Any prospect of NTL upgrade delivering reliability?

Now

According to letters this customer received earlier this year, NTL have supposedly been engaged in upgrading their network in my area, Edenmore.

I had been hoping that such an upgrade might finally deliver a reliable service but there appear to be no signs of that happening. On Sun, 28 Oct, I was sitting watching a programme on TV and suddenly the screen went black. This coincided with the broadband service going down.

When I rang the following day, there was a message about a general fault and the usual instructions about rebooting the NTL modem.

However, I told them that I would shortly be moving to a new provider because of the absolutely appallingly unreliable service they've provided over the past two years since I signed up.

I'd say it was easily the fifteenth time I've had to ring them about the broadband service going down for one reason or another: but always some problem at their end.

In February 2006, it was down for over 12 days, and would have been longer had I not insisted very forcefully that someone come out and fix it.

I was just wondering if this experience is the norm with NTL on the northside or in general?

Any recommendations for RELIABLE providers in the area?

watty

UPC inherited a network with 20 years of neglect. They are spending a fortune fixing & upgrading, though probably some months yet till you see the benefits.

There isn't any G'tee that you can get any other provider (Your phone line may be too poor for eircom, Smart, BT, or no DSL exchange. You may have trees or buildings blocking Digiweb Metro or IBB breeze, or no local wireless masts).

DingDong

With the upgraded areas they use a ring structure with the fibre so if one side gets cut the signal has another path to the node. Also the old system have massive cascades of amps up to about 15 or more off the nodes. The new systems plan to have a max of 4 amps so theirs less to go wrong. Their able to do this because the fibre can travel deeper into an area. They also plan for the cable to run in places that won't be open to damage.

My area was upgrade by NTL about 5 year ago since then my TV has never went off and my broadband only twice. Once a UBR(think big ass router) died and the other time was last Sunday which I never looked into.

christophicus

How do you find out if you are in an upgraded area?

DingDong

You can usually tell by looking at the cables outside your house. Also If you have no band 1's. Your discovery will be up around 575Mhz.