Internet availability blog

It has been observed that the lightning storms that hit a few months ago has damaged underground telephone lines. This has thrown an unsolved problem to one Suffolk couple. For nearly eight weeks, their phone lines are dead.The aged Adrian Mills, 64, of West Mill Green, Bentley, had complained to BT and was waiting for BT to fixing the  cable fault for the past 8 weeks.

Only recently their lines were fixed. His land line  phone is working now, but  still , Mr Mills is facing problems. He is unable to use the Internet or answer phone. His  digital cordless phone is still  not working. .

According to Mr Mills seven holes were dug in the road outside his house over the eight weeks in a bid to find the root of the problem. Soon, Mr Mills and his neighbour were left with no landline. It became an absolute nightmare.

Mr Mills, lives with his wife and now works part-time in Colchester. He has Post Office Home Phones that go through BT. It seams that the people from BT showed  little initiative in solving the problems in time.

Mr Mills said: “We had been told all sorts of different things. They came and dug another hole outside on Monday, but I wasn’t convinced they would ever find a fault there”.

The BT send people to dug holes on the road outside, then they go away. Then wait days for engineers to come,  without knowing when. After a long wait, again they dig the hole and say they cannot find the fault..

BT should not be allowed to get away with this service just because they have a monopoly. They should ensure proper service to the public.

Based on the complaints from consumer group, British broadband providers had investigated the problem of considerable reduction in speed of broadband.  The investigation has revealed that there is huge gap between the advertised speed and actual speeds.

 
About 300  connections  were critically tested. The advertised speed s of these  connections were 8Mbph. But the test results have confirmed that the average speeds were just 2.7Mbph. The maximum speeds reported was 6.7Mbph while the lowest was just 0.09Mbph.

 
This problem has been brought to the notice of ASA(Advertising Standards Authority) many times earlier. At rulings from the ASA have highlighted some of the contentious areas in advertising low cost  connection with high speed.

 
 It is also observed  that a significant number of people could not achieve the advertised connection speed due to their distance from their local exchange.

 
A spokesman for the Internet Service Providers’ Association had advised consumers not to choose a service by price alone. “Like anything, you get what you pay for. Customers should consider a range of features and specifications. Speed is just one indication of internet performance, good internet availability is another,” he says, adding that many reputable internet service providers will have a facility that enables customers to check speeds and availability.

 BT has indicated that that 8Mbps would be a rarity for users. The speed can never be achieved, because the distance of the user from the exchange is the main factor that decides the speed at the receiving end. There fore the advertisers should  make it clear that  it is unlikely  to obtain the advertised speed. This will help the users  at the time of buying the  services