To be fair we have had some positive responses about BT’s service – three or four – but a lot of complaint. The observation we would make is that the further from an exchange the connection is, the worse the connection – landline and BB – and the worse the service, despite the valiant efforts of the engineers.
The question we asked was:
Your experience of BT’s network / service in our area. We’re particularly looking for feedback on BT’s phone service to assess it’s capacity to carry Next Generation Broadband
- We are the last house before Carry Farm, so >6miles from Millhouse. By telephone we have such poor bandwidth that a email is virtually impossible. Luckily we received a free satellite dish from Scottish Gov’t and get between 0.1 and 10 Bt/sec depending on other usage. Our BT telephone line was unrepaired for 2 months last winter and 1 month this winter! We desperately want the CBS broadband service as soon as possible; as much for the computer as for the G4 telephone for this whole area.
- The broadband is s disgrace with a top speed on a good day of . 47and we pay top rate
- It’s s joke really annoying
- Service is slow and erratic and speeds and reliability have plummeted the past six months. Calls to BT are met with an assurance that everything is testing ok and there is nothing to be done. Call quality and broadband speed are seasonal and suffer during holiday periods with more users and also in wet weather when the antiquated BT copper (& aluminium) in the village is damp.
- Very slow and now my phone line has a fault on it – can’t call out. BT says when they fix it the broadband will take days to get back to its original speed which is “dead slow and stop”
- But service is diabolical. Especially if there are line problems
- Extremely poor. 0.39mbps download speed, slow response time to problems, no suggestion of improvement in the future. Rural communities rely on broadband for business opportunities, but BT has no interest in providing adequate service.
- Currently have 0.5 meg broadband. This was as low as 0.2 for nearly 18 months recently. Long standing connection problems that engineers have put down to the poor state of the line. As it is a rural area it has been damaged many times e.g. drainage works, farming etc. the line only gets patched up and the numerous joins cause lots of issues especially after periods of heavy rain when water gets in. We have had 2 periods recently where we had no phone or broadband for over a month which has resulted in us contacting the BT chief exec to try and resolve.
- BT are hopeless to deal with when there is a fault Waste hours on the phone calls
- Very unreliable, have just been off for a week – I am on a fixed 1/2 mb line
- Good. No issue with phone service. Broadband service sufficient for streaming and video calling via BT.
- The bandwidth is unbearable.
- The phone service is good. what is lacking is the technical service as this goes to India and also the Broadband speed which is not acceptable at this day and age
- Bt service is limited to 0.5Mb/s at the exchange and 6 miles of a mix of copper and aluminium wire suspended through trees means it is constantly breaking down. In several places the cables have dropped to the ground. After getting on first name terms with all the engineers who tried to fix it over more than 30 call outs, I moved to an expensive but reliable satellite service which gives between 12 and 22 Mb/s.
- The broadband gives a top speed of 0.5mb. At the weekend it reduces significantly. Sometimes to the point that the speed test will not load!
- We get an average of around 2 Mbps download and 0.4 Mbps upload. The service often drops out and can be considered generally poor.
- Phone is crackly, bb is slow.
- We have lived here for 8 months and have no complaints regarding the BT phone line. However the ability of the call centre to deal with a recent request was amateurish at best diabolical at worst and I never received the callback I was promised to arrange for an engineer to visit.
- Have been complaining for over 12 years to BT/Outreach about intermittent broadband and more recently about continuing slow down in speed. As never use landline would be very happy for any option to never have to deal with BT again. As latest developments show, BT has no desire to help or sustain the community and now just sandbagging for its own ends, so we should certainly show them no loyalty. As with BREXIT – logical to be in control of one’s own destiny!
- BTs broad band is slow down here and kept breaking, We now use satellite broadband. The phone is OK but expensive compared to mobile but coverage is not good enough to let us drop BT.
