ntl taking their sweet ass time.

Sloth

I don't know what it is with me and these information lines but I rang ntl up about 2 months ago asking when their cable connections would be available in the area where I live (castleknock). I was told that it would be some time before Summer and was pretty happy with that.
Now though when I rang them up the other day they said it would be a whopping 2 years before my exchange would be upgraded. What I'm wondering is what the hell happened and why is it taking them so long to set up the cable exchanges when they seem to spend half their time digging up roads in the first place.

ando

there was someone from ntl talking on these boards a while ago when they saw how Utv were getting so much support for interacting with their users. I cant remember what the bloke was saying but to be honest I dont care either. I have F**K all hope that ntl will be launching cable broadband widely

ando

here we go:

Our customers are telling us that they want high-speed access at an affordable price and we are listening. The FACTS are we are in active discussions with vendors and contractors for expanding this service and naturally timescales will not be available until discussions have been completed , which is expected to be later in the year.

running behind NTL ?? That quote is from 13-09-2002
:mad:

The full thread is here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63964&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

Sloth

Thanks, interesting read even if it does boil the blood a tad. I'm just annoyed that I was told that the exchange would be ready to go. Heres a quote from the man on the phone that I talked to:
"We will be launching a 128k service within the next few months which will probably be some time near summer followed by a 512k service not long after that."
Oooops, seems that was a load of bollocks. I mean why the hell employ these guys if they're just going to contradict each other every few calls?

Sloth

Oh yeah if anyone has the time ring them up and see if you get the pessimistic phone guy or the optimistic phone guy.

milltown

I dropped NTL my quarterly enquiry the other week and was very surprised at the reply I got. A phone call from a very pleasant sales agent who told me that NTL are currently trialing a new service (their own staff are testing it in their homes at the moment) which will allow them to offer cable internet without the laying of new cable that is presently necessary. They hope to be offering it in the next few months.

I still won't be holding my breath though.

Sloth

The more I think about it the more I realise that I might have just gotten a bad phoneperson (tm pending on that word). She didn't seem to have a clue what she was on about and seemed to go against everything everyone else had told me. I'd really love to get NTL over Eircom just to avoid that god damn limit plus ping times look a lot better.

Basically I'm going to break my vow and ring them up again tomorrow and ask for a decent phoneperson who knows their stuff. I'll get back to you with my findings tomorrow

BArra

good luck


baz

ando

na sorry miltown, I dont believe that sales person. I've heard that kind of talk to much in the past :rolleyes:

Matfinn

I think you can all safely assume at this stage that NTL will never actually widely release cable internet access at all. They have it in Tallaght and other areas of West Dublin, and thats the way its going to be for the forseeable future. I think their future here anyway is going to be short lived.

Matt

gandalf

The person you need to check with is Matthew Kemp who is/was in charge of the Cable Modem project in NTL. As far as I remember he did introduce himself on boards but when very quiet soon after that.

If you ring back ask for him, if hes gone ask for the Manager dealing with the cable modem rollout, if they say he's busy ask for his direct line.

Basically the golden rule is do not believe one word from the Sales/Customer Service operators as I can guarantee you will get a different story everytime you ring them. Personally I do not think they will be offering any rollouts outside the areas it already operates in.

Gandalf.

maxheadroom

you could try emailing him - ntl email addresses are of the form firstname.lastname@ntl.com ...

STaN

Originally posted by milltown
I dropped NTL my quarterly enquiry the other week and was very surprised at the reply I got. A phone call from a very pleasant sales agent who told me that NTL are currently trialing a new service (their own staff are testing it in their homes at the moment) which will allow them to offer cable internet without the laying of new cable that is presently necessary. They hope to be offering it in the next few months.

I still won't be holding my breath though.

This is a 128k downstream and an upstream over your phone line. So not only is it just as slow as ISDN it is tieng up your phone line too to make requests and for uploads.

bk

Originally posted by STaN
This is a 128k downstream and an upstream over your phone line. So not only is it just as slow as ISDN it is tieng up your phone line too to make requests and for uploads.

Is this a "midband" service like BT are going to offer in the UK this summer or just ISDN?

See Reg article here.

This could be good for light to moderate users if priced low.

Sloth

I was going to ring them up today but decided not to. I figured I'd either get some guy getting my hopes up by saying yes it's going ahead and then find out it isn't or get told no only to find it going ahead AFTER I sign up for Eircom's one. Basically I knew that if I started ringing now I'd just feel the need to keep ringing up to confirm it every few days.
I'll send an email to them but other than that I'm going to pretty much sit on my hands atm unless theres some breaking news.

9lives

I rang NTL about a month ago and was told that a rollout was beginning in April. I expected that to fall by a few months but I'm more pessimistic when I read this thread. I've another email enquiry with them.

Guess I'll have to see who else can offer an alternative to Eircom.

- 9L

DSLinAbsentia

NTL have less money in the bank than I do (about 30 euro), I don't think they'll be trundling along with a €60M spend to upgrade their infrastructure.

More likely someone bigger (or smaller <grin>) will buy them for half the price they were sold for, then maybe, just maybe they'll do something.