In reply to a post by GonePostal:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

There’s a lot of marketing guff out there (not exclusive to IDNet) that purports all sorts of stuff.

Broadband is not military grade. Claiming such is pure spin / puffery / [censored].

Even a single leased line at a ten times cost multiple of broadband is far from “military grade”….it needs a hell of a lot more resilience, dual or triple routing and homing before it even gets anywhere close to being resilient.

The only thing that matters is what they are contractually obliged to provide and do and what your protections are via Ofcom.

Your expectations are simply way too high for a consumer or small business broadband service. Sorry.

So is your point that the average lay punter can expect to be hoodwinked by the expectations they have based on the marketing guff? If so, it does not reflect at all well on the whole iT infrastructure in this country and implies that the "professionals" want to hide behind the "fact" that they have been ambushed by a birthday cake at the marketeers' party.

It's true of all forms of advertising and marketing across all markets. This is why a wise person does everything they can to avoid it. Only technical specifications can be trusted - anything else is just guff.

Checking this IDNET forum and comparing it with the forums of providers that the overwhelming majority of people use reveals a consistent issue with reliability with IDNET.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps/compare?isp_7=1&...

Thanks, Bill.

Along with other users in 2021 you posted of problems with your connection in April, May, October, November and December.

Although the dedication to IDNET is admirable, we just don't see this unreliability with the major providers.

In reply to a post by FibreBubble:

Along with other users in 2021 you posted of problems with your connection in April, May, October, November and December.

Yup, down to backhaul providers iirc. But memory could be failing, got the links to the posts to suggest otherwise?

The thread title got me interested. I have spent too much of my time as a specialist technical adviser on major contract deals listening to commercial and legal teams arguing over the obligations and risks attached to the terms ‘reasonable’ and ‘best’ endeavours. I haven’t looked at the contract ts and cs for IDNet but I would be surprised if best endeavours was its default position. In my experience, best endeavours usually comes at a higher contract price.

In reply to a post by lexden16:

I would be surprised if best endeavours was its default position.

Indeed:

In reference to www.idnet.com/terms-and-conditions.php:

2.3 Operational faults

We agree to use reasonable efforts to remedy any reported operational faults in relation to the Service as soon as reasonably possible, but cannot guarantee to maintain uninterrupted availability of the Service.

I hadn't read the T&Cs to that detail before, but had assumed it would be the case in view of the price for a consumer product.

The use of "best endeavours" in the email quote is surprising, although they may "unofficially" try to work to that.

As you say (sort of ), promising to bust a gut until it's fixed is expensive.

Edited by billford (Mon 18-Apr-22 10:04:57)

In reply to a post by lexden16:

The thread title got me interested. I have spent too much of my time as a specialist technical adviser on major contract deals listening to commercial and legal teams arguing over the obligations and risks attached to the terms ‘reasonable’ and ‘best’ endeavours. I haven’t looked at the contract ts and cs for IDNet but I would be surprised if best endeavours was its default position. In my experience, best endeavours usually comes at a higher contract price.

I am but an armchair lawyer, but I've always read 'reasonable' as implying that the cost of the product would be taken into account in resolving issues, whereas 'best endeavours' is closer to meaning that wads of cash are thrown at the window of a suitable engineer at 2am until they wake up and fix the problem. It implies that the supplier does not provide a higher level of service to any other client.

Edited by ft247 (Mon 18-Apr-22 11:44:55)

Unlike most 'home' providers, IDNet offer various care levels. If you are concerend you can sign up for 'critical' care, but expect to pay more than £38pm.

I think the issue is now "closed" with IDNet. They say:

In regards to disconnects, I cannot see anything to suggest a backhaul issue at this time, even if this was the case, there is no guarantee of uptime with the service, as previously mentioned it is a best endeavours product.

Given this appears to be a single line issue, I'm not going to push for further investigations. That being said, support did make another comment which concerned me:

If Openreach do not pass a notification of PEW (planned engineer works) onto our suppliers, we will be unaware of it I'm afraid. Unplanned works/ emergency works do not trigger a notification to be sent out, therefore there is no visibility on this from our end, we do not have a direct relationship with Openreach to ascertain this information.

Personally I'd expect (or at least hope!) that IDNet have their own monitoring in place to ensure that their products are performing as expected. I wouldn't expect them to monitor every broadband circuit, but monitoring (e.g.) backhaul circuits and raising a query with the supplier when unexpected downtime occurs seems fairly simple. That being said, I'm a software engineer, not a network engineer, so I'd be happy to learn why my suggestion would be infeasible.