Karoo - A shot in the arm.

A while ago I mentioned taking our fight with the incumbent broadband provider for our area to the E.U. This is gathering pace since I set things in motion.

Of course, once I had blurted it out in an email to them they immediately cut off all level of contact. Total and utter silence is what is coming from their end. Even legal and proper questions to Customer Services go unanswered. Not  surprising I guess but slightly annoying for reasons I shall now explain.

They have both an AUP (Acceptable Usage Policy) and a venerable T&C (Terms and Conditions), like all companies as small as they are they try to cover every conceivable angle in as few words as possible while wrapping the whole thing up in big words. This creates documents that are at best ambiguous and at worse have no legal standing in a court of Law. They know this, of course, but the hope is that your average person never looks at said documents so that when your  average person crosses whatever line they, the company, can point at some ambiguous section and cut off said user. Over the years I have taken several steps to address the ambiguous nature of these documents all to no avail. Now the E.U. is on their tail and they too agree the  documents are too ambiguous and should  therefore be made more legible by your average person.

As to what action the E.U. can and will take I am not allowed to say in detail. What I can say is that the organisation will be looked into. That much is a given. What  will come of it I do not know but as they, Karoo, have annoyed me to this level I do not care as long as it costs them money and they are inconvenienced to the max.

Here we go.

My telephone and ISP company, KCom and Karoo respectively, are one and the same company. That is Karoo is a Kcom spin off.

In the last  two days our telephone became dysfunctional for short spells. They have claimed that we have reached our 75GB download cap. What  is interesting with that last claim is that just 23 hours earlier they sent us an email saying we were at 80% (56GB). Not having anything close to a fast connection to download 19GB in 23 hours is an impossibility.

I said not so long ago they would start this plan of action. It is designed to shut me up but will not succeed.

I have asked them for proof in whatever format, except binary, they can use of every single byte that has gone through our connection both ways. I highly doubt that they will provide such information as they already know we are nowhere close to the cap imposed.

I am now so angry that they can stoop so low (though they have done this sort of thing before to me when we had ISDN) that I will not stop in my quest to get them to improve the network. I am so far about 60% through with my E.U. complaint and will now raise the level so that an inquiry is started into their business practises.  Once the E.U. get their fangs into them it will be fun to see their reaction if nothing else. The E.U. can be slow but I have all the time in the world to wait.

Karoo say "We don't care".

No surprise there then.

At what is quickly turning out to be our final words with Stvve (the middleman between KC and us) it can clearly be read how much they really "care" about their customers. The following excerpts are from an email that hit my in box a couple of days ago. Since then, not a word has been said on the various things we raised from the aforementioned email. All spelling errors have been left in place. One thing we have absolutely no power over is the basic educational level of the people at KC.

Gems such as this:

Ø  Why does the cold night air affect it so much considering they are
underground? Bad cabling? Or rather poor, broken, damaged cabling?
 

Highly likely, although all the remote and physical checks have come
back within acceptable tolerances. Again shot (sic) of tearing up streets to
reaplce (sic) all the cables, this will not change until fibre is rolled out
to the curb/customer premises.

Ø  You are now convinced there is an error somewhere along our line from
exchange to house, and possibly in the house?

It is likely yes and that is why I have asked for engineer to move your
line. This should have happened by now and you shoud have been
contacted. I am finding out why you haven't.

(I am still waiting)

Since the email came in from which the above was taken there has been no more contact from them. A sure sign indeed that they truly do not care about what their customers  say and are actively doing nothing to improve their service offerings.

They are so desperate to be seen as a good caring company they have plastered all manner of lies, misconceptions and general bilge all over their customer facing web site. On there they espouse about a company promise when the reality is, as I have found out, they do not care on iota.

Over the course of the last 18 months they have increased telephone charges. It was once  said that the Hull City telephone network was the envy of the U.K., back when B.T. ruled over all, that no longer applies as the prices we are forced to pay are now so high there are some, pensioners in particular, who can no longer afford such a basic amenity. Some of those have now ditched their landlines in favour of a mobile telephone simply because they have found it cheaper to do so. They have introduced ADSL2+ (we pay the highest service fees of all ISP customers in the U.K.) with no thought given to what is an aging network of copper and how that would limit the customer experience. ADSL was a solid service which people where happy to use een with the DPI slowdowns of an evening. ADSL2+ however has seen a huge rise in disconnections/reconnections and an overall speed (throughput) drop.

Care about customers? Karoo? No they do not. They have gone from the peoples company to a money grabbing  corporation so fast they do not realise the damage they are doing to the good people of this city. Ignore what their web site says   as in the main it is utter bunkum.

I wonder.

How long it will be before my ISP makes up something so they can terminate my account? I am becoming a serious pain in their sides. Well, I am not trying to but from recent responds from various people there it would seem I am becoming one to them.

