Pulse8

Sure ive seen a few people mention them on here before. Anyone with them and are they a decent ISP? Looking to move to Xilo eventually but need somewhere to go between now and when Xilo take orders again (if Pulse8 are good wont move). Coms been sold so want to jump ship before another forced supplier change like last time

I know they use TTB which is the main reason i thought of them

I and one or two others here are with Pulse8. Thus far, i have found their customer service second to none, which is exactly what they claim will keep customers. Adam hates long contract tie-ins, so there are none, not even for fibre. Lowest ever call costs, with no call connection fee and per second billing. They have jumped through hoops to sort my flaky line, much better than Zen/Enta who just made things worse. All engineer visits were with the promise of NO CHARGE whatever the outcome. TTB if your exchange is unbundled, BTW if not. What's not to like?

Edited by professor973 (Wed 27-May-15 00:13:47)

Yea i emailed them tonight and got a reply at 11pm, so that was great.

That is the sort of service you get. Adam has spent hours while on the phone to me adjusting my service for stability on a bad line. Some old ally somewhere it seems. But it passed the phone line check when the engineer visited, so there is nothing they will do. My answer is to switch to fibre. You will find customer service excellent.

How long does it take to switch once you submit your order?

Also can they change target snr and interleaving etc?

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 27-May-15 13:00:11)

About a week lead time. Yes, alterations can be made. I have been on the phone to Adam while he has made snr, interleaving and profile adjustments on his control panel to stabalise my old line. As for the 2:1 & 3:1 broadband priority - It's a priority over standard TT customers, not contention rates. His full reply to my query below, also posted elsewhere here.

Hi Alan,

We�ve been very careful not to mention �contention ratios� on our site as these don�t really exist on our network anymore (Apart from very old IPStream exchanges)



As far as I am aware or rather have been told previously, customers connected to the standard Talk Talk network (not Talk Talk Business) get a standard priority of 7:1 with 7 being the lowest priority and 1 being the highest.



Our Basic XLHome package which is the base offering on the Talk Talk Business network has 3:1 priority on our Talk Talk network which as such gives it a greater priority against the Millions of Talk Talk home users on the Standard Talk Talk network. This is a good thing.



Our XLPlus packages have a priority of 2:1 and the XLPro Package have our highest network priority i.e. 1:1



Of course we can�t really mention anything about Talk Talk on our website (which is a tad difficult when the connections show up as Talk Talk) so I haven�t bothered.



Of course all of the above depends all the other factors like the quality of your line, your distance from the local exchange (or cab if on fibre) and how much bandwidth is available on your local exchange. We do no throttle and always give as much as is available BUT if an exchange does get maxed out and you find that things do slow down then you�ll be better off with a XLPro or XLPlus connection.



On the bundle side, a XLPlus with business line would get fixed quicker than a XLPlus on a home line (care level 2 on the line instead of care level 1)



In fact we�ve only ever had 2 customers who�ve had slowdowns, these were on the Chagford exchange (OpenReach IPstream only). Upgrading them from our 8Mb to 8Mb+ fixed the issue of in the day slowdowns up until last month when a faulty card affect 96 people in the village. Took use several weeks of shouting to fix that one but all 96 customers are now happy, even though only 2 of them were our customers





Having said all that� It has been a while since I queried our prioritisation against standard traffic on the TTB network so I�ll get some more technical BEEF for you as I might be out of date.



Feel free to edit / post my vague wanderings as you will.





Kind Regards

Adam Fullalove

So for sake of any extra quid (BB adsl only) may aswell go for the 2:1 offering

Yeah, that's what I did, which gives me a fixed IP. That suits for pulling media from my NAS when away at this location.

Adam Fullalove.

haha totally made up but I will order their service based on the name alone

Well many company director registers and 192.com are happy with the name and I am happy with them, but I see nothing AA about AA other than rip-off prices.

