I will put this here. BT have pulled the plug on the free phone line used by our ISP so we no longer have reasonable access to the Web. Now we can only use a Pay as you go number which we have included in our Friends and Family. However this means we can only go on for less than an hour at a time and only for a limited number of hours per month. By the time we have read Emails etc and done the essentials there is little time left for pleasure, like visiting here and posting or chatting.
So thanks for all the fun and hopefully when they put fibre optics to the nearest PCB (Telephone cab thing at the side of roads) we will return.
Most annoying thing is that the Openreach Engineer informed us that Fibre optics are defo coming to the Village up the road, but he did not know when, next month or by the end of 2012? No-one at BT seems to know or is prepared to say eiher. Wish there was some way of finding out.
It would seem to be time for a move. I use Plus Net and get a reasonable service from them, they keep you informed of changes and the call centre is in Sheffield.
I have to say it does depend where your cab is for BT. Ours is actually in our garden and I found more than a year ago now that there was an engineer about to decimate my crazy paving with drill thing, to put a new box in for faster broadband. The first thing i'd known about it.
Tiurns out they had done the correct planning permission to put new boxes all around on council land, but thought they might have been able to sneak a new box twice the size on to our land whilst we were out ( didnt plan on it belonging to a stay at home mum).
So with alot of wrangling and alot of pushing by me, the box is now being moved off my land, as I speak (they agreed this 12 mnths ago). but its been 14 months of constant hassling them. Without my hassling people round here wouldnt be able to get faster broadband soon.
So if you have a similar situation going on in your village that could be a reason why. Oh and if it is the case and the house owner isnt hassling hem you could wait for a very long time.
Have to say this makes me seem unreasonable, but along with the new box would a have come a wayleave agreement which means they would pay me less than a tenner a year for having an even bigger box on my land, for which I get the pleasure of BT vans either blocking my drive or asking to park on it! they leave their rubbish all over my lawn, and walk all over my garden. The box was plonked on the land when the previous tenant was here without his permission, but BT swore it was thier land even though it was in the middle of his grass!
Have you used the BT ADSL availability checker - not sure what info it gives if your line in not enabled..
http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome or http://www.broadbandchecker.co.uk
Also worth registering your interest with any ISP as BT have trigger levels - if 150 people on an exchange request broadband then they will install it (so they say!)
Plusnet are definitely worth a go - http://www.plus.net/support/dial-up/index.shtml
Glad to hear all well with you Eric- had missed you :(
As Larkshall says we use plusnet for phone and internet, with a BT line.
No problems and found them good, sure there's cheaper but much better service than we had before.
We can understand them when we needed to talk to them-not had to for ages as all works ok ;)
Also as Larkshall says they are based in Sheffield- so if necessary we can go and knock on the door! ;D