I take no real joy from all this. Honest.

They have made their beds and they can lay in it. All I am trying to do is get a better service level from them for all the people who use their services. If in the process of doing this I annoy a few people then so be it.

I will not however be silenced. No matter how hard they try to make it so. They can threaten me as many times as they so wish with whatever threat they care to throw in my direction. I am well prepared for such things and have my back covered legally.

For years and years I have been fighting this company over one thing or another and I have no intentions of stopping now.

So, bring it on. until such a time as the services they offer improve to the level people expect then I will continue to do whatever it takes.

Usage caps.

Usage caps on ADSL and other such services are fast becoming the norm all over the world. Our ISP Karoo, the only ISP in town that offers ADSL services, is one such company. However, we find that our caps are some of the lowest on offer. Our ISP offers a 3 teir service. Low, Mid and High. Low = 2GB, Mid = 10GB and High = 75GB. Not very good for the Internet as it stands right now with people streaming movies from all over the place.

2GB for the Low service is useless for anyone except those who do no more than occasional web browsing and email. Say the old girl down the street who uses the Internet to keep in touch with her daughter and sons and grandchildren. It is not meant to be used as a catch all all-you-can-eat type service so 2GB might just fit that model. however, with  flash embedded in just about all major web sites nowadays and such as the BBC with their embedded sound and video's that 2GB is soon going to run out. Move up a service says the ISP if that happens but movng up a service may prove too much fr the purse so is out of the question for such people. They end up paying an extra 2 UKP  per GB instead.

10GB is not enough either as that target is easily reached. Again, move up a service shouts the ISP and the same financial constrains apply.

75GB may seem on the face of things to be plenty but as I am founding out it is not. I use a binary Linux  distribution and keep my system in sync with that distributions -current branch which can have upwards of 4GB updates a week. That equates to 16GB a month which leaves me with 59GB to share amongst the whole family. We have 4 main computers, my wifes, my 2 elder boys and mine all share the connection, and the cap. My wife and one of the boys both use Ubuntu which has plenty of updates in any given month. Neither can or do use the Internet at the free from caps times of midnight until 8am so they do their system updates during the day when the cap counts are in force. So, they get around 10GB each of updates per month which is another 20GB to add to the 16GB I use and that is before any normal usage patterns are applied. Now we have 39GB left to do all the normal things people do on the Internet.

Normal things my wife and son do is watch the BBC;s iplayer, watch and listen to some youtube, do web browsing which means waitching and listening to videos and sound on such web sites as the BBC and other news based web sites. My wife and 2 boys have what can be termed normal usage patterns. It does not take long during the month to see that 75GB being gobbled up.

Put simply for the top service for home users 75GB is restrictive at best and simplynot enough at worse. KAroo, of course, don't care as for each 1GB over the limit one goes they get 1 UKP. A nice steady income for them on top of the already inflated price we have to pay for access.

If one looks at the various other ISP's caps in the U.K. and the U.S.A. it soon becomes clear we are suffering the lowest caps on offer. After much discussion with Karoo they fail misreably on the customer services front as they simple will not raise the caps, certainly not while people are going over the caps on their chosen service. Some people do not even know they are on a capped service and some of those do not realise they pay even more on top of their normal service fees. It does not matter how many emails the ISP sends out signifying the fact a cap is being reached.

No matter how Karoo spins it the usage caps on all 3 home customer services are too low. They however, like every other area of their services they suck at, do not care about their customers as long as the money keeps rolling in. The biggest shame of all this is that we customers have no where else to go. We are stuck paying inflated prices and we are stuck we severely limited usage caps whether we like it or not.

If another ISP was to come into our service area and offer a set of better services AT THE SAME PRICE we currently pay, even though they prices are way too high, people would jump ship faster than one can say BYE BYE KAROO and of those customers who know no better those of us that do will ensure they move with us. So come on you other ISP's give us the competition we here in Hull so desperately crave so we can rid ourselves of the greed that signifies what Kcom/Karoo are all about.

A defunct ISP.

Is what Karoo is in all but name. Their share prices, due in part to the so called credit crunch and also in part to boardroom incompetence, are getting lower and lower with each passing day. They have a slow and aging network of twisted pair (telephone) cabling through which they are forcing ADSL2+. From the 3500+ people that have contacted me it can be clearly demonstrated that the ADSL2+ experiment is a failure of massive proportions.

Of course, Karoo take heart in the fact that a few say to them that they are happy with their connections but those 3500+ people, who make up a sizable chunk of their customer base and includes home as well as business users, show the level of discontent amongst their customer base.

All of this makes it not impossible that during the coming two years we shall see some other ISP/telephone company come into Hull and for Karoo to fall away as a nasty memory. But would that be a good thing? I say no. Better the devil you know and all that.

