In reply to a post by Pgre:

Yep... appologies.. realised Fast Forward was on 5.
Never seen any of the new Mythbusters on freeview though.. not unless I have to wait a few years.

But from what your saying.. apart from lost...Sky is dead !
Wooo.. that will save me a few quid.

That depends on your viewing habits. Most dramas will appear on a free platform if you're prepared to wait at least six months. That's always been the case - if you exclude sport Sky has always been about watching it first rather than exclusive access to content. Of late the gap has come down though. It used to be a year to two years wait now it's down to a few months.

Still - most of what I watch is stuff that isn't available for free and a lot of it may never appear. At least half of my viewing is from the Knowledge pack and a lot of it seems never to go free. I think Quest is changing that but they are many, many series behind Discovery for things like Mythbusters.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

the us isp's have a far better record than BT, they not perfect but their quality standards are higher.

At this point I will do my usual trick of referring the gentleman to http://www.dslreports.com

In reply to a post by zebedeee:

I know of very few other companies where......

Staff are so poorly trained
Communication between divisions is so poor
Record keeping is so lax
There is such a drive to screw the last penny from the customer
There is such a lack of reinvestment in plant

Did you not see the programmes on TV where BT charged customers to fix faults on its own wiring ? The engineer that attended my neighbour's property yesterday would not have been wanting to mess about with cabling that had only just been installed 3 months before, if there was some sort of record-keeping system in place.

Diversity training was very useful to us. I started in 79 on the post office and we used to take great pride in our work and training. Now the so called new starters are out on their own in just a few weeks. Most that started same time as me were about 12 months teamed up with one of the old hands who could teach you. Now we are all leaving from chasing targets and bullying.

Taking to other dept was hell you cannot talk about the job to BT side thats could be unfair!!

Record keeping was exceptionally lax did a few tapouts to get records up to date they lost it!!

Screw them for everything, if you get a line coming in that came loose charge them, the cleats were [censored]. Have dept to check you have billed them if not thay raise charge eng gets bollocking.

Reinvestment in plant was not too bad on the side I worked was uplift group still pride left, but moved on to faults wow you get told off for doing a good job NO PRIDE LEFT. Have some photos of line plant its very poor bodge it and scarper should be the name.
Ex Openriech eng

In reply to a post by Pgre:

Yep... appologies.. realised Fast Forward was on 5.
Never seen any of the new Mythbusters on freeview though.. not unless I have to wait a few years.

But from what your saying.. apart from lost...Sky is dead !
Wooo.. that will save me a few quid.

It depends what you want, but ironically its not really the BBC or ITV (as such even though they own majority share in channel 5) which are bringging us stateside programming.

Fiver and Five USA have some great series from the USA now (Fringe, Flashforward, Burn Notice, The Mentalist to name just 4) Some of them are not as bang up to date as what is being shown out in America or on Sky but when its free (ignoring the TV license) you cant really complain about having to wait a few months.

Sky of course still have some good exclusives........ I like the new show Caprica, (took a sneeky peak at that on hulu, naughty me lol) but thanks to channel 5s line up they have taken alot of what used to be sky exclusives.

Incidentally for Lost fans that miss it since it went over to Sky, theres rumours once season 6 is over with it will at some point be re-aired on Sky Three, again thats free on freeview.

As long as you can wait it seems thanks to expanding digital TV services you do get most of what you never did unless you had sky.

I used to pay for Sky but when Freeview and others started getting in on the act i cancelled my subscription services and cant say i miss it really (though not having new Simpsons episodes without it is a bit of a let down).

Sky is essential for sports fans especially footy, which im not, but other than that now IMO it doesnt offer that much, and certainly not enough to justify the cost...... Movies etc are nice but films i really like i tend to get the bluray for the best quality anyway.

Personal preference though, you pay (OR NOT as the case may be) and takes your pick.

thanks will check what they offer.

I dont see anything there thats worse than BT.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I dont see anything there thats worse than BT.

Even if it was stateside it isnt just one company controlling the whole country like a borg hive.
So if a provider in one area is poor chances are the rest of the USA with different providers is just fine.

So, the backup is provided by a hong kong company. How do they connect the wireless base station to the Internet? Do they have their own private copper/fibre that runs from the base station (or it's central node if it is a mesh network) to an Internet POP? Do they have their own peering? Or are they doing what a number of people do which is get the wireless back to a specific location and then use BT WES/EES circuits to backhaul it?

I just love it that Comcast is good in one state, not so good in another and rubbish in yet a third state.
I wonder if its a long line issue and it goes through all states

If to always meet a 5 to 10 fault fix as standard, are you willing for monthly fees to increase to pay for all the engineers?

Or should this simply be taken out of the massive profits Openreach make? Or should BT wholesale pay?

The splitting up of BT has made fault resolution harder NOT easier