Got my mac. Will sign up later. Are Pulse8 a new isp? Id never heard of them until i saw your posts about there good service

Looks like Adam been director for six years, so been around for a while. based in Devon. Not a lot on the web about them, though all I find is good. No contract, so an incentive to give good service, which is what I get.
http://directors.findthecompany.co.uk/l/2902984/Mr-A...

Edited by professor973 (Wed 27-May-15 16:50:43)

Well as ive mentioned theyre a stopgap until Xilo take orders again but if good will stick with them

Good luck. As I have said, I am finding their customer service very good. Customer service is all that separates most suppliers, though some folks have to take price into consideration.

No setup fees then? Normally have some activation cost, didnt see anything when i signed up

No, none that I remember. first bill was a month and a half for me, as billing is first of the month.

Yea thats pretty good. Got the welcome email. Assume the activation/login details will follow tomorrow?

You will get email and snail-mail with all connection settings. Username usually phone number followed by .pulse8broadband.co.uk with your phone number also the broadband connection password.

Cool thanks for the help

Got a migration date for next Weds

professor973 - Did you use to be with Coms? Sure i saw your posts in the many threads moaning about them, could be wrong though

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Got a migration date for next Weds

professor973 - Did you use to be with Coms? Sure i saw your posts in the many threads moaning about them, could be wrong though

Lol - No, sorry, though I have had a good moan about many over the years. BT, Toucansurf, Post Office, Plusnet (nightmare when line outside home damaged) and the last combination was Zen for line and Freeola (Enta) for Broadband. Left them for Pulse8 when they jointly made a pigs ear of getting to the bottom of my flaky line. Someone remarked recently that Pulse8 must be half decent if they kept me happy lol. - Bang on the week for installation then!

Edited by professor973 (Thu 28-May-15 15:46:54)

Ah not you then lol. Any idea time of day you get migrated? Already on ttb llu so assune it will happen in the early hours seeing as no engineer needed

I switched in the early hours, but I expect that was automatic, or done remotely as i was switched to Tiscali initially (TT owned), then a little later moved to TT LLU. Would imagine there is nothing physical to move at the exchange. Another poster here switched to Pulse8 in the last week I think and his service was working before switch-over day as like you he was on TT, so imagine in will be painless.
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/which_isp/t/4409944...

Edited by professor973 (Thu 28-May-15 18:37:30)

Yea expect so. Were you on TTB LLU with another provider before switching?

Im guessing i will need to change noise margin as i think TTB LLU is set to 12db by default when changing ISP

No, i was switched to Pulse8 LLU after I switched initially to their resold BTW. SNR no problem, Adam has me on 6db fastpath at the moment, though will be switching to their fibre once back home in a couple of weeks.

Ah, ive been on TT LLU for a while now first with ADSL24 and then with Coms.

Pulse8 fibre service is BT tho isn`it? I don`t believe TTB, wholesale their fibre service (as yet) ?

They don't wholesale them, no.

They do offer straight re-sold FTTC though.

Hoping i get switched over in the early hours. Give me chance to play with my new connection before work tomorrow

Last TTB LLU -> TTB LLU migration was done before i woke up the next morning

In reply to a post by uno:

They don't wholesale them, no.

They do offer straight re-sold FTTC though.

Yeah Right as they say - Shows what UNO lol
http://www.talktalkbusiness.co.uk/partners/news-even...

Is Talk Talk Retail and Talk Talk Business the same network or are the 2 seperate?

Not got a clue. I have always avoided Talktalk like the plague - A combination of terrible customer service, which may be half decent via their forum, which is little use if your broadband is down and losing my longtime held phone number should I wish to leave their LLU.
When sounding out Pulse8, my first question was who are their suppliers. I was told BTW, but TT where exchanges were unbundled. I was also assured they could retain my number should I leave, so I felt nothing to lose.
I know LLU Fibre has been long promised. If fibre switches my connection back to resold BT Fibre on the 15th, I will be quite happy, as no contract tie-in, decent customer service and then price are my order of priorities. As for resold TT Fibre, the business variety seems in the wild, though not sure of how widespread.