My ISP's lack of speed.

This will probably not be the last blog i do about my ISP but even though it is about my ISP is does not sit comfortably in the 'My ISP and ASDL2+ (part X)' series so it has a different subject title.

Recently, it became very clear that our ISP, Karoo, have no intentions of trying to improve sync and connection speeds on their ADSL2+ services. After several months of trying to get them to do various things that would provide for better sync and connection speeds the following excerpt from an email from Steve 'The Head of Infrastructure' nationwide.

"At present this is all we can offer but we are still looking at other options available to us and that includes working with Alcatel, as we have been since we implemented ADSL2+."

Which, knowing him as I do, is as good as saying "We fucked up over ADSL2+ and we know it, but at this time we can do nothing about the problems.".

There is no shame in admitting defeat but that is simply beyond Steve so, as always, he wraps it up in words. He became very good at  question dodging. He rarely gave up information that would allow us to peek beyond the words spoken. His biggest problem when talking with customer representatives, as we are/were was that he could never get his head out of the boardroom. Time and time again he sat firmly on the side of his paymasters promising so and so would be done but nothing ever got started. He was to all intents and purposes Karoo's lying machine and on occasion he played that role so well we didn't see it. Most of the time though we did see through it and when we did we tried to get behind the veil. In the end He Who Must Not Be Mentioned had had enough and left the  fold. Then that email, from which I took the excerpt, came in  and Steve left the fold. This left me with nowhere to go and nothing to do so it made sense for me to cut the baggage free and so I did.  After several months of promises we have absolutely nothing to show for our endeavours.
 
As I have commented in various blog posts here at AnnoyedFolk there are several ways they can, at the very least, galvanise public support here in Hull but, as was not unexpected, they have chosen, with no explanation whatsoever, to ignore those options. It has to be said that if those options where given up as a solution then only a very small minority of customers would be able to use them. Karoo call this minority "Power Users". But those Power Users could help those not within that group to utilises those options so everyone  could, in theory at least, benefit from the options. But it would appear, allowing those options is beyond Karoo technicians (which is amazing really as other ISP's within the U.K. do it with great benefits to their customers) and because of that little technicality  ADSL2+ will never improve here.

Overall we do enjoy slightly better sync and connection rates than, say, BT but the demographic is much different. So different in fact that one cannot make suitable comparisons even given exact same line lengths and  exact same DSLAMS in use etc etc. Here, because Karoo's service offerings serve only Hull and surrounding areas they have a much tighter service area. Because of that they should be able to consistantly provide for higher sync and connection rates. Some areas of the City have copper cabling older than 40 years which does not help matters.

But enough on the technicalities and back to the   throwing in of the towel. My own personal thoughts as to why Steve has done this is that his paymasters told him to do it. It is widely known that the MD and I do not get on so my thoughts on this matter turn to that and I believe the word was sent down to rid ourselves of this problem and Steve being the opitomy of a company man  duly agreed.

Another reason could have been that Steve  could not provide the answers we were so desperately seeking therefore he felt it was time to let things go and leave it in a state of limbo. Yet another reason could have been that I have too much knowledge for them and because of that I scare them which led to the     dropping of the ball.

Whatever the reason for his sudden capitulation this is not the end. Far from it. I have other, powerful avenues that I can take our grumbles to and it is those avenues I have spent the last few days since Steve's 'I quit' email exploring them. Right now I have more faith in the E.U.'s ability to  affect change here than I do via change from within.

At the end of the day Karoo, being a subset of KCom, is a company with shareholders and anything that needs to have money spent on it to fix whatever is broke (and there is a LOT broken) would need to get passed their money grubbing shareholders before those filter feeders at the bottom get a chance to  affect that change. In these dodgy share times I cannot see that happening. We need high speed Internet as much as anyone else in the country.

It will never happen while the current trend within the KCom company is one of damage mitigation and skimp and save at all costs in all areas.

KCom are doomed and those  from the boardroom know it. It is only a matter of time.

Kcom and Karoo.

Kcom the incumbent telephone company here in Hull and its ISP spin off Karoo are technologically so far behind the other ISP's that proliferate around the U.K. they are fast becoming a bigger joke than they were last year.

They use relatively new DSLAMS but their back end servers often fail and twisted pair cable runs are mostly 20 or more years old. If you are stupid enough to use their proxy servers you are guaranteed to run into problems more times than not. Their back end servers that sift through what you do on-line so the data can be sold to third parties often fail. In the last year or so we have suffered outages of between 24 and 14 hours on 3 separate occasions. They have no backup servers. No redundancy whatsoever. They are a cost cutting operation. They have not invested much in new stuff for years. As for cable runs well, the best that can be said about them is they work. Slowly, but work. Just.

