The Underscore Archives

>  > USELESS.   I just switched to BT OpenLegs, from a Demon Smurftime account,
>  > and I must say that I am *not* impressed.   DNS is flaky, support is
>  > terrible.   (I'm on the Business 500 tariff)

But what are your options? I've got blueyonder HSI and while I am 
happy with the transport (I get the advertised bandwidth, DNS does 
not seem to be a problem, even tech support answers phone reasonably 
promptly) I am very unimpressed with some aspects of the service. 
Worst offender is SMTP delays. And I'm even suspecting email going 
astray completely. They claim the delays are due to virus filtering, 
but given that they have never worked out how to get their newservers 
working correctly in the last 9 months (I gave up and use a 3rd 
party) I don't have any confidence in their tech abilities.

I just wish I could buy access to a reliable SMTP host so my outgoing 
mail was more reliable.

The other day outgoing mail failed completely. It turned out that 
they had some new dynamic domain ranges that were not working 
properly, but after about an hour on the phone to tech support I had 
not got them to admit to a problem, despite the fact I was telling 
them that I could not ping any of their servers (they wanted me to 
use Outlook Express, which I don't have installed).

But what are my options? It sounds like both broadband providers 
available to me are as bad as each other. At least I'm better off 
than a mate near Cannock Chase to whom BT quoted over 2 grand to 
install ISDN... and although NTL's cable is available to houses 500m 
away NTL can't say if they'll ever extend it down his road!

F.

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Fraser Stephens                  07966 412891 / +44 (0)117 946 6958
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