 11pm-8am no caps were applied. Once 8gb in a 4 week period was exceed you were capped to 8KBytes per sec, again the cap was removed between 11pm-8am. In any 4 week period if you dropped back to the accepted levels the cap was removed.

When these changes were first brought in a letter was sent to billing address notifying them of these changes and as per the terms and conditions you could cancel the contract at that point. Obviously it is unclear why you did not receive this letter (perhaps it is somewhere with your red reminder too!)

I cannot comment on the outages that you experienced without further details and copies of the logs at that point in time, to see why outages were occurring.

BT have now migrated across to IntelSat. The migration took approximately one month and all customers were contacted by telephone to arrange the best install date/time for them. The actual migration work at the customer's site took around 1-3 hours depending on the work that needed to be done to complete the migration.

The 500/1 users have had their original Skyblast 360's upgraded to 360E's (which means that it is now an entirely hardware based system and so can be used directly with hardware firewalls and routers etc. and does not require software to be installed on any of the client pcs). All warranties for all hardware (which by the way is all brand new!) at the customer sites have been reset to one year. The previous Fair Usage Policy has been ditched in favour of a more network-centric and therefore fluid one similar to Aramiska's.

Also as the migration inevitably changed the IP addresses allocated to the customer, a portion of the DNS team were set aside for the express purpose of updating DNS records as quickly as possible to minimise any downtime for customers hosting (for example) their own SMTP server.
 
turnkey said:
On the 500/1 system, there was a capped applied at a total of 6gb per 4 week period at which point the user's speed was slowed to 20KBytes/sec between 8am-11pm ... between 11pm-8am no caps were applied. Once 8gb in a 4 week period was exceed you were capped to 8KBytes per sec, again the cap was removed between 11pm-8am. In any 4 week period if you dropped back to the accepted levels the cap was removed.

Thanks for the fuller explanation of what the limits were... it's academic now but this is the third or fourth version I've heard of how it actually worked.


When these changes were first brought in a letter was sent to billing address notifying them of these changes and as per the terms and conditions you could cancel the contract at that point. Obviously it is unclear why you did not receive this letter (perhaps it is somewhere with your red reminder too!)

I do not believe a red reminder was sent out as the time between the original demand and the communication from CCS was too short. That is unless they sent the red reminder a week after the first bill.

BT's mail is the only mail that I am aware of that has gone missing to this address over the last three years - that makes it seem likely to me that they never sent it in the first place or it got "lost" before it left BT.


I cannot comment on the outages that you experienced without further details and copies of the logs at that point in time, to see why outages were occurring.

BT "investigated" at the time and decided my equipment must be faulty. They offered to come and look at it for a £150 call out charge. I declined. 4 weeks later it was "working" perfectly again with no action at my end. I suspect the problem was therefore not with my equipment.

However the downtimes were extensive (2 or 3 days at a time occasionally and at other times several hours at a time). Then suddenly it was working again. It continued to work fine for a few weeks after that during the run up to my cancellation. At the point of cancellation it was still working ok.


BT have now migrated across to IntelSat. The migration took approximately one month and all customers were contacted by telephone to arrange the best install date/time for them. The actual migration work at the customer's site took around 1-3 hours depending on the work that needed to be done to complete the migration.

I know. Despite not receiving previous important letters, three weeks or so after I cancelled my service and was disconnected they did send me a letter saying someone would soon be in touch to discuss when they could come round to change my system over.


All warranties for all hardware (which by the way is all brand new!) at the customer sites have been reset to one year.

How nice of them. Fortunately my current deals offer full warranties of all equipment for the lifetime of my contract with the service which is what I would hope for and expect with any serious business solution. When I asked about this the people I spoke with were incredulous that BT did not offer this. As far as I know they are the only company offering this type of solution who do not support the hardware beyond the equipments inherent 1 year warranty.


Also as the migration inevitably changed the IP addresses allocated to the customer, a portion of the DNS team were set aside for the express purpose of updating DNS records as quickly as possible to minimise any downtime for customers hosting (for example) their own SMTP server.

I wonder if they managed to get reverse DNS correct this time? That never worked for me and when I complained (as I was getting outgoing mail rejected and security problems connecting to some sites) I was told to fix it would costs thousands of pounds so that could not be provided as part of the service.

Anyone who has ever edited a DNS zone file will know what a heap of ******** that was but try as I might nobody at BT cared enough to do anything - they even told me if it was a big deal to me I should cancel the service since my needs are obviously beyond what they can provide.

I did argue that I didn't think the term "Internet Service" could be applied to a service which does not offer proper reverse DNS resolution... but that didn't seem to get me any further either.

Sigh!

As I said the £10 bill and legal threat seems a fitting end to a totally unsatisfactory experience which I hope to never repeat again.
 
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