fast.co.uk problems?

Not seen this reported here yet:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2016/12/custome...

Free, Firenet and 186k websites all appear to be taking sign ups however...

Taking signups is one thing, is anyone actually getting service from it? I thought they all went dead?

Yeah I thought they ceased everyone's broadband service and then told them it was time to find something new...

Would think there are rules and/or procedures in place to stop this happening. If fast havent paid their bills, its not like being cut off from their supplier would come out of the blue. Its to be expected, so at least tell your customers beforehand.

If a business is living hand to mouth trying to survive, and just managing, the last thing it would ever do is tell its customers it is likely to have the service withdrawn at any moment by its suppliers.

That would guarantee going bust.

Many businesses survive such episodes. A high possibility is that this month the bank unexpectedly foreclosed on an agreed overdraft and simply refused to pay the supplier. It could even be that a business customer paying a large sum each month failed to pay, triggering Fast's bank.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Would think there are rules and/or procedures in place to stop this happening. If fast havent paid their bills, its not like being cut off from their supplier would come out of the blue. Its to be expected, so at least tell your customers beforehand.

There should be, especially with these smaller providers. Lets face it the likes of TalkTalk, BT, Sky etc are "too big to fail" and if they did somebody else would swallow them up... This mitigates the risk a fair bit for the majority of people who use a mass market provider.

Smaller businesses are often actually doing fine as a business, in some instances they can be making a profit overall, but they have all their cash locked up in things such as equipment etc. A lack of cashflow can close a business very easily and very quickly.

I get what you mean, but in terms of broadband/fibre if your line is suddenly ceased then you personally have to pay for the line to be reactivated and pay for migration costs etc.

There should be things inplace that safeguard against this