o2 woes

EvilDreams

EvilDreams

EvilDreams

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Joined
6 Jul 2008
Posts
1,841
Have just moved to o2 after recommendations here (especially the no limits part) after my last ISP (who called themselves unlimited) started moaning at me for going over some hidden peak limit, and in the last few months have only given me about 50k/s in the evening.

Anyway I was supposed to be activated on Friday, when my old ISP was still up and running, but o2 messed up the activation, and the old connection dropped at about 5pm and wouldn't work. o2 sent me a text claiming I was up and running, cue 2 hours on the phone, mostly on hold, to be told they'd messed up something at the exchange and now I am waiting for BT to pull their fingers out and send an engineer down to fix it. I was told Monday but still no connection. Thankfully I can use my mobile phone as a modem so I have about a 1mb connection until the battery runs out and it needs charging again.

The one good thing I can say is that their technical helpline is free and I got through past working hours, and spoke to British people.

So, anyway, am I to expect more of this from o2 or has everyone else had positive experiences with them?

Also, is it possible to ditch the wireless box they send you and use my old, extremely configurable router instead?
 
EvilDreams said:
Have just moved to o2 after recommendations here (especially the no limits part) after my last ISP (who called themselves unlimited) started moaning at me for going over some hidden peak limit, and in the last few months have only given me about 50k/s in the evening.

Anyway I was supposed to be activated on Friday, when my old ISP was still up and running, but o2 messed up the activation, and the old connection dropped at about 5pm and wouldn't work. o2 sent me a text claiming I was up and running, cue 2 hours on the phone, mostly on hold, to be told they'd messed up something at the exchange and now I am waiting for BT to pull their fingers out and send an engineer down to fix it. I was told Monday but still no connection. Thankfully I can use my mobile phone as a modem so I have about a 1mb connection until the battery runs out and it needs charging again.

The one good thing I can say is that their technical helpline is free and I got through past working hours, and spoke to British people.

So, anyway, am I to expect more of this from o2 or has everyone else had positive experiences with them?

Also, is it possible to ditch the wireless box they send you and use my old, extremely configurable router instead?
Click to expand...

Yes you can use any router you want.

If it's an exchange issue then it's probably not o2's fault it's probably BT. o2 have little to do with it unless it's LLU, other than asking BT to have the line configured and routed to o2. Infact 9/10 times something goes wrong on BT LL services you can bet your mortgage it's BT's fault. In my experience the other 10% is DNS servers go *rasp* which is why we have openDNS as 3rd, 4th in the list :)
 
Your difficulties are probablyery much down to good old BT! BT love screwing companies that have opended up "their" exchanges. The best router is one with a Broadcom chipset - there aint much wrong with the router they send! A netgear with a Broadcom is ok with a better interface for making changes
o2 is excellant particularly for £7.50 a month plus £10 every 3 months for a card topup and a £25 bungback for joining. Get that spread on yer bread kid and you wont believe it aint butter!
 
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Skidilliplop said:
Personally I'd have said alcatel do better ADSL chips but irl it's much of a muchness.
Click to expand...
You'll find most will recommend a Broadcom based router for use with Be/o2. As Be/o2 use Broadcom chipsets in their DSLAMs Broadcom based routers tend to get higher sync speeds.
 
OK, several days later and I still have no connection. Not only does my o2 connection not work but when the "activation" text came they appear to have broken my old connection as well. Still having to connect through my mobile phone which is getting a bit annoying although it was giving me almost 2 meg yesterday! Not bad for a phone.

Anyway I phoned o2 and they sent an engineer down to the exchange. My dad (I don't know how they got his mobile number) got a call from a *telephone* engineer....don't know whether that has any significance....who told him that there was nothing wrong with the line and it seems to be a broadband problem. No doubt I am going to get punted between o2 and BT indefinitely. To add to this they sent me a text yesterday telling me that they were going to take payment....bit cheeky I thought.

So that's 5 days now with no internet and no real solution.
 
do you have o2 via LLU or over BT hardware? Whoever owns the hardware is at fault here. If you arn't syncing at all then the DSLAM isn't set up right for your line. Whoever owns the DSLAM needs to fix it. Given the hassle you've been through i think it's worth logging every single corresponance and outcome and making a nicely backed complaint with a request for compensation. Usually if they screw up big time you can get a couple of months free if you kick up a fuss
 
Skidilliplop said:
do you have o2 via LLU or over BT hardware? Whoever owns the hardware is at fault here. If you arn't syncing at all then the DSLAM isn't set up right for your line. Whoever owns the DSLAM needs to fix it. Given the hassle you've been through i think it's worth logging every single corresponance and outcome and making a nicely backed complaint with a request for compensation. Usually if they screw up big time you can get a couple of months free if you kick up a fuss
Click to expand...

The line is fine and it is syncing, but apparently, according to today's phonecall to support, it's not connecting to o2. It's not connecting to my old ISP either. I think my old ISP must have been LLU, but I took o2 on the non-LLU option as o2 haven't set up at our exchange yet (still cheaper than my old ISP though). They're sending a BT engineer round here tomorrow, so hopefully he can sort things out.
 
In that case it's 100% BT's problem and it's BT you need to bitch at. Generally I prefer LLU if you can get it because it takes BT out of the equation. Most of the engineers I've dealt with are of questionable competance and wholesale prices push the cost up.
 
It's your ISP you need to beat with a stick, and up to them to beat BT. There's no one at BT that you you can talk to...
 
Well, that seems to be the problem fixed. Had a BT engineer phone me from the exchange to say that they hadn't bothered connecting me to o2 in the first place apparently! He came round here and all was well, so I am now browsing at a comfortable speed. Only took a week to activate me too....
 
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