Edited by professor973 (Tue 02-Jun-15 21:34:03)

Yea partial LLU (smpf) is always best. Less trouble to migrate and no issues with phone number as its not tied to your broadband.

That link does not work, but if you meant this one from 21/11/2012 (it's the only one I could find regarding FTTC on their partner site), that's exactly what I said.

When I last checked with TTB (Friday last week), there was still no FTTC wholesale option, only their re-sold offering.

As far as it goes with TTB, wholesale = not using their "internet facing" network, IPs and so forth and re-sold/reseller = managed by them, pre-packaged services, IPs on their "internet facing" network.

Matt

In reply to a post by uno:

That link does not work

Yes it does.

I just get a 404 Page not found. Strange.

Matt

Works for me ...U No lol

Looks like the one in the email notification is truncated. I was using that one but alas, it appears to be the same one.

Matt

Still not been switched over

Have you restarted your router? - Though if it involves exchange work, it may be a little later than a remote switch. Pulse8 are in the middle of changing over to a new control system, that takes into account gaining provider control where no MAC is needed, or at least that was the info from Adam at around midnight last night, so if it's Pulse8 causing a delay, that might be the reason.

Edited by professor973 (Wed 03-Jun-15 10:40:34)

Yeah rebooted. Should be a remote migration as pn ttb llu already but Pulse8 have said it can happen at any point today and got the 'activation today' email at 6am. Do you get another once its completed?

Control system to allow us to change line profile etc ourselves?

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 03-Jun-15 10:49:46)

Don't remember a second activation mail, but at least they are updating you with OR progress. - Yeah, apparently I would "love to see" the new control console with all its new buttons to press. They can control everything while you are talking to them on the phone if the need arises, as it did when adjusting my flaky line to reduce errors. I switch to fibre on the 15th, so will be a bit of exchange work for me I expect.

Edited by professor973 (Wed 03-Jun-15 10:58:55)

Cool. Were you on bt or ttb llu before changing to Pulse8?

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 03-Jun-15 11:03:23)

Enta - Freeola - resold BT again!

Ah thought Freeola used TTB

Post deleted by MrSaffron

In reply to a post by professor973:

Don't remember a second activation mail, but at least they are updating you with OR progress. - Yeah, apparently I would "love to see" the new control console with all its new buttons to press. They can control everything while you are talking to them on the phone if the need arises, as it did when adjusting my flaky line to reduce errors. I switch to fibre on the 15th, so will be a bit of exchange work for me I expect.

Well that's something "AA" about AA. Us customers can do that ourselves with instant results and we don't need to call unless we want to. When you have 2 dozen line profiles to play with, can change the rate,sync and SNR on upstream and downstream. Can get the radius logs, dump the connection, Dump the PPP, run PSTN tests AND run sync and TAM tests.

THEN come back and state your provider is the best. Wake Mr Fullalove up at 4am and see how he likes you then.

Just sayin...

Post deleted by MrSaffron

In reply to a post by AAuser27:

In reply to a post by professor973:

Don't remember a second activation mail, but at least they are updating you with OR progress. - Yeah, apparently I would "love to see" the new control console with all its new buttons to press. They can control everything while you are talking to them on the phone if the need arises, as it did when adjusting my flaky line to reduce errors. I switch to fibre on the 15th, so will be a bit of exchange work for me I expect.

Well that's something "AA" about AA. Us customers can do that ourselves with instant results and we don't need to call unless we want to. When you have 2 dozen line profiles to play with, can change the rate,sync and SNR on upstream and downstream. Can get the radius logs, dump the connection, Dump the PPP, run PSTN tests AND run sync and TAM tests.

THEN come back and state your provider is the best. Wake Mr Fullalove up at 4am and see how he likes you then.

Just sayin...

As you pay well over the odds, I should hope you do - As for the above, I was responding to a P8 users question. I suggest you keep your snotty muck-raking comments out of a thread that does not concern you .... Just sayin'

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Ah thought Freeola used TTB

Nah... not Talktalk Business ..... Enta!

