Things like this are why BT annoy me intensely

Right. For you Yanks, I'll explain. BT are the telcom company in the UK. They have an interet provider called BTopenworld. The link would work, except it seems they're not even capable of keeping a webserver up

Anyways. One of the services they provide is called "anytime". [link not yet findable. Assholes.] The deal with this service, "anytime", is that you can go online anytime you please. You'll note the service _isn't_ called "BT Sometimes" or "BT Once-in-a-while"

There's also a service called "BT SurfTime" which is free connection evenings and weekends. I don't use it.

Anyways. The point of this rant. Here is an e-mail I got the other day. What assholes. I shall make a mental note that "anytime" in fact means "some of the time". Which is nice.

Comedy response here from this man

Quick note: with BT Anytime, I actually also get summarily disconnected every two hours. And to quote the terms&conditions, "Between the peak hours of 19:00 and 22:00, we may limit the session to 90 minutes". Of course, my current experience is more on the "more-than-half-an-hour-is-unlikely". Literally. The plug just gets pulled, randomly, often

Next bit: I'm not allowed to have my computer automatically reconnect. So if I were to want to do a huge download, I'm not allowed to start it going, and leave for more than 2 hrs, having set my computer to reconnect if BT shaft my download half-way through

In fact, upon closer inspection, I'm not allowed to "leave my internet connection online unattended". Indeed. I'm not allowed to start a download and leave it to do it's thing, at all, ever. Let alone that whole more-than-two-hour thing.

And they get away with this... because they're a monopoly. Out where I currently live, there is literally no other services available

And here's a price comparison of some services:

Let's put this in perspective:

• If you want to be online, a lot, during the day, you will be taken for an absolute ride. BT Surftime costs a lot, per-minute, to be online between 8am and 6pm
• That leaves you with with NTL, BT Anytime, or one of many others. Compare:
  • To be online and never use the normal phone [ie, like me; my mobile is cheaper to use than BT's land-lines, so I use my mobile to speak to people], BT Anytime costs 25 UKP/month.
  • Since phone costs aren't relevant, NTL costs 25 UKP/month.
  • NTL beats BT to buggery with a pointy stick in terms of speed.
  • BT sends abusive e-mails if you spend "anytime" online with their "anytime" service
  • NTL and BT Anytime cost the same
• Unfortunately, NTL aren't cabled out to where I live.
• I'm therefore stuck with e-mails like this

Gary (-;

PS. I'd humbly like to make some recommendations if anyone's considering getting online in the UK...

• If it's available, NTLWorld is apparently about the best service you'll get for the money.
• If you can afford it and want ADSL, Pipex simply rock. They're faster and more reliable than any other ADSL provider, and IME you can get online with them first time, every time, using Linux. BT ADSL is a seriously non-trivial exercise unless you're using something like smoothwall, which fairly implicitly supports ADSL But then your service absolutely blows..
• And finally, if you want permanant 56k, Fast24 are supposed to be pretty decent

Addendum 2002-01-28

This morning, I recieved this e-mail. It's an attempt to get me to move to using their other dialler, that overrides the windows one and dumps you on a slower-access number. I would attempt using it, but I can't see my linux-based firewall running it very well. Specifically, I don't think that it'll put an icon on my desktop, given the machine is headless and doesn't have X installed.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Fucking cripples

Addendum 2002-02-19

And now my account's been shutdown

This page is and

My Website Starts Here

This page last modified: 2003-06-26