Look at the state of ADSL2+ in this city. Ignore what KCom and/or Karoo say about it as they often lie about statistics and it is a well known fact that those who say they are happy with the service are those who are technologically lacking in skills. There are thousands of people suffering from poor connection rates. Piss poor throughput rates and it can all be put down to 1 or 2 things. 1) Lack of exchanges. 2) Long, poorly routed, twisted pair cabling. Cable runs  that where laid early last century and new runs bolted on as the city grew in size. Back then of course there was no Internet so they laid cable willy nilly which results in this Internet age with piss poor sync rates and throughput speeds.

Almost every area of this city suffers from old copper cabling. Almost every area of this city suffers from long lines (from house to exchange). Some areas suffer what they call 'dead' exchanges which are then routed out to real exchange which can be several miles away from the 'dead' exchange. It is a mess. Worse still is the fact they are doing nothing whatsoever about it.

It is quite simply take it or leave it. As there are no other ISP's in this city it is impossibly difficult to go eslewhere.  Those who do not understand the telephony situation in this city often say "Go to another ISP"  which is impossible to do here.

If another ISP came here and did not use the Kcom network of piss poor cabling nor use their exchanges but did in fact set up their own autonamous network then people and businesses would jump ship in a heartbeat. But they will not come here and neither will they invest in a new network simply because of some believed loyalty to Kcom and Karoo which frankly does not exist amogst the rank and file of this city.

The people and businesses of this city are crying out for a real high speed connection. If there is someone out there with money to burn and they set up a high speed fibre network and charged reasonable rates for the connection they are guaranteed to succeed in taking  thousands, 10's of thousands, 100's of thousands of customers.

Kcom and Karoo can't see this simple fact. If they can see it they are doing nothing whatsover about it. Last I heard they where  doing a feasibility study  about fibre but the fact of the matter is if it will cost then money they  will not do it. They are a shadow of the company that once served Hull only. In those long since gone days they where a company to proud of. Since they expanded into a, don't laugh, world wide company they have forgotten about their long suffering roots. Telephony in this city is so poor now they are the biggest joke this city can offer.

Someone, any one, set up a fibre network. Use the cities extensive sewer system to route the fibre to homes and businesses. Use a route out to the wider Internet somewhere outside the city. No need at all to touch anything belonging to Kcom. Provide  real high speed services which the current piss poor ADSL2+ cannot provide, Offer Internet, telephone and TV via cable and the people would jump. It it so easy to envisage but finding someone to do it is the hard part. Which is a shame because I guarantee the people of this once magnificent city would jump ship tomorrow if the fibre network suddenly appeared.

The fact is that the long suffering people and businesses of this city are ready and primed to move elsewhere.

Karoo customer services.

Our incumbent ISP, Karoo, have what is possibly the worst customer services of any similar, and none similar, industry.

They often proffer an email address to which one should sent customer related enquiries. That email address is in addition to their regular one. More often than not any email sent to either addresses is routinely ignored.

As a test to make sure it was not just me that they ignore (I have been on their internal blacklist many times over they years) I arranged with some of the people on my list to send  an  email from their own computer using their own email address. Around 2000 agreed to allow me to conduct this test. I then sent such an email from the  around 2000 different customer computers and of those more than 2000 around 82% were ignored. Not exactly conclusive proof but is a clear indication of how they hold their customers in utter contempt.

Why do they ignore the emails? That can only be answered by them. However, it is well known here in Hull that the Karoo customer services team follow very closely a sheet from which they read. That is how many other companies do things as well except that in Karoo's case they  rarely, if ever, deviate from it. This sends customers tempers flaring as more often than not this tends not to solve whatever is/was the problem that prompted the question in the first place.

Ringing them up is no better either as it is essentially they same team so inherits all the same bad traits as emailing them does.

In conclusion it can be said, within the limited scope of the test mentioned above that Karoo Customer Services quite simply is diabolically bad.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 11)

On each FORCED reconnection due to unsettled weather conditions our sync rate gets lower and lower.

The only thing that is constant is the fact that the sync rate gets lower.

ADSL2+ is a waste of time on the ancient copper network (from house to exchange) here.

Karoo run fibre almost everywhere else so why can't they replace the aging copper that is left and give us users the at least the speeds they claimed from ADSL2+? Only they know the answer to that one but I can speculate.

They KNOW ADSL2+ is poor and they KNOW how to fix it so that everyone will get a nice speed bump but they WON'T do it. They STOCK refuse to do it. why? Because if they did a part of the company would disappear.

Karoo's stock is dropping faster than rain from a black cloud. The company is dying and they know it. They are ripe for the picking but we users do not want that to happen because if it did the cost of both telephone calls and braodband access would go up.

They know that to replace the ancient copper here is the way to go so why don't they just get on and do it?

ISP speeds (a rant by any other name).

