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:

Service Name Service Speed Cost - Line Rental Cost - Charge for Service Cost - Total
BT Anytime 56k [I get about 2.6k d/l speed on avg] 9.99 UKP/month 14.99 UKP/month 24.98 UKP/month
BT Surftime 56k Nil - included in Service 14.99 UKP/month 14.99 UKP/month
NTL World 256k Not relevant - not a phone line 24.99 UKP/month 24.99 UKP/month

Let's put this in perspective:



Gary (-;

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

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

Gary (-;
<chunky@icculus.org>


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