In reply to a post by izools:

UKOnline works best only with a very expensive router

I cant agree im a older customer of theirs (from back when they did upto 22Mb) and i get around 18Mb quite happily on the Netgear they provided.

UKonline AFAIK are also the only people that will WILLINGLY enable fastpath/turn off interleaving and also if needed re-interleave the line.

HOWEVER

I think bethere has or did have an option in your members account/login to turn fastpath on or off.

UKonline do support other things though that i dont think bethere or O2 do such as Seemless Rate Adaption..... Freephone ENGLISH support also Not the cheapest but you do get little extras for your money

In reply to a post by xilonet:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Got it !

So one is C & W and the other is ...(Be?).

Tiscali Wholesale....

LOL no wonder before when pushed that wasnt revealed..... If anyone should even see the word Tiscali mentioned they should run for the hills, its bad enough direct, let alone through a reseller.

Id suggest anyone considering yourself or other C&W/Tiscali LLU ADSL2+ resellers go for the C&W option, people in mass dont lie, Tiscali is horrid.

Edited by deleted (Sat 05-Sep-09 22:52:23)

Actually, if you remember, that thread was locked.

They may be bad direct but that's certainly not the case on a wholesale level. Their interfaces allow us more control on the lines as I have already posted than C&W lines.

One thing about these lines though is that they have unbundled some exchanges that some of the other networks have not touched.. so for some people this is the only choice for a non-BT based connection.

Matt

In reply to a post by xilonet:

Actually, if you remember, that thread was locked.

They may be bad direct but that's certainly not the case on a wholesale level. Their interfaces allow us more control on the lines as I have already posted than C&W lines.

One thing about these lines though is that they have unbundled some exchanges that some of the other networks have not touched.. so for some people this is the only choice for a non-BT based connection.

Matt

Im not going to argue its pointless, as you are a reseller and a happy reseller of their services obviously you will not say a word against them.

History does not lie though, so here is some history........

1 Tiscali the company that previously slammed several people

2 Tiscali the company who throttled another third party resellers customers to dial up rates and to top things off wouldnt let them migrate.

3 Tiscali one of the most complained about companies in the UK (yes not just when looking at broadband but industry as a whole)

4 Tiscali the only ISP with a record of being on Watchdog 3 seperate times

5 Tiscali one of the most complained about companies to ofcom

6 Tiscali >>>>>>> http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/products/260.html spot the consistancy, and i picked that site just to show its not just people here that think they are useless.

7 Tiscali The thieving so and sos that tried to claim i owed them money when i was a Pipex customer and didnt.... Funny they should do that the moment i wanted to migrate away.

8 Tiscali it must be a word in some alien language that equates to lots of swearing.

I WILL STATE, IM SURE YOU AND VIVACITI DO THE BEST YOU CAN FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS, THAT IS NOT IN DOUBT.... HOWEVER.......

I believe in the old phrase if you play with fire you will get burned, and from a customers point of view Tiscali be it direct or through a reseller is like playing with a swimming pool full of petrol and matches. One little flame or spark and you are well and truely (Self censored)!

Just to quickly answer that.

1) Maybe so to their direct service, not wholesale.

2) That I did not know, but it's not with what we've seen on the L2TP feed we have.

3) Yes, their direct service using their bandwidth maybe, not wholesale.

4) Maybe so to their direct service, not wholesale.

5) Maybe so to their direct service, not wholesale.

6) Maybe so to their direct service, not wholesale. Partnered/Resold connections rarely use their network which is where their support/traffic shaping/DNS servers/FUP and so on come into play - none of which do with our service.

7) Maybe so to their direct service, not wholesale. They have no billing or service agreement with our end users.

8) Possibly.. but I don't speak alien!

I know of a few companies, one who sell VoIP services as their primary business who offer DSL via Tiscali directly connected to their network who also seem to have few issues.

Im not going to argue its pointless.

Maybe the only thing we'll ever agree on.

Matt

You're wrong to believe that people won't negatively associate Tiscally wholesale with Tiscally retail.

If I understand that.. I not said people people wont think wholesale is 'bad' when the name is mentioned simply by having the Tiscali name in there.

They will.. what I did say was that the service someone may get from the retail side, compared to a partner like us, simply using their tails - could be and is VERY different. We don't sell their products, or ones that use their network connectivity and so are not managed by them like their retail clients might be.

Matt

Thanks to both Xilo and Vivaciti (below) for their informative posts.

Its good to hear - for your sakes as much as anything - that that the two levels of service are so different. I guess it shows that the wholesale experience is a proper B2B service that you in effect subcontract rather than a "minimal reseller relationship".

It does rather confirm that all of tiscali's historical problems on the retail service derive from a pile them high and sell it cheap business model. Implying that peak bandwidth per user whether through management or congestion really is at the root of their service issues, along with poor (ie. cheap) customer service. So their mantra might be "Its not the network its how we use it...!".

I guess your experience also reinforces the idea that the B2B services that plusnet and eclipse originally bought in used a similar business model to tiscali retail. The maximum number of users at the lowest bandwidth/cost. Well done to both of you for avoiding that model (so far ).

Having worked alongside Tiscali Wholesale when I worked for <ISP> I can vouch for their uselessness.

We used both Tiscali LLU and Tiscali Datastream L2TP tunnels to deliver our service.

Non LLU areas got Datastream.

Now, re: LLU product. The two major pitfalls were in regard to router compatability, wherin many highly acclaimed routers like the 3Com Office Connect and ZyXel Prestige routers would assume the DSLAM was trying to sync in ADSL 2+ when in fact it was G.DMT. This took 18 months of emails and conference calls between us to get this resolved. In the meantime, many hundreds of <ISP's> Business customers had to purchase new routers.

The other major pitfall is fault resolution. Anyone who has ever used Woosh / BT Wholesale Fault Diagnostics and of course our old favourite, Siebel Fault reporting, will know how painfully slow these tools are.

But, they are a tech support agents' wet dream in comparison with the tools provided by Tiscali for diagnosing and reporting faults. They were inaccurate, unreliable, under featured, and generally unfit for purpose.

On the Datastream product, we didn't even have a way of checking the sync rate or noise margin on a given line.

Not to mention Tiscali Wholesale Support

Laura in Milton Keynes was an absolute star, but at the end of 2006 beginning of 2007 they moved their Wholesale Support offshore.

These guys knew so little about ADSL they swore blind that their ADSL 1 connections were capable of 8M down and 8M up. When I escalated the call to a TM, I was told no actually they are capable of 8M down and 2M up. That was the depth of their knowledge.

I cann't complain enough about Tiscali Wholesale.

The LLU product has a small amount of merit unless the subscriber experiences a line fault, or VP congestion, at which point they would be better off migrating and asking the new ISP for help, it would take less time to resolve that way!

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

You're wrong to believe that people won't negatively associate Tiscally wholesale with Tiscally retail.

Indeed and rightly so.... Would you give money to one department of a company that seems legit and customer friendly when another area/department of the SAME company is crooked as zig-zagged stitching?

People can obviously make up their own minds, I dont care how great their wholesale service is, if one area of a company are as good as scumbags, then thanks but no thanks i wont be giving them money.