Tiscali hits 'undo' after bandwidth throttling chokes iTunes

@AC

We don't want free internet. We want the service we thought we were getting when we signed up - you know, the "unlimited" thing.

Tiscali can sell whatever product they like, and traffic shape, port block, throttle, or DPI as they choose. What they CAN'T do, and what they are currently doing, is to sell a package that looks like 8Mbit/sec, no cap, and actually is something else entirely. That is what all the screaming and whining is about.

AOL UK dead slow too

Anyone else experencing dead slow AOL UK (i.e. provided for by Carphone Warehouse) Broadband in the last week or two?

This is getting beyond a joke.

COD 4 on PS3 has been affected by this for a while too

http://www.infinityward.com/community/forum/index.php?topic=9245.0

I have asked for my MAC - any suggestions as to who is best / cheapest at providing unlimed / no port blocking / traffic management etc - was looking at this lot as they promise "No network contention, no port blocking, traffic shaping or bandwidth throttling: -

http://www.idnet.net/solutions/homeofficebroadband.jsp

Is there a catch?

The old adage, you get what you pay for...

Reading the horror stories over the Tiscali (and others) with there port blocking and traffic shaping got me thinking about my connection.

Been with BT Internet since 1995 and not once have I had any downtime or blocked ports. Torrents come down at 800kbs depending on seeds, Downloads from http sites are similar.

I actually have to limit d/l speeds at my end so I can use the connection for other things. I do hear them slated by some too, but it is down to individual experience with an ISP.

Fair enough im on the top package, but you pay £12 or so a month to Tiscali, then really what do you actually expect?

If your connection and speeds really make that much of a difference to the way you work and play, then im sorry but you have to pay for it.

Me I don't grudge a penny of it as I prefer to pay to get what I want and require from my ISP.

It's a problem everywhere

This all sounds sooo familiar. About a year ago the French ISP "Free" 'upgraded' some equipment. Result - forums full of people complaining that their broadband was slower than dialup. Free denied any port shaping of course, despite the fact that ordinary http/smtp traffic was fine, but anything else got zero throughput.

Unfortunately for a dozen people in my office alone "anything else" included SSL email, VPN, etc.; all the things needed to telecommute. It took Free *3 months* to finally react, which they did by blaming France Telecom. I hung in there, mainly because none of the alternatives offered the free US phone calls which is also very useful for telecommuting, but was on the point of biting the bullet and giving up when it finally got better. It's still crap, a month ago my ADSL was offline for 4 days, and they only returned my support call a week after it was fixed, but at least I get most of my 1Mbit/s, most of the time. No idea if P2P and torrents work, I've never tried them.

I know that you get what you pay for, but I live in the sticks are there aren't any reputable ISPs who'll let me pay them for decent service out here. My only real alternative is to go back to ISDN :(

Fradulent? Well, you might say that, but the last person who accused Free of fraud in an online forum got a lawsuit slapped on them, so I couldn't possibly comment, and remain:

AC

"Without Let or Hindrance"

Which part of "Without Let or Hindrance" do these clowns not understand?

Talking of Unlimited

Here is a Petition to stop ISP's using the phrase unlimited, unless of course it truly is.........

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ULInternet/

Still no Napster - or anything much else

Well surprise, surprise I couldn't log on to Napster yesterday evening. I understand the concept of line contention, I understand that I'll get the service I pay for. My Pipex 'to go' account has a 15Gb per month limit, my typical usage is < 5 Gb. Yet, all of a sudden, I'm permantently on the naughty pipe, despite the fact I don't use P2P, one or two programmes a month are downloaded from BBC iPlayer, but even that's configured to downlaod only, no uploads. Oh well I wonder how long it'll take to get a MAC from Tiscali :-/

Don't tell!

stop it! when will people who have found a great ISP realise that the more people they tell about it the worse it will get?

My ISP is great, but if I told you who it was I would have to kill you.