Can still be on TTB LLU and use Enta. I was with ADLS24 for years. Never know how it actually works but you're on TTB exchange equipment at the exchange but never go over the Talk Talk network.

Still baffles me how it all works

When with Enta my number was still recognised by BT checkers despite TT LLU at my exchange, unlike now. Something I will be happy to get back to. So you were on resold TT Business.

Edited by professor973 (Wed 03-Jun-15 13:46:31)

Mine is a BT recognised number. No wasnt on TT Business network at all, just there DSLAM or whatever at the exchange. Been on Enta and Daisy resellers with this setup so not sure how it works tbh. Maybe they give a cut to Talk Talk to use their unbundled exchange

Guess you have phone with Pulse8 too?

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 03-Jun-15 13:59:52)

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Post deleted by MrSaffron

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Mine is a BT recognised number. No wasnt on TT Business network at all, just there DSLAM or whatever at the exchange. Been on Enta and Daisy resellers with this setup so not sure how it works tbh. Maybe they give a cut to Talk Talk to use their unbundled exchange

Guess you have phone with Pulse8 too?

Possibly. What becomes confusing, is when people use TTB to describe Talktalk broadband, as the all important 'B' in TTB indicated business. - Hope you are up and running by the time you get home.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Edited by professor973 (Wed 03-Jun-15 14:41:43)

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Post deleted by MrSaffron

More than likely as a reseller they have a bare minimum monthly rental charge and they then mark up to cover that and make a small profit. Thats how it works with ICnet who are another reseller/white label provider (not saying they are also)

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Edited by professor973 (Wed 03-Jun-15 15:09:52)

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Mine is a BT recognised number. No wasnt on TT Business network at all, just there DSLAM or whatever at the exchange. Been on Enta and Daisy resellers with this setup so not sure how it works tbh. Maybe they give a cut to Talk Talk to use their unbundled exchange

Guess you have phone with Pulse8 too?

Yeah, phone with Pulse8 - A Whole £6:00 per month ... now that will draw fire from the newbie troll lol

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Still no migration over

Pulse8 say cant do anything until tomorrow as its still technically migration day until midnight

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 03-Jun-15 16:44:35)

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Still no migration over

Pulse8 say cant do anything until tomorrow as its still technically migration day until midnight

A pity, but whoever your ISP, un-bundled or not, the bottom line is that we are all at the mercy of Openreach.

Even for remote migrations where no exchange work needs to be carried out, do these still have to be done by a human, or are they automated?

Looking at Pulse8.
Could you post opinion when live.

By an engineer. It used to be known as a Lift & Shift where they remove you from one set of equipment and put you onto another. You might even have wires lose at the exchange that need to be connected. I know with the phone if everything is connected they do what they call(or called) the "start of a stopped line" which is automated and usually happens around 3am. (or used to)

My knowledge is a little out of date.

Will do

I dont think there is any equipment at the exchange to move me onto. Im on TTB LLU now and Pulse8 use TTB LLU where they can. So assume it would just be some authentication thing where they allow me to connect to Pulse8

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 03-Jun-15 20:53:58)

Correct.

Sometimes these changes on the port require manual intervention, effectively just a mapping change.

Matt

Cheers. Any reason this hasnt happened yet? Its 9pm now, doubt its going to happen in the next 3 hours so will have to get Pulse8 to chase why ive not migrated

SMC might need to manually "sort", it's a quick process though.

Matt

In English?

Sorry.. service management centre, basically TT people that fix things like this

Matt

Ah thanks. Is this something the ISP would chase up then?

So is it possible the migration has taken place, just it wont let me connect for some reason? Pulse 8 said their systems didnt show anything new about the status of the migration at 5pm

Indeed.

It's still possible for it to be done but it'll likely be a phone call from the provider to their supplier tomorrow to fix it.

Try and connect using a random username, if that works, it might be in progress but if not, you won't be on the correct mapping yet. If it does, the mapping might be right but the username might just not be active.

