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[HPsauce]

Is there any way for a non Be customer to check the current service status in their geographical locality?

What exchange are you on?

[orainsear]

What exchange are you on?

Newcastle Staffs, (WMNEW)

[HPsauce]

As far as I can see there are no complaints at all from that part of the world in the Be Forums.
There are general backbone capacity issues further north that Be are working on and of course there are local problems that pop up and generally get fixed sooner or later.

[kitz]

I must admit I havent had chance to visit the internal Be forum of late..  but when I was last there, most of the problems seemed to be either around London or Manchester?

[TABower]

I would like to say that a lot of the problems seem to have been worked around till the full upgrade has been done.
I still get the odd blip but on the whole I am very happy with the service Be* provide.
Especially now they are trying to keep the customer (ops sorry Members) moor informed about things.

[BritBrat]

I have just moved to O2/BE Access and last Saturday night it was terrible.

Lots of posts on the problems on the O2 forum, but they say they are doing upgrades over the next 6 weeks.

bethere.co.uk network status page


I changed my IP to a 9 number from a 7 number and so far it has been a lot better.

[kitz]

hmm... interesting you must be on IPStream - because if youre on the Be LLU network you cant access the BTw speedtester and Be/02 LLU dont have IPprofiles.

[HPsauce]

"O2 Access" is the clue. 

See: http://broadband.o2.co.uk/home/findmore.jsp

[orainsear]

My exchange has started accepting connections again and I'm seriously considering switching.

A few questions for anyone with be broadband -

What are customer, or more importantly technical, support like and are they based in the U.K.?

Is it possible to communicate with techies in the be forums should you have any issues and how receptive are they to helping?

What sort of ping times are achievable?

Have the DNS issues been resolved?

What are the different user selectable profiles, and is it possible via these any profiles (e.g. gaming mode) to disable impulse noise protection?

[HPsauce]

Tech support are actually in Bulgaria, they're fine (certainly compared to most ISP's).
Forums are VERY active and tech support staff and mangement are in there and responsive.
Dunno about pings (don't care) but I get 7ms to the BBC.
DNS is fine now, and has been for some time.
INP can be dealt with by ticket, user can control interleaving and target margin (3, 6 or 9dB).

Over to Kitz for further comments (I'm in a hurry!)  

[kitz]

>> What are customer, or more importantly technical, support like and are they based in the U.K.?

Echoing HP's comments - their CS is one of the more knowledgeable.  Theyve always been pleasant and helpful and do appear to know the stuff they should.  There's been just one occasion where I struggled to understand an accent, but all the other times have been fine. Tickets are answered promptly and they also send text alerts.

>> Is it possible to communicate with techies in the be forums should you have any issues and how receptive are they to helping?

A few of their reps visit their forums, theres a couple who are very helpful and monitor for issues.
CS seem ok and they do all they can, but a small gripe is that sometimes they seem to be a tad slow sometimes updating the Service Status for Network Issues etc.

>> What sort of ping times are achievable?

I'm up in the NW nr Blackpool -

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.254.252] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 212.58.254.252: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=247
Reply from 212.58.254.252: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=247
Reply from 212.58.254.252: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=247
Reply from 212.58.254.252: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=247

Ping statistics for 212.58.254.252:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 13ms

As you can see I average 13/14ms.  These are about the best I see in this area from all the ISPs.

[waltergmw]

Can anybody say how well they manage to interface with BT Openreach ?

Kind regards,
Walter

[kitz]

I've no first hand experience, but from what I have seen they do appear to move stuff between BTw just as good as any other ISP. 
Their facilities will be just the same as any other ISP, but because their CS appear a bit more clued up than some of the 'larger ISPs' they do seem willing to assist and be able to identify when there is a problem.

From what I can make out, for a long while they even sucked up the £150+ fee, but (understandably) are just reconsidering this now..  which I feel is fair enough.
There's certain ISPs whom I personally consider good..  and put it this way, certain LLU providers were available at this exchange were available, but until Be came here then I wouldn't move from IPStream (I paid xtra for 20:1).  This is entirely my own choice but the only LLU providers for my own line that I would consider are Be & UKO.
UKO came to my exchange just a month or so before Be and I almost went with them, the only thing that was deterring me with UKO was the annual contract and then once I knew Be was on the way, I waited.  I have spoken with UKO though on behalf of others and their CS is also very good. (separate CS from sky).

The only reservation that I had about Be is that this particular exchange for some reason is well known to have contention issues regardless of ISP & LLU, and Be can sometimes be a bit slow about the network side..  therefore an annual contract is a deterrent to me... but I thought I could cope with 3 months.

[UncleUB]

Kitz,I have read your comments with great interest.I know you have mentioned Be as being your isp and are very pleased with them,would you say O2 are along the same lines as Be,or are they totally different in support etc.

[HPsauce]

for a long while they even sucked up the £150+ fee, but (understandably) are just reconsidering this now.. 

I believe the policy now (for some time actually) is that customer within the first few months of a contract (6 or 9 maybe) will be asked to pay up front for an SFI visit, getting a refund if "appropriate".
The main problem I see with that is the rather vague definition of what an SFI will do and what skills they arrive with, plus the limited time (2 hours?) they are given on site.