Whether actual speeds or publicity speeds are getting ever faster. Except here in Hull where ADSL2+ is a mess of slow sync and throughput speeds for the vast majority of customers. Our incumbent ISP claims, but never gives out actual provable figures, that their home customers are happy with ADSL2+. They will not provide any figures to back up that claim though not even to us, us being those of us who were supposedly on a monthly scheduled meetings with them.

Virgin Media have announced plans for a 50Mbit/sec service. How many of their customers will acheive anywhere close to that remains to be seen, but the fact they are publically declaring such speeds is admirable. Our ISP touts  service improvements then fails miserably on the  actual  giving part of that service, ADSL2+ is one such example. Okay, Virgin Media are a cable company probably using DOSIS3 9or whatever it is called) but the simple fact they talk to their customers via various news outlets is in stark contrast to how our ISP operates.

Many times our ISP  replies to  questions with the boilerplate reply of "That is being tested." which actually means "We have no idea what you are talking about.". Our ISP's technical people are a joke beyond the pale. Anything that goes outside of their abilities is immediately debunked as "not being worth the effort".

There are many people who offer up free advice to our ISP's technical people and those people offering up that advice known that of which they speak but, without fail you can bet your last penny that our ISP's technical people will not have the  abilities  nor brain power to do what it is that was asked of them.

Whether this is due to the limitations of the software used or is because those technical people have never dared to venture beyond the absolute basics or even if they are simply stuck in their ways not wanting to try and find out what sort of power the software they use provides is all open to debate. My own feelings and thoughts on the matter is that it is a mix of the first two.

To give an example. We asked them about offering their users, home users, multiple IP's as standard on their top tier service but what came back from that  request was both astounding and mystifying. The reply said "We cannot offeer multiple IP's because it would create too much work." Imagine that! Technical people   saying so and so would be too much work to implement.

There is a whole list of such replies that  seriously impacts peoples thoughts on their technical prowess.

Not that long ago I set up an ISP. The basic setup took under an hour to do. Over all the time taken from start to a fully fledged ISP setup was 52 hours. And here we have our incumbent ISP claiming something was too much work to setup. Simply amazing!

But back to speeds. With just about every ISP offering   40Mbit/sec plus it seems we users in this city with our incumbent ISP as the    provider will be stuck with slow speeds for years to come. It seriously impacts the beiief of their customers in the ISP ability to do anything beyond the absolute basics to provide a connection. They are stale. They are old hat. They are simply rubbish at every level possible.

Due to how they have handled us in recent weeks, the ignoring of emails, it is my remit now to make life for as many people within the company as uncomfortable as possible. I have instigated an E.U. investigation into their Hull operations. Particularly in what they charge other ISP's, be they  one already out there or new startups, with realtion to LLU or sharing of cabinets. I have contacted OFcom, the relevant E.U. departments (!2 in all) and am in the process of using the contacts I have within the newspaper industry to get the word out.

We are suffering here from a crap service. A service that is fixable but whether they have the ability within is open to debate. I have had to do this sort of thing before and I have no qualms in doing it again.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 10)

With the local people here getting evermore annoyed at slow sync speeds I read this article with some alarm and amusement. If, as that article says, the main backbone trunks have capacity to spare and the usage of is getting cheaper by the hour and the so called 'last mile' is the only bottleneck to a good consumer experience then one really has to wonder why such as our incumbent ISP lacks the relevant ideas and plans on gaining the upper hand for local customers by getting rid of that last bit of copper.

The E.U. complaint (re)started last week is gaining ground. This morning I received an email which basically asked me to all the data I have, less any identifcation bits such as names and IP addressed, from the various people who sent me such information. This I did straight away. I had already compiled such information in anticipation of such an email coming in so it was a simple case of replying and attaching the data.

Where does this go now? At this stage I don't know. What I do know is the complaint is gathering pace and we now have traction within the E.U. so something may be done. When that will be however is open to question. The E.U. council are not known for their speed but at least the complaint is on its way which means that we may see something happening before we realise it.

They ask me if I wanted them to contact our ISP so they could put their side of the story. Knowing how our ISP lies consistantly about just about everything to do with their network I requested that at this stage I would rather they did not. So, unless they read this blog series or any of the emails I have sent them over the last 14 or so days they will, for now, remain blistfully unware of what is actually happening.

Fun times indeed.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 9)

And so after many none replied to emails to 3 separate departments at our incumbent ISP I have renewed the E.U. complaint started a year or so ago.

There is much interest in the U.K. ISP situation within the E.U. with none being more closely watched than our incumbent ISP. To renew the complaint all it took was an email to the E.U. department handling such things. Once that email was received and processed a person within that department was assigned to the complaint. Once this stage has passed it is then a simple case of getting them back up to speed from where the complaint was left.

