Now my mobile provider has BT at the back end as well as my broadband provider. Again. We could have 100Mb ethernet to the doorstep if we wanted, like in Japan and South Korea, but noooo, BT don't wanna do that. 21CN is the network for the 21st century, or rather 2001.

I use Virgin for my mobile, who use T-Mobile's network, and I'm fed up with their poor coverage. My house in central London frequently has 0 or 1 'bars', and I find the same all over the place...

...are you sure about that?

I bluntly told BT to rip the copper land line from my house after 7 months of them pissing around with my ADSL. I now have a T-Mobile branded E220 USB 3.5G modem, and BT's got involved!

As I am sure many people are aware BT used to be British Telecom....I think a more apt name would be British Twats.

I changed to T-Mobile to get away from BTand guess what...? Stuck in an 18-month contract with BT. Isn't there a Who song about this sort of thing - "Won't get fooled again"? Oh yes, we will.

More crapness about BT!

Theyre honestly the absoulte worst company i've ever had the mispleasure of dealing with. I'm still TRYING to become a customer with them - even agreeing to pay all of the extortionate 'new line' fees (it's not a new line but for the full story look at my blog www.lewty.org.uk/blog)

They really don't want my money!

The telecoms industry in this country is monopolised by BT, the entire company wants broken up and sold off to competing bidders, then, with real land-line competition we will progress with technology and price.

Dave

Hilarity should ensue. Tell Simon Travaglia to start outlining the BOFH stories... BT is going to handle T-mobile's backhaul?? I can see it now. Site goes offline due to backhaul failure. T-mobile NOC slave calls up BT and "Oh, sorry, we're having a fault. Your estimated date of resolution is 12 days."

If you get crap customer service from BT, all you need to do is mail their CEO directly (I'm not sure of the address but it should be easy to find, maybe on the Radio 4 "You and Yours" web site, as they were banging on about this a while back.) by all accounts he makes sure that things get sorted. Very fast.

I can imagine the conversation in the board room:

CEO: Someone called Dave has mailed me because he can't become one of our customers. Please can you tell me why not and why he feels necessary to mail me about it. (Liberally insert Fs and Cs, directed at the board)

Board: Err... Um... Err, sorry sir <tugging of forelock>, we'll get right on it.

Dave: Gets phone line BTQ.

Dave, you're not quite right about the telecoms indsutry in the UK. BT no longer have a monolopy and OFCOM is making damn sure that they can in now way HAVE a monolopy.

As the infrastructure part of BT has been separated out, the retail and wholesale parts of the company now have just as little access to engineers etc as other suppliers.

You are, however, right about them being useless f***ers. I've had plenty of insight into the workings of BT and it has always shocked me. The issue is that it's a massive corporation and nothing is simple - even if it should be! They will always be the same in business terms, even if they DO progress technologically.

WHY they still use sh!tty copper pairs for ADSL when fibre is so much more efficient is something that forever bugs me. Even with 21CN they have no plans to take fibre further than DPs [distrobution points], which means you'll still have that piece of copper wire serving your home. Pointless.

@Ed - I'm not surprised you have poor coverage in central London. Too many buildings close together! If you knew how much planning is involved just to get one tiny mast erected, you'd thank your lucky stars you have ANY bars in a dump like that...

Ive always said that if I had the choice of a no phone line or have BT bill me, id go without, besides my faithful tmobile can be used for to up to 2mb broadband.

I would imagine tmobile go downhill from here on in.

Now im stuck with having the choice of having a tmobile or no phone at all, ill go with the no phone option.

BT are the most diabolical bunch of goons I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

They have their dirty nose into everything

This 21CN stuff is pure hype. Many telcos are rolling out next generation networks. In fact, many of the smaller unbundled providers are already on full NGNs. BT is simply using this as a marketing tool to make it sound like they're uber-high tech, which they're clearly not.

From an end user's perspective this stuff will make very little difference, all it does is make the BT backbone and local infrastructure more efficient and allows them to save costs and remove some of the infrastructural bottlenecks in their network. It's really not all that exciting, yet they're going on about it as if it were some massive step forward.

Most of the more modern and better designed local exchange equipment is highly modular anyway and can be adapted to live on an IP network. It will mean some change of local equipment where it can't cope, but it's not going to be anything as dramatic as they're making out.

I know BT aren't great, but I'd rather deal with them any day than have anything to do with NTL...or Orange.

I aged years whilst trying to get NTL to do ANYTHING. It was the worst service I've had from any company of any type. BT are just mildly annoying in comparison (and their gear works).

A friend of mine was with Orange. It was so bad his ears fell off. OK I made that up but it was bad. Real bad.

in my experience BT have always ripped off the british public. It's not just that they're inept, but they are deliberately extortionate. They had ADSL for 5 years before they went public so they could sell their massively overpriced and underspecced 'highway', and even when they did bring out adsl they still secretly capped more than half their customers by 50% for over 6 months before Offtel (as they used to be called) caught them and made them uncap, but they didn't even get a slap on the wrist.

the biggest problem for Bulldog customers wasn't bulldog, but BT deliberately screwing Bulldog around. Telewest used to be a real threat to BT, offering a cheaper and superior service, but then they got greedy and put their prices up so there really was no advantage, and since Virgin bought out Telewest many people have reported a 10% drop in conncetion speed.

I avoid BT like the plague, now I'll have to change my mobile service from T-mobile... but who the hell to. Are there any reliable mobile proiders left in the UK ?

You're teasing us, the real story is BT's change to its 21CN plans:

"The network will, no surprise here, be compatible with BT’s 21st Century Network, which at some point will break out of its trial comfort zone of Swansea."

I thought the trial was in Cardiff

"T Mobile has dodged a massive investment in Telco kit" - of course they have - they've dodged any investment at all for at least 3 years because BT won't deliver anything until then !!

In the meantime their revenue to BT for lease lines will increase massively to cope with the increase in data demand and/or their customers will get a crap service - Idiots !!

T Mobile should stop taking those drugs they hand out to those kids on their adverts !!

In a previous incarnation T-mobile were 1-2-1

Or as we knew them in our family Wonky-One

This was due to my brother owning one of their phones 'cos it was cheap,- if he turned his head while talking to someone, the call would be dropped.

There is the Theory of the Moebius where a twist in the fabric of space....