- Currently unable to connect to BT network, despite having been able to receive four years earlier. There are three three residential sites on this estate plus 4 holiday homes. It has en extremely negative effect on guests and residents who use these properties, being unable to use their phones or having a reliable broadband connection. Residents of PA212AH need to be included in the future plan of the roll out of services, swiftly
- Adequate but slow in repairs and service. When there are problems difficult to get action
- Broadband service drops out constantly, our wireless music service is always going off.
- Phone service seems ok, its the broadband service is incredibly slow.
- Too slow for my needs
- We are currently in process of moving our home and businesses to this address. Other properties at this location are unable to get a working broadband connection and the telephone line is unreliable. This could make our move unviable.
- We are just about the maximum distance from our local telephone exchange at Kilchattan Bay. We do not have a lot of difficulty with telephone service but our broadband is dreadful – over three tests – max. download speed was 0.39mb/s and max. upload speed was 0.14mb/s. It is extremely disappointing that we will not benefit from the current super broadband proposals.
- Very poor network service
- slow & unreliable
- Dreadful. Extremely poor service and very long time to install. Less than 0.5meg sometimes . Had to go over to satellite .
- Phone works fine but broadband is so slow I don’t bother to use it to avoid the frustration !.
- Phone service is reasonable though does cut out from time to time in a storm. However internet is very patchy. At certain times it seems to cut out entirely and you have to reboot the router. This doesn’t seem to be related to how many people in the house are using the internet, more to when one assumes there is peak use-age in the area. Also it takes ages to download video, which, as my partner and I both work in TV, is a real problem. It means we cannot base ourselves in Tighnabruaich and work form there as we cannot be confident that we will be able to download edits of programmes so we can give our editing notes. Next generation broadband will enable us (and others like us) to stay and work in Tighnabruaich for a great deal of the time with the economic benefits to the local economy that would bring. And of course the benefits to ourselves.
- BT’s broadband service is slow and unreliable. Their response to phone and broadband service disruption is also slow, despite the fact that we pay business rates for our phone and broadband and should therefore receive a priority service. We run a chalet estate making on line enquiries and bookings important. We struggle to download and upload advertising material, respond promptly to enquiries and communicate with banks and government agencies, who now insist that everything from tax to official form filling is conducted on line. We would like to be in a position to provide WI-Fi to our 44 chalets but do not have sufficient backload to support an installation. Recently we have found that the lack of broadband has made our chalets difficult to sell.
- We have had a lot of problems sustaining our connection to the internet. Last time their engineer called to fix this which he did he said that our speed to the house was 2 while the speed from the BT router was 0.5 and that he ws not allowed to upgrade our speed as we were under an existing contract with BT until Sept this year . This seems to be nonsense to us as we were forced to sign with BT to get the new faster connection about 18 months ago- which never materialised. No chance of Netflix or streaming anything and the service is so slow. This should be a fast business connection for which we pay their standard charge whci I resent
- Phone line is generally ok but have issues with the broadband speed fluctuating from slow to very slow
- Totally crap service sometimes off altogether for up to 3 wks at a time in bad weather.Wont listen and insisting faults in home equipment -always wrong
- cannot get broadband from BT and they have no plans to connect me.
- Our telephone line is a spur off the main line and is a) too old to carry any broadband speed and b) we are too far away from the local exchange (6 miles) to expect any satisfactory speed even if our phone line were upgraded.
- Previously had a phone line installed from BT. Service was unreliable for voice. After checking on the broadband checker site, it was indicated that broadband may work in the area. After installation I had zero success (unsurprisingly) and had horrendous problems trying to get BT tocancel the order. As I need a broadband and really a voice service (cell phone is adequate), I had the line cancelled and uninstalled. My experience is tha quality of the oine and number of spliced connections from Millhouse to Ardlamont makes broadband connectivity extremely unlikely. This is why the CBS bid is so desirable.
- I don’t have a landline and from talking to local residents it seems pointless to get one as the service is so bad. Mobile reception is patchy and very problematic
- no mobile reception at all – which severely limits our visits as a family to our holiday home as I need to be available by telephone every second weekend for work reasons
- I have just recently upgraded to infinity as it’s now available where I am. However – this is not available to all in this small community.