EE to be launched

In case you did not know, Everything Everywhere is the company which owns Orange and T-Mobile. Well, they are launching a new brand called EE and they will offer UK's first mobile 4G network and Fibre broadband service and will also be the UK's biggest 3G network.

O2 broadband finally comes through

I take back whatever I said about O2 in the past (read here).

Flashback a couple of weeks:

We had speeds of around 2Mbps and we were thinking of changing providers after staying with O2 since 2009. Then suddenly one fine day we got disconnected for a whole day and when we finally got reconnected, the speeds were at a snails pace - then the service became intermittent going on and off. I complained to the O2 customer service several times, and it seemed to work for a while then the connection would go bad again. I have to say they were really patient and trying out various things  but it didn't seem to work. Finally one day, one of their people called me to say that the problem might be with the line and to connect my line provider (which happens to be BT) to check it out. I had been having crackling noises on the phone for a long time and had assumed that it was normal. Called up BT and their customer service tried their best to help me as well but apparently the line test came out OK. They offered to send their engineers but I would have to pay if there was something wrong.

I had finally made up my mind to shift to Virgin and get rid of both BT and O2 when the O2 people called me up last week to say that they would like to send an engineer to check our line.

Today:
The guy came today - he was from the BT outreach service and he found out that there was indeed something wrong with the line. He changed the line and sockets and  I finally have speeds more than 1Mbps. Nowhere near the advertised (Maximum) speeds of 20Mbps but I am not complaining, I am too happy to get connected without getting cut off every few minutes.

O2 broadband sucks

Update: Read my latest post "O2 broadband finally comes through"

Warning: Rant ahead

It's been almost 7 months since I wrote "Moving from Talk Talk to O2 broadband" and we finally got connected via O2 broadband in July last year.Read my O2 broadband review.

I have since then regretted moving from Talk Talk. We were unhappy with Talk Talk's low connection speeds but we later found out that O2 is far worse. Talk Talk's connection did get better in the end but by then we had already decided to jump ship to O2.

We moved to O2 because of the good customer reviews and I have no idea who these idiots were. Now we are paying more for a lousy service.

Download speeds are no where near the promised 8 mps ( though they did mention that it is subject to location). We are still stuck with download speeds of around 4mps and upload speeds lower than 1mps (worse than Talk Talk) and get cut off all the time. I can't even have a decent conversation on Skype anymore.

They boast that their customer service staff are all based in the UK and calls are free.  

Who cares!

I don't mind if the customer staff is somewhere in India or Timbuktu as long as they solve my problems. Called the O2 technical support twice - the latest was last Saturday. After being on line with 2 different guys for nearly 45 minutes they couldn't solve anything and said that they will have the line analyst have a look at our line. They promised to call back within 24 hours and I am still waiting.

So far I have tried 3 broadband service providers in the UK - AOL, Talk Talk and now O2 and none of them have delivered what they promised. Forget about customer satisfaction.

To say I am unhappy with O2's service would be an understatement. Can't wait for our contract to end and jump to another broadband service provider but the question is "which one?" I don't know if the problem is poorly managed servers or just poor management in general, but I cannot wait until this nightmare is over.

UK Broadband forums

If you are looking for unbiased information on any product, forums are often the best resource. I am in the process of setting up a wired home broadband network and O2, my broadband provider, doesn't tell me much on how to go about setting up the router and other stuff. Even though I have some experience setting up a local area network (LAN), there were some problems getting the new router to work. Tried Googling it and I found some forums discussing similar problems about UK broadband service providers.

In one of the forums, I contacted one of the guys and he was really helpful. He actually emailed me listing down the step-by-step procedure to set up the broadband connection. Since then I have been joining and contributing to various forums and sharing my experiences, as well as queries about problems that crop up and it has been a fairly good experience.

Right now I am going through the UK broadband forum, which discusses various UK broadband providers. The forum seems to be fairly new and when I last checked, they just had only 141 members. There were a few queries about some of the UK broadband providers I was previously with and as far as I can tell from the members' comments, they still haven't improved. I definitely wanted to contribute my two pence worth and decided to join in. Registering on the forum was a breeze and took me a couple of minutes. Best of all, I could start posting straight away.

For those who are interested, the forum also discusses mobile broadband providers in the UK as well.

Also check out the Think Broadband forums and Digital Spy forums as well. The later focusses on broadband internet services from BT, Virgin Media and Sky..

