I'm writing this to find out if I'm the only one experiencing this level of frustration (which I doubt).
Let me start of by saying that my experience with C&W's ADSL service has been one of up's and down's, no inbetweens. I currently pay for the 512kbps package. I use the term "pay for" because that's all I do, I can't tell when last I saw speeds above 256 for the past 3 weeks going on a month now.
Now some of you might be saying that, it's a line fault or some other hardware problem between here and there but I'm here to dispute that theory. I've called customer service and 115 so many times, I might was well have them on speed dial and might have spoken to every employee in the respective departments since I got this service. They've come to my house twice within this last 2 weeks, once to do testing and a second time to change out the cable running from the pole to where the box is located; and I wont go into how many times they've done that, let me just say, that If they keep doing that, the ppl on my road will assume that I'm hosting a exchange at my house.
Next step is to give you a little history on me, and why I'm frustrated. I'm currently working as a system administrator, and before that I was employed with an ISP, so the Internet and it's related products are kinda in my blood about now. At work I manage 2 Internet links, one fibre and the other a wireless link. Now I come home to a service that, realistically I expect atleast 300+kbps (since we all no ADSL isn't dedicated bandwidth. This last month, I'd be happier with dial-up, no joke, it'd move faster if you go bang for the buck. I've consistently seen speeds of 128/64, 128/96, 128/128, 128/160 and on a very damn good day I'll see 128/256 but that doesn't last more than 30 minutes before they reset the connection.
Once again, I'm a realist and I've been on both sides of the fence, so I know what to expect. So that leads me to one conclusion, C&W has obviously, and I say this with confidence, that they have over-subscribed their ADSL service . They market the product, the sell the product but they dont have the neccessary infrastructure (aka bandwidth) available to keep the service at an acceptable standard.
If you don't know already, services such as ISP's work on a ratio basis, what this means is that they calculate x amount of resources to x amount of customers, this applies to bandwidth and modem lines and some other stuff. A typical ratio is like 10:1, could be more or could be less, less is always better and more is always worse. Here's an example, Company X has 300 modem lines to facilitate 3000 customers, now that's a 10:1 ratio, they then calculate that at the busiest period they'll use 275 of those lines. So let's say they get greedy and try to squeeze a few extra customers here and there without building up their infrastructure. So soon they're at 4500 customers but have the same 300 lines, ratio is now 15:1...good for the bottom line but bad for the customer; as this ratio will mean that they'll be getting busy signals during peak periods.
Now the problem lies in the fact that C&W is still a monopoly type company in terms of broadband residential services, yes you have wireless and maybe cable (not sure if this is off the ground yet). So you are basically at their mercy unless you go back to dial-up.
So where does this leave ppl like myself who pay full price for a service that consistenly I'm getting less than 1/4 of the service, well within decent hours. Am I relegated to becoming a vampire, where I do all my browsing/work in the wee hours of the morning when the rest of the population sleeps. To me this is unacceptable, I know that all they care about is the bottom line and that at 1 second past the due date for bill payment, whether I got the service I paid for or not, they'll cut off my service without such as a second thought then charge me a inflated re-connection fee. Where's the justice in that.
All I can hope for is some decent competition will emerge with the coming of new fibre links into the island and that this will provide opportunity for new companys to provide a good service, where C&W has taken us for granted.
Maybe I'm ranting, or trying to beat a dead horse back to life, but what else can I do until there are viable options out there . I don't know if anyone can answer this question but I'll ask it anyway! Who has jurisdiction over disputes between a customer & C&W? Is it the O.U.R ? or is the customer left out in the cold?
Regards
PS...Sorry for the long *** post....just venting.