[access-uk] BT or not to BT

Hi all,

Looks like we're going to be leaving BT for Virgin Media.

They can't get this broadband sorted.
We've had 5, yes 5 engineers out at the house. Out of all but one new what she, was up to. They constantly wanted to measure signal, even though yesterday morning a job was specifically booked to measure throughput. The engineer who was booked for the job told me, 
" I wouldn't know anything about that"

When I explained that wholesale and retail couldn't even ping me he said,
"I'll get my collegue to call round as my wee XP laptop wouldn't be powerful enough for that". 

What sortive clowns are these guys employing?
There's been one gentleman in BT though that I have to take my hat off to. He's a young fella like myself and we've screamed at engineers together. 

We've had the phone line isolated and the modem/router directly wired to it.
We've had battery cleared off the line, then two weeks later a lady engineer came and actually did clear the battery her male collegue was meant to have cleardd. 

We've had a new card, supposably fitted in the D Slam, (Exchange).
4pm hits and we drop to 40k for all downloads inside the UK servers, 19K or below for outside.
I've been running speed tests and I'm coming back with 1700k out of a possible 8128k. We're in a good area, close to the exchange, (around 1500metres), and we recieve the full 8128 signal.
The place over there is a shambles. I'm frankly pissed off by the lack of knowledge their engineers have, this is compounded by them attempting to hide behind jargon. 

My XP laptop isnt' powerful enough to try and see if I can ping you....

He didn't have a clue what ping was!
Fair enough, alot of people I'm mailing this to might not. This guy's a field engineer for a broadband internet service provider!
He also tryed to give me BS about signal to noise ratio, and like with the other gentleman I explained about Shannon's theary that's used to formulate this. 

Do these clowns talk this way to all home end users?
Anyways, we're paying these jokers £52 a month for really crappy 8MB service plus all inclusive telephone calls to LAN lines in the UK.
I'm going to subscribe to £39 a month 20MB cable broadband, plus the phone calls from Virgin Media.
I've been told by a technician in BT, (naming no names), that he's on it at home and he really gets the speeds that are promised.
This guy's good and I trust his judgement. Come on, anything has to be better than this rubbish from BT!
I'm tired of arguing, researching and learning about DSL service and how it works so I could force the engineers who did do work when they came out to do what they where and are being payed to do!
We could go for another DSL provider but, yes there's a 50-50 chance it'll be fine, even if it's using BT lines as they're testing fine.
I really think some routing table at least had went wrong somewhere on the local network.
I dont' want to be writing another email though like this in a months time because another one wont' listen. Let's isolate it completely and not use phone lines or broadband over them. 

On that, anyone got any decent Linksys cable router recommendations?
I sold my WRT54G thinking this was going to be great with BT and am back in the market for a wireless router that works with cable modems. N technology is a must. I'm sure netgear and D Link are quite nice these days along with Belcon but I've always used Linksys and I like they're web utility. 

I'll have a look at Linksys site but anything to look for would be handy.

Thanks for listening to my tails of woe.
My last piece of advice, educate yourselves or find someone who is more technically minded to take charge because what I've experienced is that they will hide behind anything they can including outsourced help desks. They will blame everythign on you, I've had three routers and three computers tested here.
I've just decided 8MB isnt' worth this hassle when i can go to Virgin and woe be tide the first manager in BT who trys to tell me that they dont' promise 8MB again!
I know they don't! But 40k and below is not an acceptible level of service on the low end of the scale!
My suspection is that it's too costly to send field engineer's out and delay tactics may be being applyed in the gise of support. 


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