BT disconnects much too often (btinternet.com)

Member Name: ta_yahoo

Product:	btinternet.com
Date:	29/07/06 (1185 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none

Disadvantages: disconnections, expensive

For the last 1 1/2 years my broadband connection from BT got patchier and patchier with a growing number of disconnections and when they occured they also got longer (up to 15 mins). This could happen once to three times per day for long enough that I would use it. My wife who uses MSN Messenger a lot noticed shorter outages and says she’d lose connection every two minutes when it got bad. We use internet a lot for work from home and it was getting very annoying. On top they charge £24/month.

The annoying thing about BT is that their technical support (which is very courteous) is trained to find the fault in YOUR house: Are you connected to the main telephone socket or a branch socket? Is your modem placed on a carpet? Have you spoken to Netgear (my modem maker)? Maybe we can do a line test, etc etc etc... So you try out stuff and ring them back later but you forget to call immediately because there are other things to do than ring BT, and so this drags on and on... All it does in the end is divert from the real culprit: BT and how they run their servers.

Proof: I switched broadband supply to AOL (Silver for £14.99/month) and it works. No interruptions. I can't believe internet can be this good.

Choosing AOL was not so easy though. U-Switch told me that they are not particularly cheap and don't have outstanding customer ratings. But in one discussion forum someone spoke up for them, saying how every other broadband company he'd tried was bad, even expensive packages.

Download speeds are up to 1Mbps on the Silver plan (my residential area only has half that available but I am not an online gamer, just want reliable connection and downloading). The switch to AOL was recent, but fingers crossed they are doing a good job. Oh, and when I called to find out why I could not connect to the internet initially I got a technical support person immediately! No waiting (at least at 8 am)! Turned out I had not changed user name and password in my router because the switch to AOL broadband happened before I got the welcome pack through the post.

Summary: BT broadband bad - AOL broadband good