As I keep emails for years and years (some go back to 1988 and are in fact fidonet to email messages but I digress) all I had to do was give them the email headers and date stamps then they did whatever they do and retrieved all the relevant documents at their end which they sent back to me after further verification to make sure I was the one who started the complaint procedure. For my end all I needed to do was search through my email archives and locate all the relevant emails as well as the original case number(s).

The procedure is now (re)started in earnest. I have been tasked with gathering as much data as I can from both my router logs (stored on a log server located  somewhere in our house) as well as  data directly off the router. Apparently, they will use my line as an example of everyone else. Further, I have emails from various people around the city and with a bit of identification scrubbing the data some sent to me can also be sent. There is other stuff they have requested I do which I will do and send to them.

Going on the contact had so far (6 days excluding Saturday and Sunday) they seem to be very conscious about the lack of true speeds throughout the U.K. and within that target demo graph Hull itself. From what they have said they have give or take a few, 1000 people around the U.K. involved with their probing and of those 6  reside in Hull itself.

This is going to be very interesting. Knowing, as I do, how the E.U. complaint procedure works will alow me to leverage those procedures to my own advantage

The last time  our incumbent ISP pissed me off  to this extent It ended up with our incumbent ISP MD contacting OFcom (or whatever name they used back then - circa 1999) who sent me a letter protecting the then MD from further proof I was providing about that subject matter. Shortly after i had received that our incumbent ISP saw sense and implemented what had been under discussion. I was left with a ban from posting to the then ISP controlled news groups which really wasn't such a bad ban anyway. I wonder if the MD will use his, or rather the companies, monies to protect them this time around?

They will surely learn that this person still has the same teeth as he had back then and I will use whatever the E.U. law allows in an effort that will hopefully benefit everyone connecting via our incumbent ISP.

They will rue the day that they pissed me off enough to do this. I can and will, as much as one person can, make life very uncomfortable for them.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 8)

In this "My ISP and ADSL2+ (part X)"  series I have tried to document what is going on here in Hull and what our incumbent ISP is doing, or rather trying to do (and ultimately failing to do) regarding ADSL2+. I have tried to do this without giving too much away as there are somethings they need to ensure are not mentioned due to business issues best left alone. For our part we have done this while at the same time  explaining various issues. For their part they have consistantly broken their own word.

Here is the latest twist in this series.

A week or so ago there was an agreement between myself and the incumbent ISP. That agreement basically was that they woud remove any limitations placed on our line so that we could find out how stable a line can get when the SNR drops to 0.1. As it turned out the line was stable at an SNR of 0.1. This removal of the shackles placed on my line also allowed the line to sync higher than the ill-conceived settings they assumed would be better.

Now, without a word they have once again placed limitations on my line. The sync rate is shit, the max rate is shit. The SNR hovers around 4.0. The line is stable but what got me was that no contact was made by them to inform me they were going to break the agreement.

A week or so ago, after the the agreement was agreed to, they did some upgrades on their network. For all I know these upgrades  could be why the line now has limitations placed upon it. To me, however, this is irrelevant.

The idea behind the agreement was that they and I could see how stable a line sync could be when no predefined limitations were placed on a line. That was the basic premise behind the agreement. I gave them an unfettered allowance to do whatever they needed to do in an effort to suss out why ADSL2+ is so crap for the vast majority of people. I told them I did not care how many times my connection dropped (it never did, not once).

And yet towards the end of the first week they (re)placed the limitations without so much as a word in my direction. Several emails requesting clarification have been sent with no reply. They have broken they agreement.

Because they have broken the agreement and because they have not said anything this says to me we can no longer trust their word and the word of the infrastructure manager in particular.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 7)

So, the war of attrition has begun. Totally out of our control the masses have taken it upon themselves to hit our ISP head-on in the war over ADSL2+. The fall-out is not going to be nice. Damage control is the best our ISP can do but will that be enough to stop ever more people joining the rank and file? I somehow doubt it.

Once the cat is out of the bag that will be it. On and on it will go until something is done to placate them. What that something is however is open to question.

What they want is simple enough. For years and years the vast majority of users here have been happy with their connections. Sure, there has been the odd one or two who suffered bad connections but the majority did not and were a happy lot. Then our ISP brought out ADSL2+ and the rank and file suddenly found that their connections became unstable, became slower and so on. Suddenly the rank and file where not a happy bunch and they are looking to bite the leg of their ISP.

The ISP, perhaps not surprisingly, have gone very quiet and it is that quietness that has made the rank and file irritable. When they become irritable they look to let of steam any way they can. In the first instance that means writing articles for newspapers, radio presentations, news web sites etc etc and then go from there.

The ISP for their part only needs to fix the issues plaguing their users connections.