Matt

Cheers. I can still connect to my old ISP at the moment so hopefully that wont get cut off until its fixed

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 03-Jun-15 21:25:09)

You should be safe until someone flicks a switch (or presses some buttons).

Matt

random [email protected] doesnt work either

Timeout for both of you to know that petty name calling and insults is not tolerated

Well I say... 3 days into a week and a third lover's Tiff, so what's cooking up for tomorrow then?

Rang them. Its stuck in the system as a backend error so they need to ring the tech guys to see whats what

Stuck sucks .

Didn't some other ISP, Xilo perhaps, have problems doing TT->TT migrations?

All TTB resellers had problems. It's supposed to have been fixed. I think it was mentioned in one of the OP's threads.

MPF to MPF but only because TT had issues even progressing them.

That's now resolved.

Matt

Spoke to Adam at Pulse8. Apparently the migration happened ontime yesterday, but the username was having problems. They have reset that and said its sorted now. Will see when i get home

Interestingly they can see me on their systems and know the date and time and login from my previous ISP. Thats why he said i wont be disconnected while they dorted it as they just allowed my old login details on their system. Didnt think they would be able to see stuff like that seeing as they dont use the same supplier

Live now...eventually.

Not much has changed service wise as on the same tech at the exchange, just minus the traffic management system (tbh i didnt have many speed issues with Coms unlike some). Customer Service has been great so far. Adam fixed my stuck migration, then they had to sort my username out as that was causing authentication issues, but im finally on

Only weird thing is Google defaults to .com instead of .co.uk even though it recognizes my IP is in the UK

Edited by bobble_bob (Thu 04-Jun-15 19:54:22)

Only weird thing is Google defaults to .com instead of .co.uk even though it recognizes my IP is in the UK

Is this using Firefox? I am seeing the same here although in my case I'm on Plusnet. IE still goes to .co.uk whereas Firefox goes to .com.

No happens on both, only since changing IP since the migration. Weirdly the location on the bottom of the Google page says im in the UK so dunno why.

Edited by bobble_bob (Thu 04-Jun-15 23:14:31)

I am with Xilo (TTB LLU) and Chrome does the same thing. Odd.

Sign into Gmail and it has my location as uk. Its just Google and any other of their services that it does it with

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Well I say... 3 days into a week and a third lover's Tiff, so what's cooking up for tomorrow then?

Beef Stew - Want some? ;P

Dumplings?

Of course..

And reet thick Gwravvy!

My switch to fibre was today. A few problems with an am appointment that ended pm and routers that would not connect. Even the new Billion would not detect settings in vdsl mode as it does for adsl. Thanks to Adam at pulse8 for an hour on the phone alowing a joint solution to get it to play ball. Happy with my end result.
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4428009337

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/b610615e4f9...

Edited by professor973 (Fri 12-Jun-15 17:54:17)

Glad its sorted. Once i was migrated over my password didnt work. They had to change it but then all was good

In reply to a post by professor973:

My switch to fibre was today. A few problems with an am appointment that ended pm and routers that would not connect. Even the new Billion would not detect settings in vdsl mode as it does for adsl. Thanks to Adam at pulse8 for an hour on the phone alowing a joint solution to get it to play ball. Happy with my end result.
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4428009337

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/b610615e4f9...

Still seeing some packet loss on that by the looks of it? id expect it to be better than that.

Not now that it's settled my friend. Initially was running at 4 meg above the highest BT estimate, now dropped back to 65 down, which was the expected maximum and behaving
nicely.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/8db73cd1379...

Do you get an email 5 days before its taken confirming the amount? Assume come the 1st July i will have to pay for July's subs upfront and also the bit ive used this month, so be nice to know the amount before it comes out

If it's Direct Debit you have to be given 10 days notice of the amount and the earliest date it will be taken.

10 working days unless otherwise agreed.

Also, if the amount, frequency or date has not changed, that isn't always required either.

Matt

True. Though for regular d/ds of fixed monthly amounts I think all send a schedule at the beginning. Recurring fixed annual ones seem not to notify.