How DSL works

Afternoon guys. You all enjoying the rainy Sunday afternoon? I am. I’m also adding a bit more functionality to Talk Talk Hell.

1. A feed over at Feedburner: Subscribe to Less Talk Talk: More Service. The unofficial, unaffiliated Talk Talk blog.

2. And a few options for subscribing to Talk Talk Hell via e-mail

And just so this post isn’t entirely about the ‘My Me’ here’s something for you guys. (If you don’t already know.)

When you connect to the Internet, you might connect through a regular modem, through a local-area network connection in your office, through a cable modem or through a digital subscriber line (DSL) connection. DSL is a very high-speed connection that uses the same wires as a regular telephone line.

The braniacs at How Stuff Works put together a little tutorial describing how DSL services work.

Have a read.

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AOL customers costing Carphone Warehouse big time

I’ve been waving my hands, jumping up and down, whilst shouting to AOL UK customers to run from the Carphone Warehouse. To my uneducated brain, it seems like a good deal for the Carphone Warehouse board of directors and few others. However, the writers at TechCrunch UK have found a few holes in the plan.

Based on the subscriber numbers below, CPW’s newly acquired “broadband” customer base cost £370 per customer to acquire. I guess what CPW are hoping to do is convince the vast majority of AOL’s 1m broadband customers and especially the 600,000 dial up customers (not listed in the figures below) to migrate over to their TalkTalk phone service worth £9.99 per month with the carrot of “free broadband”.

So doing the maths, it will take approximately three years of TalkTalk revenue per customer before CPW breakeven on this deal i.e [(£9.99 x 12months) x 3 = £359]. This assumes that at least 60% of the AOL access customer base sign up for TalkTalk which seems unlikely given the fact that less than 50% of the current CPW TalkTalk customers applied for the “free” broadband offer and less than 10% of them actually ended up migrating over to their free broadband offer.

3 years to get any money back? And the deal comes as Dunstone et al admit that their broadband service has ‘issues?’ Could this be the beginning of the end?

Tech Crunch UK: Why did Carphone Warehouse buy AOL UK’s “access” business!?

Technorati Tags: Carphone Warehouse, ADSL, DSL, AOL, broadband, free broadband

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Error 680 actually line fault?

We’ve had our share of debate around here regarding error 680. Cathy, someone to be admired by the sound of it, finally got someone to check it out for real.

I have been trying to connect to TalkTalk broadband for 3weeks. Had it up and running for 20 minutes then it disconnected. Keep getting message “no dial tone” and “unable to establish a connection”. Error 68O has appeared more than once. Copious calls to TalkTalk – no joy until a technical person phoned me on Wednesday at 9.40pm and said that it was being reported to BT as a line fault! I wish I had stuck to BT!!

Anyone else?
Talk to Cathy

Technorati Tags: Carphone Warehouse, Talk Talk, ADSL, DSL, free broadband, bad customer service

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Talk Talk harasses disabled customer after not providing her with welcome pack

Oh, nice one Talk Talk. Sally is registered disabled, she needs her phone line to work and would rather have received a welcome pack. Does it work as expected? Did she get her welcome pack? Has she ever used Talk Talk’s service? Oh hell no. That would be too much to ask of Carphone Warehouse’s deformed demon child.

I was tempted by the TalkTalk offer and signed up online. I was promised a welcome pack and it never arrived. As I am registered disabled I was concerned. I did not want to be left without telephone or internet and cancelled before the package was started or so I thought. I remained a BT customer for line rental but they were no longer my service provider and in due course I received a bill from TalkTalk. As I use a dialer with a non BT service I had made no calls through TalkTalk. I cancelled my direct debit and wrote to TalkTalk explaining that I had not used the service as I was still awaiting the welcome pack. I wrote several letters and made several phone calls and for my troubles I received two letters from two different debt agencies. I had already paid £18.00 to the first agency as they harassed me over the telephone to pay up or face further charges. I paid £18.00 plus my postage and long unanswered 0845 calls for nothing but I could still be paying and receiving nothing. My telephone is my lifeline and I need an absolutely reliable service.

Wow Sally. Any tips for her?

Technorati Tags: Talk Talk, Carphone Warehouse

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Hate isn’t too strong of a word

So, technical support’s new strategy is to tell customers to get to a new ISP. That’s possibly the best advice I’ve seen on this blog. Have a read:

In also spent hours hanging on to speak to someone in India who eventually told me to get broadband from someone else. Basically I had everything working fine on my NetgearDG834GT, it worked fine using ethernet on one w2o00 pc and using airport on my ibook.

