So Long and thanks for all the fish

In the early days, using an accoustically coupled modem at a snorting 300Baud I used FidoNET on a Commodore PET.
This was the leading edge of technology at the time and the worst thing out there was ASCII Porn, I admired the dedication of those who used so much of their time to produce something laughably poor.

Eventually Demon came to the fore, £10 a month all you can eat internet.
I moved to Pipex as "High Speed 2Mb Internet" was coming SOON!

The big disruptor was a start-up called Comtel, they dug up the street and laid direct cables to your door, broadband only so I kept my BT phone line and used the variable quality broadband.

Comtel were brought up by NTL who offered a free phone service but it had a new number which I still remember despite never using it.

Then Virgin stormed the good ship NTL and raised a big red flag with a Virgin Media logo.
This was never fast or stable and after years of a Maybe service I moved to Plusnet Business.
A post mortem of the NTL/Comtel/Virgin media was not good, it had always been flaky, no engineer had spotted the CoAx installed who stapled the cable to the skirting had put one staple into the Coax.
In addition, when I dug the cable out to lay a new front garden water was running out of the cable!

All this time using a BT phone line as a seperate service with a residential bill, it just worked, everybody had the number so why change ?

BT promised superfast fibre and a DIgital telephone service using my existing number, sounds perfect.

How could a British Institution like BT fail to provide its CORE SERVICE with cutting edge technology ?

I think you can all guess how it worked out......

Cloud Voice Express is the biggest possible dissapointment, the Legacy socket on the back panel of a SmartHUB clealry marked PHONE is an ornament.
The expectation was I would rent IP handsets, without these handsets I could only use my HOME phone line through a wonderfully sketchy APP.
The Superfast Fibre never showed up, it used the same 300m of underground copper I have always used but somehow the 80/20 from Plusnet struggled at 50/15 on the same wire ?

I switched to Zen, five minutes from unboxing their router, I had broadband and a working analog handset.

Yesterday I managed to cancel the Cloud Voice express service and after 30 years I am no longer a customer of British Telecom.

You had it all, then you threw it all away

Each to their own, only time will show if you made the right choices along the way.

In recent years; having been with both BT and with Zen I much prefer BT.

In recent years BT as a company seems to have turned itself around; I do not like the supplied BT SH2 router but other than that BT has been very reliable and has been very good so credit where credit is due and so far BT deserve 5 Stars.

My experience of Zen was that Zen was very good when I was on Zen 80/20 FTTC and often very very poor when I changed to Zen 900 mbps FTTP.

Since you appear to be on Zen 80/20 FTTC then you may be OK with Zen but personally I would have stayed with BT but good wishes with your move.

Edited by Fido (Tue 23-Jul-24 12:19:24)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Each to their own, only time will show if you made the right choices along the way.

Some of the supplier changes were driven by a need for stability and throughput capacity.
Each change was an upgrade of speed and throughput with the exception of leaving Plusnet Business.

Plusnet were flawless as long as you didn't use any of the legacy bolt ons like hosted webspace and was ideal for 12 years or so and would still be in place but for the mithering from BT.

BT sales got in touch to advise me that

- My service with Plusnet Business was being closed and I could not switch to a residential package with Plusnet even though my BT number was residential.

- My new BT package would be "Super fast Fibre"

- I could keep my residential line number and it would work with my BT DECT handsets.

None of these facts from BT sales are truthful,

- Some plusnet customers have cancelled their business plans and joined as residential, using 5g for a month would be my choice in hindsight, provided I have enough tinfoil to make a sturdy hat to stop the 5G giving covid or something.

- There is no fibre to my house but BT sales were adamant it was in place and just needed to be connected.

- The SIP/Analog socket is disabled in the business grade smart hub, there are teardowns of both Business and Residential hubs on Youtube, the component count is identical.


- The BT business solution as provided could not provide the service I was being charged for.



BT have entirely lost the plot.
Being fined £17.5 million for failing to connect 999 calls should be warning enough to the rest of us.


EDIT
One point I forgot was the need to preserve the BT landline number.
There are a number of relatives dotted about the country that have this number to hand.

Updating their speed dial list would solve it but wont fix the 2004 diary that lives in the car or the list tucked behind pictures next to the house phone or update Uncle Nicks mobile that he only uses on holiday.

Edited by BTcanDoOne (Tue 23-Jul-24 12:49:40)

So have Zen provided you a faster speed than BT were able to?

Zen are providing exactly the same speeds as BT Business 55/15

Whatever Openreach did at the far end of the crusty old copper when disconnecting PSTN obviously hasnt helped but at least the phone service now works exactly as expected.

BT are no faster than Zen so nothing is lost by leaving BT.

The Superfast Fibre never showed up, it used the same 300m of underground copper I have always used but somehow the 80/20 from Plusnet struggled at 50/15 on the same wire ?

I switched to Zen, five minutes from unboxing their router, I had broadband and a working analog handset.

Sorry, I assumed from your comment that Zen must have found a way to provide faster connection or full fibre. BT Super Fast Fibre I believe is the FTTC package so BT provided what you said - if they told you it was "full fibre" then that would be different - it is BT (and many other ISPs) selling and they have all been allowed to call FTTC fibre as Ofcom and ASA won't stop them.

Not sure why the speeds dropped on changing from PlusNet but it sounds like it is the same on both BT and Zen so likely out of the ISPs hands.

If you gave me the choice of BT or Zen I would go with BT ever single time, you clearly want to beat up on BT due to your perceived experience of their service and thats fine. But there are 2 sides to every story and customers need to take responsibility for their own poor decisions.

The identical speeds for BT and Zen made me curious, is this happening elsewhere and I am wondering if Openreach have implemented a speed cap as discussed here ?

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/9679-pstn-switch...

"
I don't know why anyone is even bothering to moan about all this! It's a fait accompli.

In the Salisbury & Mildenhall areas where the Stop Sell was first trialled, Openreach started capping the broadband speeds on any line that had not been converted to SoGEA/DV back in April, so as to force the users to switch! The rest of the country will be similarly hamstrung over the next 2 years until everyone has switched.

There is going to be virtually no choice in these matters and all the ISPs are doing is just trying to make the right sounds while toeing the government/Openreach/OFCOM line.
"

No ISP is perfect Zen Forum thread