Confused, need impartial advice

pctech · Nov 12, 2012, 17:41:13

Need some advice please.

I'll not mention ISP names as I had my collar felt about this by a mod.

Ok here goes.

It's likely that I'll be working from home over Christmas and decided to switch to a provider offering an O2 Wholesale based service and who offered free migration from BT Wholesale to see if I can get better performance, let's call them provider A.

It appears at this stage that is certainly the case, however I did wonder what the situation would be if my connection were to go down when I was working and the provider determined it was something O2 had to solve.

My understanding was that with BT they would not lift a finger out of hours if you did not have enhanced care even if the 'fix' just required someone clicking a 'button' on their screen at some BT central facility and thought this maybe true of O2 too.

I enquired about this with provider B who I initially intended to go with but wanted to charge me 65 quid upfront which included activation, VAT plus first months usage.

I was reluctant to do this as did not know how the O2W circuit would perform as when I tried their own service a few years back it was unstable but work has been done on my line since.

Provider B tells me they can organise an Enhanced care equivalent service on the line but Provider A says no such thing exists.

Are O2 quite quick to resolve issues that they can where an ISP reports them or do they insist on payment of another fee to do this.

If an engineer were to be required it would probably be quicker for me to just get to work.

Technical Ben · Nov 12, 2012, 19:26:52

I went with O2 so it's not "impartial" advice. They lied (customer team, no idea about the business teams). They had congestion on the entire network (not enough bandwidth purchased from BT) and did not own up to it, instead saying it was my router. Not just the 1st line assistants who you know are out of the loop, but the third line too, and after admitting they themselves get congestion.

It would take a LOT to get my confidence back in them. The mobile people are great, the BB ones not so sure.

If it's a reseller, as with IDNet, it depends on what the reseller does and what they can do (the physical limits on the service imposed by O2). If you need a business level of support, perhaps go to business broadband?

I might not need to, but if things go well here, I might do PC repairs from home for a while. I'll not need perfect up time, but having the support from IDNet is currently priceless.

PS, I've no idea about Be* though. They were great last time I looked, but that was about 5 years ago, and they don't serve my area.

pctech · Nov 12, 2012, 19:28:32

Yes I had a similar experience with the end to end service but am referring specifically to the wholesale service that backhauls traffic to an ISP.

Only need the additional support over Christmas really but don't want to commit to 12 months.

Technical Ben · Nov 12, 2012, 19:32:39

In which case it depends on the Reseller. The problem is, the customer service team of the main seller will have zero info on the backend (I've worked in call centers, we were suppose to be knowledgeable, but not that much). And getting to anyone other than a call center seller/assistant is near impossible. I'd hope their business sales side is better, but I'd not hold out much hope.

The reseller might know more details, but I agree it's important to verify the service offered. No point in a 24 hour call out, when they only check your side of the line, as O2 still only do 9-5.

Can you check their own forums/customer suggestions? If they honestly can provide an additional service, the existing customers should know.

pctech · Nov 12, 2012, 19:52:57

Think I'll stick with provider A for now.

I wish it was home time

Technical Ben · Nov 12, 2012, 20:33:17

Which provider is that? A reseller or another co? As my exchange got an upgrade, and I don't know any other company to offer the same bandwidth + no throttling, I'm staying put. I'll probably be ready to move house before I'm ready to move ISP.

pctech · Nov 12, 2012, 21:19:14

I'll PM you Ben as I got in bother when I mentioned anyone other than IDNet

Technical Ben · Nov 13, 2012, 11:15:12

Got the pm (it's blocked for some reason.

)
Ah. Not had any experience with them, or heard any reviews. So best check their forums/thinkbroadband etc.

nowster · Nov 13, 2012, 18:04:08

Quote from: pctech on Nov 12, 2012, 17:41:13My understanding was that with BT they would not lift a finger out of hours if you did not have enhanced care even if the 'fix' just required someone clicking a 'button' on their screen at some BT central facility and thought this maybe true of O2 too.

Have a good read of what "enhanced care" actually gets you. You might be shocked at how little it is.

pctech · Nov 13, 2012, 20:55:07

I placed the order to move to Provider B this afternoon as I think I'll get more help from them than a reseller, connection moves on 21 November.

Technical Ben · Nov 13, 2012, 21:30:29

You never know. I get more help from a Reseller (IDNet) than I ever could from the horses mouth (BT). But then that's because you can lead a horse (BT) to water (pay them money) but you can't make them drink (get off their proverbial).

Ok, that's like an illustration in a car crash of a sentence. I think I'll avoid the pretend secret phrases.

pctech · Nov 13, 2012, 22:33:32

IDNet have their own network and just use BT for backhaul, the company I moved to do not and resell another companies services.

Technical Ben · Nov 13, 2012, 23:04:34

Fair enough. I always forget that little nice bit about IDNet (although I thought they rented most of it from BT and the other back haulers). But of cause, they have their own mail servers etc. I guess some peering stuff too?

Lance · Nov 13, 2012, 23:08:15

Idnet also make use of a Telefonica / O2 hostlink in some cases.

pctech · Nov 14, 2012, 10:43:10

I'm now taking part in a home working trial in a couple of weeks and have to use a laptop with a network software image on it over VPN which runs the likes of the corporate AV and one mother of a script to checks for updates for various things and downloads stuff, along with this all calls will be routed over the connection too using VoIP so its probably a good job I'll be on an unlimited package.

Glenn · Nov 14, 2012, 10:51:47

Is your employer contributing to the cost of the connection?

Technical Ben · Nov 14, 2012, 18:30:18

With all that I'd wonder why they don't just give you a mobile dongle and be done with it (oh, and keep the software local, not "cloud" based

).

pctech · Nov 15, 2012, 21:37:44

@Glenn no as they'd probably insist my connection terminated on the BT hostlink coming into the network which means I'd not be able to use stuff like iPlayer and Xbox live when I wasn't working, its only going to be times like Christmas, Easter or they want someone as a remote standby in case of sickness so I am retaining control over my connection and just using VPN with a loan laptop, can't use my own machine because it doesn't have some of the bespoke system management apps on it that run at startup that check this and that.

@Ben Due to the trees round me mobile reception ain't great and the connection will have to bear VoIP, intranet and other traffic all encapsulated in a VPN tunnel so has to be DSL or fibre, all of our line of business applications run off large application and database server clusters at work so don't have much choice, the only thing that is currently installed locally on my work desktop is MS Office and a small part of the phone system software, they are currently looking at virtual desktops I hear.