Telephone and broadband companies

[ardcarp]

Life isn't necessarily a choice between unfettered capitalism and inefficient socialism you know

No it isn't. But there is a middle way...a mixed economy...where market forces can get on with things that it is good at. Public services are not one ope those things n my book.

On the subject of copper, the telephone lines in my rural lane are aluminium, fitted in the 1960s when copper was very expensive. These are notoriously bad for broadband, apparently. Open Reach deny there are any aluminium wires left anywhere in the UK . Individually, their engineers will tell you otherwise...off the record.

[Serial_Apologist]

Life isn't necessarily a choice between unfettered capitalism and inefficient socialism you know
more things are possible..... maybe a bit more imagination is called for ?

Soviets

[Tom Audustus]

If you are lucky enough to live in an area with Virgin cable TV then taking their very fast standard cable modem internet service is a real no brainer. Since moving house and moving from BT to Virgin I've been really impressed with the reliability and service response.

[Frances_iom]

If you are lucky enough to live in an area with Virgin cable TV then taking their very fast standard cable modem internet service is a real no brainer. ..

they must have changed fairly recently - in past they had just about the worst reputation for faults and service - even worse than BT where you are stuck with a script reader unless your colloquial Hindi is excellent

[mangerton]

Touching wood furiously here, but I've had Virgin BB/cable TV/phone for eleven years, and it's been absolutely fine. I'm currently on 30Mb, and going up to 50Mb later in the year.

[ardcarp]

I think the dilemma here...about people's providers, I mean...is that if everything is going swimmingly one thinks the company (Virgin, TalkTalk, BT) is great. Unfortunately when there is a glitch it is often impossible to fix. If this affects only 0.1% of the population, that's still about 60,000 households up the Swanee; and being ripped off by being hooked into a contract you can't get out of.

[Dave2002]

I think the dilemma here...about people's providers, I mean...is that if everything is going swimmingly one thinks the company (Virgin, TalkTalk, BT) is great. Unfortunately when there is a glitch it is often impossible to fix. If this affects only 0.1% of the population, that's still about 60,000 households up the Swanee; and being ripped off by being hooked into a contract you can't get out of.

Surely if there is a serious glitch there is no breach of contract if the customer refuses to pay thereafter. I suppose lawyers would say that the "injured" party shouldn't break his/her contract, as they would then also be in breach, and a court could award against them. In the "real" world I suspect that wouldn't happen - though it would depend on how willing each side would be to compromise, or give way. In cases of serious glitches I'd personally start action with Trading Standards/CAB and probably also write to my MP, just in case the company did decide to come back at me. Minor glitches can be accommodated, though again I would warn the company that I would not renew their contract at the next opportunity.

Some companies are desperate to get one back onto a fixed period contract at the end of one, and indeed I refused to take out a new fixed period with TalkTalk at the end of our initial period. They rang up quite frequently to badger me back onto one, but I refused to play, and asked if it was OK if I carried on - which they appeared to agree to. When I finally gave up on them I checked that we were not tied in, and we weren't.

[Frances_iom]

Of course some things will change when the price of copper means that it becomes economically viable to rip up all the 6 core phone cables (of which only 2 are used !) and replace them ........

The 6 wires only exist for the local in-house wiring - for domestic users only 4 wires are used in the 6 pin BT plug - one is the derived bell circuit (via the master socket), two are the speech circuit and the fourth, generally no longer used, is an earth line for now obsolete earth recall call system (for PABX use all 6 wires may be used ) - only 2 wires enter the house and were used in the analogue transmission network - yes the copper wire here is generally recovered as more local (on street) connection boxes are employed with optical fibre links back to the exchange and Copper pair used only for the last few yards to the house

[Dave2002]

...yes the copper wire here is generally recovered ...

Indeed, but not always by the phone companies. Round here there have been several long period outages due to thieves taking away the infrastructure.