Really not good

As an ex-Homechoice customer currently still on the old network I'm viewing this with absolute horror. We're all scheduled to be migrated onto Tiscali proper next month, and IPTV down the phone line is the only digital TV channel option I have.

If this is the future I'll be re-commissioning that second line I have lying dormant in the back bedroom and paying for ADSL 2+ from Be. You simply cannot go backwards with Internet speeds without really getting frustrated.

Paris because she's looking tearful, an emotion I may be sharing in a few weeks time.

Tiscali? ... only ever been mediocre ... getting worse

I have been with Tiscali for just over a year now. Supply of modem and initial connection were fine and initially it was OK, although evening speeds were noticeably slower and browsing became flakey.

But gradually the service deteriorated ... slow speeds, disconnections, mail servers unavailable. At the end of May 2007, when mail failed for several days due to Tiscali's inept handling of a SPAM storm, we were told that e-mail was an "extra" and that we shouldn't rely on it. That's probably one of the few things they have been honest about ... lots of my e-mails disappeared into the ether.

Lately (since Christmas 2007), the service has been even worse for me with frequent disconnections and then inability to get authenticated for some time. I really couldn't recommend Tiscali to anyone and it's time for me to leave.

Another petition ...

Has this petition been mentioned yet? ...

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/broadbandripoff/

RE: ooohh the little tinkers.

"My download speeds from Napster using my 'pipex' ADSL line were down to a whopping 3kb/s yesterday afetrnoon"

You should be ringing them up to thanks them - Napster sucks!! :)

On a serious note, this wreaks of the crap I went through with PlusNet a few years ago... one day my usenet downloads went from 4mb to 4k.... when I rang them they said I had downloaded more than 1GB of data via usenet and that I was now on a silver service until the next billing period - which was about 4 weeks away. Then they claimed I was making the speeds up, and I should have been getting at least a couple of mb, then they claimed I should go with a third party usenet provider (I already was). In the end, I left - at a cost of over £200 because they had reset my contract when I switched my line from my old house to the new.

This is why I now pay for decent ISP's... well, semi decent. Be have been having some router problems recently too.... might be time to look around again!

Don't know what the fuss is about...

Tiscali's T&C's clealy state what the FUP covers - anything between 6pm&11pm... (okay, admittedly, they don't define exactly what heavy usage is, and if you ask them, they give you a BS answer along the lines of, "We can't define it exactly as it changes from day to day..." but you know that during their peak hours, you stick to web browsing and emails!)

If you're a heavy downloader, and I average about 20-30GB a day, Tiscali actually have a pretty decent policy, "Steer clear of our peak times, and we'll leave you in peace." For £18 a month, for a decent 8Mb line, I sure as hell ain't complaining with that.

I've been with Demon (who up until they upgraded their lines back in 2006 to the 8Mb and consequently changed their T&C's were pretty decent as well - but now cap you at 60GB, thereafter throttling you down to 128kbps during their peak periods) who're overpriced have crap customer service and nowhere near as reasonable fair use policy. I've been with BT, who quite frankly couldn't find their a*** from their elbow. And through my clients, I've seen a hell of a lot of problems with other providers as well (Eclipse probably being the worst one I've had to deal with.)

So seriously, stick to downloading outside Tiscali's peak hours, and they're actually pretty decent - the odd screw-up taken into account (not telling anyone their emails were disappearing into a black hole and throttling legit programs.)

- Happy Little Smurf

RE:RE: ooohh the little tinkers.

>>"My download speeds from Napster using my 'pipex' ADSL line were down to a whopping 3kb/s yesterday afetrnoon"

>>You should be ringing them up to thanks them - Napster sucks!! :)

Serious question : is there actually an alternative 'all you can eat' download service available in the UK, covering most mainstream labels / artists? With two teenaged daughters whose musical tastes change every 5 minutes,10 quid a month rental to Napster is actually a pretty cost effective solution for me. Plus they let me use it sometimes ;-)

Napster still seem to have an image problem, the majority of Pipex / tiscali "support" staff I've spoken to in the last few days seemed to think Napster is still some 'naughty' P2P service.