Why have BT tanked so badly?
Discussion
I would suspect it may well have some connection with them being too bleeding stupid to get their head round the fact that people don't want a phone line to make phone calls any more, they only want a phone line so they can get broadband and they make all their calls on mobiles. Yet BT insist on trying to live 20 years in the past and refuse to see the phone line as anything other than a voice circuit on which they might grudgingly allow you to run an internet connection but that's not what it really should be for. 
All their deals and packages are totally oriented around voice telephony and if you have broadband it cuts you off from most of the worthwhile options.
I am given to understand that American telcos are not so bloodyminded and dictatorial, and are nowadays quite willing to offer phone lines for network-only use with no voice call facility. They are sufficiently open minded to realise that that copper pair coming into your house is no longer useful as a voice circuit, it's as a data circuit that it is now of value. BT on the other hand refuse to admit this and try and force people to use it primarily as a voice circuit, and the sooner they drop this ridiculous attitude the better.
I reckon it's fundamentally Buzby's fault for being the wrong sort of bird, he wasn't a pigeon, he was some kind of yellow deformed canary thing. If he'd been a pigeon then by now the whole of BT would be run by pigeons and we wouldn't have any problems.
All their deals and packages are totally oriented around voice telephony and if you have broadband it cuts you off from most of the worthwhile options.I am given to understand that American telcos are not so bloodyminded and dictatorial, and are nowadays quite willing to offer phone lines for network-only use with no voice call facility. They are sufficiently open minded to realise that that copper pair coming into your house is no longer useful as a voice circuit, it's as a data circuit that it is now of value. BT on the other hand refuse to admit this and try and force people to use it primarily as a voice circuit, and the sooner they drop this ridiculous attitude the better.
I reckon it's fundamentally Buzby's fault for being the wrong sort of bird, he wasn't a pigeon, he was some kind of yellow deformed canary thing. If he'd been a pigeon then by now the whole of BT would be run by pigeons and we wouldn't have any problems.
Pigeon said:
I am given to understand that American telcos are not so bloodyminded and dictatorial, and are nowadays quite willing to offer phone lines for network-only use with no voice call facility. They are sufficiently open minded to realise that that copper pair coming into your house is no longer useful as a voice circuit, it's as a data circuit that it is now of value. BT on the other hand refuse to admit this and try and force people to use it primarily as a voice circuit, and the sooner they drop this ridiculous attitude the better.
In your dreams.US telcos are so backward that they make BT look good. They may give you an adsl circuit without a telephone line but you pay $$ for the privilege. I think MsT is paying $50 for adsl in the Florida at the moment, and there is one choice of provider.
Because they are useless 
s. Where's my fking fibre optic cable??? Or at the very least, a cable connection that runs consistantly at more than 2mbps? What's that? Oh yes, sorry, yes, it's my fault that I live 500m from the telephone exchange, the one that services the financial capital of Europe, what was I thinking.....piece of string and an old tin will do me just fine.....
s. Where's my fking fibre optic cable??? Or at the very least, a cable connection that runs consistantly at more than 2mbps? What's that? Oh yes, sorry, yes, it's my fault that I live 500m from the telephone exchange, the one that services the financial capital of Europe, what was I thinking.....piece of string and an old tin will do me just fine.....tinman0 said:
Pigeon said:
I am given to understand that American telcos are not so bloodyminded and dictatorial, and are nowadays quite willing to offer phone lines for network-only use with no voice call facility. They are sufficiently open minded to realise that that copper pair coming into your house is no longer useful as a voice circuit, it's as a data circuit that it is now of value. BT on the other hand refuse to admit this and try and force people to use it primarily as a voice circuit, and the sooner they drop this ridiculous attitude the better.
In your dreams.US telcos are so backward that they make BT look good. They may give you an adsl circuit without a telephone line but you pay $$ for the privilege. I think MsT is paying $50 for adsl in the Florida at the moment, and there is one choice of provider.
Is that $50 for everything, or is it just for the line and you still have to pay someone else for the actual service separately?
What's it like in other states?
collateral said:
Most people in the States already have cable anyhow. DSL is no good out in the sticks
An increasing number of people do seem to be using ADSL in the US, if the RDNS/whois info for the hits on my website is anything to go by.TEKNOPUG said:
Because they are useless s. Where's my fking fibre optic cable??? Or at the very least, a cable connection that runs consistantly at more than 2mbps? What's that? Oh yes, sorry, yes, it's my fault that I live 500m from the telephone exchange, the one that services the financial capital of Europe, what was I thinking.....piece of string and an old tin will do me just fine.....
You're lucky, i am not even hitting 1 meg on my "highspeed" internet s. Where's my fking fibre optic cable??? Or at the very least, a cable connection that runs consistantly at more than 2mbps? What's that? Oh yes, sorry, yes, it's my fault that I live 500m from the telephone exchange, the one that services the financial capital of Europe, what was I thinking.....piece of string and an old tin will do me just fine.....BT have under invested for years and now it is coming back to haunt them. Their lines are in desperate need of upgrade. I was talking to a BT engineer who installed a new socket in my home and i asked him why my broadband is not capable of any thing more than 1 meg. He said the lines are from the 70's and can't handle any more data. I was surprised by this and said i didn't think they would continue to use such old lines given the digital age we are now in, he said that is nothing the city centre has lines much older and they use paper as insulation. People there would kill for 1 meg speed.
BT are stuck in the mindset that their lines are for voice communication 1st and everything else is just an after thought. Which was true a decade or so ago, but they need to get up to date. Fibre optics is what we need not paper insulated wire.
gtr-gaz said:
I have no sympathy with BT at all and would never buy any shares in that company out of principle!
I have a long memory and remember getting shafted over the price of a phone installation in the mid 1970's when they had the monopoly (GPO it was then, I think.)
Didn't they have a flat rate though? So if you lived out in the sticks and it required several miles of telegraph poles to get the line to you, you could shaft them.I have a long memory and remember getting shafted over the price of a phone installation in the mid 1970's when they had the monopoly (GPO it was then, I think.)
Pigeon said:
If he'd been a pigeon then by now the whole of BT would be run by pigeons and we wouldn't have any problems.
It worked for Google 
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.htmlR5GTTGaz said:
The slashed my bill from £50 a month to £20, improved the service and provided me with the latest homehub and phone. The guy sorting it out on the other end of the phone said they were desperate.
Tell us more, please - what do you get for £20/mth and what did you have to do to get it?Gassing Station | The Pie & Piston Archive | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff