Broadband - obliged to use BT?

[Thumper]

Our local exchange is being upgraded in March to enable Broadband Internet access. In order to persuade BT to carry out the work we had to get 300 local residents to pre-register for Broadband on the official BT website.

Having done that, are we now obliged to use their service? It's just that I've been given conflicting advice and now don't know what's right. The BT Broadband service is about £28 per month (give or take), but some other ISPs are already offering access for nearer £20 (or even less, depending upon speed, I think). Anyone else been through this mill?

[PetrolTed]

I very much doubt that you're under any obligation to use BT.

I know someone who went though his local phone book typing in people's details in order to get the exchange to the required number of requests!

Some of the neighbours were probably quite surprised to find that they'd expressed interest in broadband!

[Plotloss]

Nope.

Even if you use AOL or Bulldog its still ultimately BT as BT Ignite sell the DSL bundles to the ISP's.

Its up to you...

[Godfrey H]

Nope, you are under absolutely no obligation to use BT.
Choose the ISP that suits you best.

[fatsteve]

I doubt whether you are obliged to use BT OpenWorld (or whatever it's called). However, irrespective of what ISP you'll be using, you'll still us BT's infrastructure (namely the local loop and the ATM network - which is what broadband sit's atop of).

Steve

[T4R]

You're under no obligation at all, however as Plotloss says, BT still provide the underlying ADSL infrastructure.

4 years ago I had broadband through Demon. If I had problems, I'd have to phone Demon, and they'd wait until they had X number of problems, and off-load these onto BT, which slowed the whole fault resolution process badly. I moved house 21/2 years ago, and went to BT direct. I now find fault resolution is faster, providing you know which phone menu buttons to press. I get very few problems (I think 3 so far in total) all of which have been resolved in under 12 hours, and none of which were serious enough to prevent access.

[docevi1]

T4R, I was just about to say the same. Although you are paying more a month, the service offered is better and the support you recieve is much better as well (speed of response).

Having said that, I haven't need to call them yet

[stevieb]

Im with Bt at the moment was with NTL before. I decided to pay an extra £3 a month to secure better and faster customer services. Ive only had one outage so far in 10 months it was fixed within 30mins..

I got no complaints about BT at all.. even gave me a Business line at home for the price of a residential line.

Steve

[atom290]

But even when you're with BT you are not with the supplier.

You sign up to BT Open world, a seperate company, that way they dont get accused of unfair trading.

Ask what their SLA's are, I think you will find they are next to no good. Who ever you are with, if there is a problem it gets fixed as and when BT what to do it, and thats that.

Its a shame about NTL, their customer service sucks, and they are the only company that can offer a totally independant service.

It wouldnt take a lot to get things right, but their customer service staff, must get paid by the insult!!!