How this can be done without spending millions of pounds on their network infrastructure, particularly the so called 'last mile' is unknown. We do know they are not using all of the available spectrum that ADSL2+ allows so perhaps if they did then many, if not all, would find their connections both stable and faster. We won't know until they use the available spectrum. Will they? I don't know. But, they have to do something and fast otherwise they will be facing a huge backlash which even coordinated damage control will not contain.

Once that happens and ranks  fill out with more and more people who know what will happen then?

Fun times indeed here in Hull.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 6)

Now at the end of the week. Many emails have been sent to my ISP, some to the guy who we hold meetings with, some to a contact I have had there for years and a couple to their so called customer service email address. Every single one has gone without a reply. I get the feeling that just like several times before i am on some internal ignore list.

What is all the more surprising is that the guy who we hold the meetings with is the Head of Infrastructure for their entire network across the whole country. And here he is pissing me and everyone we represent off.

Perhaps others outside of the KC/Karoo service areas are used to be ignored but here, especially when they asked us to setup a meeting, is  not a good thing to do. They know we will spread the word to every newspaper, radio station and news web sites faster than they can put a stop to us doing it. They know that when we say we are pissed off we are really well and truly pissed off.

My own thoughts on why they are ignoring us again is that they know their ADSL2+ is a massive mistake. A total and utter and utter mess and no matter how much data we throw their way they have not got the slightest clue how to fix the mess ADSL2+ have left them with.

They can ignore us all they like but once we have had enough of them ignoring us and the problems, real problems people all over the city are having with this ADSL2+ mess they will regret the day they ever considered ignoring us  a good thing to do.

I shall continue on a daily basis to collect all the moans that keep arriving in my inbox, on my mobile in both txt and calls, via snail mail and so on from people within our own group as well as from some, a lot actually, outside it. So far that count has hit 2126 unique telephone numbers. The numbers are growing. They cannot ignore them just because a few old ladies and gentlemen say their connections are stable.

It is the power users of Karoo that define who they are. Pre the ADSL2+ mess the service was quite simply brilliant. Now, after the ADSL2+ mess was instigated it is  a nightmare. They have to face up to this fact sooner rather than hope we all go away. If they don't then the first ISP that comes into the city will get their custom and once customers start moving others will surely follow and if that was to happen it will sound the death knell for Karoo as an ISP and quite probably for KC as the telephone line provder for this area. If not the death knell then surely they will not be top dog.

The time for action is growing ever nearer.

I had to smile.

I read this article on the BBC web site with some amusement. Here in the KC catchment area they simply turn up and remove the telephone box. Totally unaware of any concerned the people local to that telephone box may have.

This is yet another way our incumbent telco provider differs from BT.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 5)

It has to be said. Here in Kingston-upon-Hull (Hull) ISP's are something of a rarity. Even more of a rarity is that we have one, ONE, ISP offering ADSL services. So, when I get emails from people outside of the ISP servicing area saying "Switch ISP's if your own is so bad" I have to question their knowledge of U.K. telecommunication history. Okay, not many are interested and even fewer even know we have our own telephone network totally autonomous from BT.

There are many people here that would love to have a choice of both telephone provider and of ADSL provider. That number is growing all the time as more and more people become aware of what ISP's offering services outside of this area offer. Some have gone so far as to initiate contact we some ISP's outside of this area in an effort to persuade them to setup camp in Hull all to no avail as KC have steadfastly stifled the market to ensure their foothold in local territory stays that way.

KC, of course, resolutely denies this and has said on numerous occasions that their prices for wholesale broadband is competitive with those of BT. While the actual cost of purchasing such IS comparable to BT the provision of such services is not. But, say KC, these are details that are looked at on a per customer basis. Not that that makes any difference to actual costings. So, we have the situation  where the local incumbent telephony company openly invites outside ISP's to come into the city any ISP looking into such says that the local incumbent telephony provider has things locked up price wise so they will not come here.

There is a company supposedly offering fibre services to businesses but I know of no business here, large or small, that has taken up such an offering. No doubt cost of installation is the main barrier to penetration.

Our incumbent ISP had better pull its finger out. Customers are getting evermore wise to how things work and here ADSL2+ while offering fantastic line stability (until it rains then all bets are off) has SLOWED DOWN the vast majority of peoples speeds. That's correct. ADSL2+ which was hailed as the faster of the ADSL technologies has proven itself to be a duck egg for the vast majority of people here. I have serious doubts that they can fix the slow sync/throughput speeds so what are they to do? First, they have to admit that ADSL2+ is a waste of time on their aging network copper lines. Second, they must ring forward whatever plans they have for fibre installs. Third, they must ensure those fibre installs are right up to peoples houses (so called FTTH). Fourth they must ensure that throughput speeds on FFTH lines are at least 50MB and preferably 100MB or better.

Failure to heed any of those will eventually lead to one of two things. One, the Karoo ISP will disapear as a going concern. Two, others WILL come here and offer comparable or better fibre connections.