Thursday night it went off, after numerous phonecalls they eventually said it could be something to do with being on superfast 8mb and that they rented mt bt line from bt and that there could be work going on. They also gave me the router settings but I cannot see where to check that CHAP is being used. Also they said that the primary and secondary i.ps had to be set to

DNS Primary: 62.24.199.17

DNS Secondary: 62.24.19.18

I have checked everything a thousand times, nothing works, I hate them

You’re not alone Paul

Technorati Tags: NetGear, Talk Talk, Carphone Warehouse, ADSL, ISP, free broadband, bad customer service

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Sophos tired of sophomoric claims

It is a big like the school braggart isn’t it? Oh yes, we can get you connected to the best service ever. Any one who criticizes us is wrong and obviously we’ll prove it by doing nothing after we apologize.

On the day I was meant to move to LLU (27th August 2006) my service was cut off and I have now been without service for over six weeks. I finally got a response from TalkTalk agreeing to terminate my contract but they still have not released my number so BT cannot restore my line. In over 13 years of dealing with ISPs and phone companies, I have never had such bad service. Just to show they could get even worse, they are now demanding money for the month of September during which time I have had no service whatsoever. I cancelled my direct debit in time to avoid paying them any more.

6 weeks without service during a simple transfer. Naturally no communication.

Talk to Sophos

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Andre sues Carphone Warehouse successfully

Regular readers will know of our beloved A and all he’s contributed (since the beginning!) He successfully managed to get some money out of Talk Talk for their legendary incompetence when he tried to disconnect his phone service.

I wrote earlier on that I received a cheque of 140 GBP from the Carphone Warehouse.

I filed a claim at the small claims court and I thought it was good to document what I did and how I did it so other people can learn from the experience.

Have a read of how he managed it!

Technorati Tags: Carphone Warehouse, Talk Talk, ISP, ADSL, DSL, bad customer service

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Trouble with US Robotics ADSL modem

Steve is envious of my up time of 20 minutes. Oh, bless our ISP. Bless them.

20 minutes LOL i’m continually disconnected every 30 seconds! I even went and bought an adsl router modem decent make USRobotics which works perfectly on pipex btw. My router log shows

ATM1 negotiating..

ADSL UP !!!

PPP connecting…

Connection successful IP address 84…….

ATM1 lost signal

ADSL down..

this happens every minute, i can actually watch the router and time when the connect will happen whiles its connected I can browse the web for all of 20 seconds woohoo! go CPW Talktalk the new standard of high speed internet.

Any tips for Steve? Could this be CHAP related?

Technorati Tags: Talk Talk, Carphone Warehouse, ISP, free broadband

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Phones 4 U challening Carphone Warehouse

YEAH! YEAH!

Phones4u rings out warning
The mobile-phone retailer says it intends to overtake market leader Carphone Warehouse by focusing on the youth market. Report by Paul Durman
CHARLES DUNSTONE and Carphone Warehouse have a new challenger for the top spot of Britain’s booming billion-pound mobile-phone market — Phones4u’s Tim Whiting.

Whiting became boss of Dunstone’s main retailing rival when John Caudwell sold his group for £1.5 billion in a long drawn-out deal that was completed at the end of last month.

Caudwell’s decision to sell up and sail into the sunset caused the business he founded to be split. The retail operations, headed by Whiting, have been bought by Providence Equity Partners while another private-equity firm, Doughty Hanson, acquired 20:20, the logistics and distribution business.

I hope they win.

Times Online: Phones4u rings out warning

Technorati Tags: Carphone Warehouse, Phones 4 U

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Brian wanting to brain someone

At work a few weeks ago one of my coworkers came in, (he knows I run this blog) and started chatting about ISPs. He’s the same I deterred from signing up to Talk Talk a few weeks ago. However, he was too late to save his neighbor from being sucked into the bad service abyss. She, unlike many, received her welcome back and installation CD. She popped it in and now her system doesn’t work. My coworker is a nice and technical guy. After 3 hours he finally managed to strip it all and get her system working again.

Those CDs are a bad idea.

Now Brian is having the same problem:

Hi, having serious problems with Talk talk installation. After install, computer has been totally banjaxed, only goes to welcome screen and restarts continuously. Eventually it stopped and the computer would not boot up at all. If any of you guys have any ideas on what I should do, or if any of you have had any successful compensation claims….please please let me know~!! thanks

I don’t know anything about compensation claims (at least on my part) however, I can point you to XP running funny after installing Talk Talk’s software.

Anyone have anything else to add? Talk to Brian

Technorati Tags: Carphone Warehouse, ADSL, DSL, Talk Talk, free broadband

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