O2 broadband review

Some of you may recall my previous post about moving from TalkTalk to the O2 broadband service. We finally got reconnected to the net at home via the O2 broadband connection on the 17th of last month.We had signed up for the standard package which promises download speeds of "upto" mbps.

As you can see from the two broadband speed test results, it is nowhere near the promised speed.

On Broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk


On Speedtest.net

The different tests show quite different results for both download and upload speeds even though they were just taken one after the other.

On the bright side, both test results indicate that O2 broadband is definitely faster than TalkTalk. The connection has been good with no drops so far. Had some minor problems connecting wireless to my PC in our study but is OK now after I changed the settings on the router.

So far so good and I would definitely recommend O2 broadband even though we have to pay slightly more than we had to for the TalkTalk connection.

First Commentator:
T_Volts

Moving from Talk Talk to O2 broadband

I have not been updating my blogs for a while. No! I haven't been struck down by Swine flu. It's because I don't have any Internet access at home right now. Hopefully that will change tomorrow when I get reconnected to the net again with 02 broadband. It''s been really hard and I sometimes wonder how we managed without any Internet access in the past.

I have been with Talk Talk for a while. They are now the UK's largest resident broadband provider and second overall behind BT. Not surprising because they are the cheapest. The broadband connection came free with the telephone line. Even though, I had actually called them the worst broadband provider in the past, their service had improved tremendously. However, even though it was cheap, we were looking for a more reliable internet service provider.

Initially we were thinking of Virgin broadband and their claims of super-fast cable braodband connections were really tempting. However, after reading customer reviews on various sites, we finally decided on O2. Apaarantly O2 has the most satisfied customers in the whole of UK. First of all we had to change to a BT line which was activated last Friday. On the same day, we were in the Coventry city centre and decided to get a Pay-as-you-go O2 sim card. This is because the Internet connection is cheaper if you are a O2 customer (good marketing).

Anyway while we were there we noticed that we could actually sign up and get the O2 router in the shop. Moreover they were having a broadband promotion as well and we won't have have the initial two months free plus a discount on the initial sign up fee.

At first it looked like we were outside their normal coverage area and would have to pay more for what they call the "O2 Home Broadband Access package" but when we got home and called up to activate the connection, we actually found out that they were going to extend their coverage area, meaning that we won't have to pay for the alternative Broadband Access package and there would be no problems moving down to the lower rate (I sincerely hope so).

Will be posting about my initial experiences with O2 broadband tomorrow.

Faster broadband speed

I had been quite unhappy with the broadband service provided by TalkTalk and even called them the "worst broadband provider in the UK". However, of late their service has considerably improved.

I tested the download and upload speeds on Speedtest.net Here's the result:



Compare this with the speed test result in March this year. It is an increase of approximately 1447 Kb/s.



I had been seriously considering moving to another service provider once our contract ended but I guess I have to reconsider now.

Faster boadband

I am so sick and tired of the broadband service provided by TalkTalk and the previous provider AOL, was no better. That's not surprising as a survey by price-comparison site uSwitch.com indicated that many broadband customers in the UK are dissatisfied with the service offered by their current provider. So I was really happy when I read about BT's plans to invest in super-fast broadband.

How fast you ask? Well they plan to have top speeds of up to 100 Mb/s with the potential for speeds of more than 1,000 Mb/s in the future.However, I realised that I might not be around in the UK to enjoy that kind of speed. Anyway, the £1.5 billion programme to give up to 10 million homes access to fibre by 2012.

People keep on asking me for recommendations for a good broadband provider. I don't really have any idea but according to the Moneysupermarket.com, O2 is the best broadband provider followed by Sky and TalkTalk.

I am not really sure about the third provider. However, what really surprised me was their finding that customers taking slow 2MB/s deals are actually receiving faster download speeds than those advertised. I am tempted to shift to Sky after reading this. I actually would have but I am tied down to TalkTalk by a contract for approximately another 10 months.

Check out the full news release by BT: "BT plans UK’s largest ever investment in Super-Fast Broadband".

Testing out the 3 mobile broadband service

Finally got the chance to give the 3 USB modem a good test run. I am blogging this via 3's mobile broadband service.

I shut of the wireless network in my house and used the dongle to connect to the net.



The first thing I did was to check the connection speed. Here are the results according to Speedtest.net:



The speeds are nothing to boast about but I look at the possibilities - it's amazing to think that I can access the net from almost anywhere in the UK. According to the 3 website, their "network covers 86% of the UK population."



Found this old picture of my son (3.2 MB) in my computer. Uploading it to my Flickr page took around 10 minutes.

Next test area: Nottingham.