Tiscali executes stealth LLU migrations

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From The Register

Tiscali executes stealth LLU migrations
By Chris Williams
Published Monday 28th January 2008 12:28 GMT
Thousands of ex-Pipex customers have been suffering unexplained interruptions in their broadband service in recent weeks, as their new provider Tiscali stealthily works to cut costs.
People suffering a broadband outage as a result of the work are told by customer services, recently outsourced overseas, that their line is undergoing "essential engineering work". One Reg reader was initially told the downtime was BT's fault.
Top broadband watchers Thinkbroadband.com blew away that figleaf last Monday.
In fact, Tiscali itself is performing mass migrations to its unbundled network in order to save money, as it bids this year to turn a profit for the first time ever.
Tiscali paid £210m for 570,000 customers of Pipex and its subsidiary ISPs last year. A source at one of the acquired ISP brands said the new owners have ordered a focus on customer volume rather than the quality service it has been known for.
"The logic is that we'll save more money placing customers on the Tiscali backhaul per month than we will lose from customers migrating away," he said.
"So far we've had our SMTP Servers replaced with Tiscali's Iron Ports and now we've been forced to replace our DNS Servers with Tiscali's."
He also claimed that Tiscali has indicated it wants to place a full block on peer-to-peer applications at peak times in the evening.
The tens of thousands of ex-Pipex customers affected are not being told about the move because ISPs "do network migrations all the time", a Tiscali spokeswoman said. She denied the claims that former Pipex customers will get an inferior service on Tiscali's network - a natural worry given its reputation for strict bandwidth-throttling and data allowances.
When done right, unbundled lines offer some of the fastest and most reliable ADSL service in the market. O2's Be and Sky's LLU broadband offering are often praised.
Tiscali provides broadband for some of the lowest prices around, however, and as a result service is inevitably restricted to cut costs. Pipex traffic will now be throttled (or "managed", according to taste) by Tiscali's Cisco P-Cube bandwidth-throttling hardware in its central infrastructure.
Tiscali rejected concerns. "Pipex (including Nildram and F2S) was using traffic-shaping technology also, and we will be applying the same profiles they had in place prior to migration," the spokeswoman said.
The Cisco gear has caused Tiscali users problems in the last two weeks because of a botched software update that cut off iTunes and other popular internet services. Tiscali's broadband support forum suggests many are still suffering very slow speeds.
She said they would be offered cheaper "Tiscali-type" services later this year. The mass migrations are being done to offer people better line speeds and reliability as well as to save Tiscali money, she insisted, and speed complaints have dropped. So why not tell them about it?
An Ofcom spokeswoman said it's unlikely Tiscali would be contravening any regulations if the quality of the connection does drop. If it is changing the service described in Pipex's broadband contracts, it must give customers 30 days' notice and allow them to switch away. However, such agreements are typically carefully-worded so that line speed and data allowances are not guaranteed.
Tiscali is currently the only ISP with its own LLU infrastructure as well as customers served via BT's IPstream and DataStream wholesale products. The primary goal of the mass migration programme is to cut out IPstream provision, which is the most costly for the firm. If Tiscali hasn't unbundled the local exchange they will be shifted to DataStream service.
Earlier this week, the man in charge of Tiscali's Italian parent company said that profit is his number one priority for 2008. He also hinted that a sell-off of its UK broadband business is likely in the next two years. ®

Hello all,

A tale of woe :

On 19 Jan I lost my connection and had to endure on 3 successive days 3 x 1 hour being on hold while waiting for technical support to sort out the problem. Finally after 10 days the connection was re-established after a visit by an engineer to the local exchange.

I believe this was due to the incomplete ( incompetent) installation of the LLU equipment in the local exchange.
( I am on the 01968 exchange : Penicuik )


3 days after the line went down I spoke to customer support lady who told me that there is some maintenance work going on in my exchange and my connection should be back that evening . It eventually took 7 more days.

ON 1st Feb Pipex is changing to a 0871 number for technical support ( 10 p/min) which includes calls to report a line fault which is their problem.

I checked out a number of ISPs and had them test the line and decided for adsl24 .

Start of this week I requested a MAC code from Pipex in order to migrate to adsl24 and was told that it takes 5 days.

It now transpires that pipex has in the meantime carried out a LLU meaning that I am now required to pay a £ 40 reconnection charge to adsl24 .

I have been a pipex customer for over 4 years now (on solo 1000) . In my opinion Tiscali / pipex's action constitute an un acceptable change in Terms and Conditions and although I should therefore be able to leave the contract without penalty, the action ( converting to LLU) by pipex now penalises me to the tune of £40.

The connection speed by the way is absolutely rubbish after the change .

Any comments or similar observations out there


Regards
Robert

Exactly the same things happened to me. Pipex told me they had a power failure and that was why i lost my connection for 2 days. Cost a fortune calling their useless numbers. My connection speed has now halved since i was moved to LLU. This should not be allowed!!!!!!!!!

to day is my 19th day without broadband. Firstly I was told it could be my equipment, so I spent a whole morning with an IT guy who brought router etc.. to my home and by passed all my equipment. He then took away my router and set it up on his pc it worked fine. I then waited on line for pipex tech support for 50 minutes to be told BT had been working on my exchange and they would raise a fault. They continued with this lie for 13 whole days and would have kept the lie going only for the fact I was doing my own communicating with BT. British telecom were more than happy to talk with me, even though Pipex said they wouldn't as I wasn't they're customer. Well I am a household customer, so BT checked my line twice they got one of their broadband experts to have a chat with us and when that helped in no way they sent one of their very helpful engineers to my home, who confirmed what I already knew Pipex were not being truthful with me. Throughout this time I have made numerous phone calls to Pipex and can only say the customer care is non existent. They're standard office joke is put it in an e-mail, yes I'd really love to guys and ha ha, lets see who has last laugh. On Monday evening my husband called tech services again who started on the BT lie, he stopped them mid sentence and told him BT had been at our home that day. Pipex Tech guy then comes clean this has been there fault all along they hoped they could bluff the customers and have it up and running in no time. Sorry guys I noticed, 19 days without broadband is a hell of a long time to be without a service I am paying for. O and by the way they don't respond to e-mail, I believe they're company policy is ignore the customer at all cost! I have now requested my mac code as bum scratch and botch-it in technical services are unwilling or unable to deal with the problem. I will keep you posted.

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