My own patience with KC/Karoo has worn very thin indeed and I am now actively speaking with ISP representatives outside of the Hull area with a view to having them setup camp in the city or as one of them told me "so that we can provide you with the technologies you will need but you and your partners will be the front end for us".

We will see in the coming year where this leads to. I, however, will be doing everything within my capabilties to make sure it happens. The ISP's I have spoken with hold all the cards so if they get weak knees about such plans there is little, right now, I can do about it.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 4)

It has grown increasingly clear that our ISP does not care for its userbase. They plan everything around those users who know nothing about how or why their connection works as long as it does. Us lot (power users they call us) that do know such things are increasingly ignored.

This was never more clear than after the recent tests of ADSL2+ here.

Since they started the tests it has become increasingly clear that they have not the faintest idea why sync speeds for the vast majority of their customers are so crap. As long as old Mary Smith is happy with her connection then they are happy for her and chuffed with themselves they can please this level of user. Because they have not the faintest clue why the contact with them has got less and less until silence ensued.

This shows to me a total lack of caring for their power users. Okay so those power users make up about 1% of their total customer base but it is that 1% of users that   demand the best from their connections as that 1% of users are much more likely to use protocols the other 99% have never heard of let alone used.

What they cannot seem to grasp is that the twisted pair wiring here is mostly old. Because it is old it is more likely to break down during heavy usage resulting in dropped connections, slow connections etc etc. Why they cannot, or will not admit to this only they know. Until such a time arrives when they will admit ADSL2+ is a joke not worth laughing at here and acknowledge where the problems with ADSL2+ really lays then there will be no such thing as a high speed connection. Not until fibre comes along anyway and if they screw that up like they have  this ADSL2+ then they are beyond hope. We are close to that now anyway and it will not take much to drive the 1% over the edge. Not that we can go anywhere else which the majority of that 1% would given the chance.

ADSL2+ here in hull is so poor it is a joke. A joke not worth laughing at. As the parent companies shares fall and the companies cost rise the likelihood of them fixing what is so obviously the problem grows less and less likely withe ach passing day.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 3)

After a week of tests our sync rates are still pathetic. Sure, in BT land one can expect slow ADSL2+ sync and throughput speeds but here in Hull, via KC/Karoo, the situation is different. Different enough to not even bother comparing what those in BT land get on an ADSLL2+ enabled line.

I will quallify that comment. The main difference is line length. In BT land the vast majority of people are a lot further away from their exchanges than the vast majority of people are  here in Hull. ADSL and ADSL2+ are both line length driven technologies in so much as the further one is away from their exchange the poorer your sync and throughput speeds will be. The underlaying technology is basically the same but is it that line length that causes problems. Of course, one should not, indeed one cannot, discount  poor/bad/broken wiring both in the house and on overhead and underground. Nor can one discount the modem/router in use nor micro-filters in use but the main cause of slow sync and throughput speeds comes down to the length of the telephone wiring (twisted pair) between house and exchange.

Due to our ISP having a monopoly on the telephony here, especially the provision of ADSL/ADSL2+, one would think the quality of wiring would be higher. After all, they provide a city not the whole country as BT do, with the telephony network, thefore one could assume that purely on a land size basis the work involved is much lower. Indeed, it is. However, the telephoney network within the city of Hull was built peicemeal. As the city grew so did the telephony network. Bit but bit it was peiced together. This means that there is varying thickness wiring dependant on when said wiring was installed. Of course, as time progressed some of the more anceint wiring was replaced but in the main this is not so. So, today we have a mish-mash of a telephony network. This goes someway to explaining why some people are getting sub 2mb syncs and throughputs while others are getting 9-10mb and a very few greater than 17mb. The average ADSL2+ sync speed here is 10mb. In itself that may not seem too bad when compared to a comparatively distanced from exchange BT user but for here it is pathetic.

We are 1.9km from our exchange. We get a poor, for ADSL2+ 11mb sync. Throughput is 1.2MB as reported by the various   download applications I use here which includes but is not limited to, SVN, CVS, GIT, FTP, Web downloads and a host of others. Our sync should be a lot higher but due to possible problems on our line between house and exchange we cannot achieve any higher. I have asked our ISP several questions for which i am waiting answers. I want to know what thickness of wiring is in use here. I want them to manually check each and every inch of it. If the quality of the line is poor I have been assured they will change it. There are many reasons why a sync could be low but by starting with the wiring between house and exchange they can eliminate bit by bit as th checks are made. I have been assured that they think the vast majority of users should be syncing between 15 and 20mb but the reality is the vast majority are not seeing those sync speeds. Therefore, they are committed to  trying to establish why this is so.

Time will tell if they actually manage to improve peoples sync speeds or not.