Reader responses to "Broadband Problems"
18/02/08 21:46 Filed in: Reader Response
From B...
First TSTT. I have had a fast TSTT dsl line for some time but in recent months [quite a few] it has become extremely unreliable. When you use e-mail for business applications as our firm does then reliability, more than speed, is paramount.
In recent months the e- mail environment has become exceedingly unreliable with possibly as many as 25% of e-mails not getting through. This is quite dangerous because when you think your communications have gone through you may not even get to know if they have arrived or not. Chances are, these days, is that they haven’t.
This really makes the use of e-mail as a business tool for communications questionable. Another problem in recent times is that the system just goes down – maybe ten times a day! Look that sort of service is totally unacceptable in the first world. Remember that is what we are striving to become. Reliability in the first world is measured in ‘nines’ – like 99.99% reliability.
In Trinidad is probably somewhere around 75% these days. So, when it comes to e-mail, while speed is important – reliability is paramount. Someone needs to explain this to TSTT. It really comes down to an attitude about ‘service’ as opposed to ‘sales’. So as TSTT pursues the holy grail of kilobytes we should remind them of these basic needs we, the customers, have.
So hungry is TSTT to ensure market share in the quest for speed they will pay for huge newspaper advertisements whipping up a frenzy appetite for speed at the blink of an eye that they will ignore their own customers who have paid for dsl lines for years without even offering them preferential terms to convert from dsl to blink. And when they actually get around to providing you the blink service your mail will probably shut down completely. Why?
Because TSTT is not really interested in service – just your sale – you, as a customer, must now spend hours on the phone trying to get the service, which is all you really want. You will be shunted around from India to a whole bunch of people who are trained to be polite but who actually do not help you at all – though they all promise to help because that is what they know you want to hear.
Eventually, if you are really persistent and enterprising you will get a number of a local guy in the field who is the guy you really need to speak to – he is the guy that can actually help you. But then he has to run a whole series of test – some of these tests are done by different departments. First they have to test the line. Then they change the router.
Then they have to check the exchange ports. Then they have to help you reset the router. You ask yourself – did anyone bother to think this through? FLOW is not much different. They advertise sales. Try and call them. No there is nothing wrong with your phone.
(Response from Rhea Yawching... Yes we still continue to face this problem especially over the last 2 months when thousands were trying to subscribe to the new movies and sports packages. Right now we are waiting on our telephony service to get up and running and then we will be launching a new number with our own new lines.)
I learnt a little trick – dial all but the last number and hold it for about 30 seconds before completing the number (RY...never heard of this) with luck you might get through– then you have to get through the dial this number, then that extension – eventually they give you an appointment to inspect the premises – “December 04 in the afternoon”. But do they come? No. Try calling them again? Get the drift yet? It’s the same story.
LISA is different. You do get service here. They do turn up when they say they will. You do get a dedicated broadband speed that is ideal for an office situation. They do install a demo to let you try their service. Then you have to reset all your settings. Only to discover the cost of get a reasonably fast speed that is needed for a modern office situation where you need to upload/ download large files to extranets. The price is exorbitant. What a pity.
This could have been a solution but can you afford it? Well this is my story. I take the time and trouble on this Christmas morning because I would really like to see this attention to sales rather than service end it reminds me too much of the cell phone service. No joy for many this Christmas!
From V...
At the office -in Woodbrook- we've had for a couple years now, TSTT's fastest available business connection- 1.5 mb. It worked as advertised most of the time, topping out at 1.3mb. We switched to TSTT from Carib- Link's wireless service which was giving too much trouble for too long. As with everyone we were excited about the new broadband services that rolled out, and signed up online immediately to "switch" to blink's service.
We were going to go with a business package that was faster but cheaper than our existing one. We spoke to our corporate rep but she said that our area wasn't as yet Blink enabled so we sould have to wait a couple weeks. A week or so after we spoke to the rep our connection went dead for 4 days straight after a period of unusually spotty service.
Calling support only put me through the same script that they follow each time, and ended with the (local) support tech saying that they would have to talk with their technical people to solve the problem.
I kept calling and was finally told that they were in the process of switching networks and that we wouldn't have service for 4 days (including Sat and Sun). Could you believe that? No warning, nothing. Typical TSTT right? They knew all along what the problem was.
A couple weeks after that I noticed our speeds increased dramatically. 3.5- 4MB downloads was now the norm. I contacted Blink again and they still maintained that our area wasn’t yet Blink enabled. It has been about 2 months now that we’ve we have had our 3.5mb to 4mb connection while still signed on to our original 1.5mb high speed package.
Normally that would be a good thing but the problem is that we’re still paying the higher price that we originally signed on to. So we have Blink Broadband (it seems) but paying the old higher price. The service itself? Pretty good I think. We would get the occasional blackouts but it doesn’t last for long, a few minutes max. With Azureus I’ll get 400-500k downloads. Upload is about 65/75k.
The best results on a speed test I’ve had is 4.2mb down 660k up Flow is always an option but we’re a bit wary about their being new, and would probably wait a few months until they’ve stabilized their systems and tech staff to really consider it. (RH...we have extremely good levels of stability in our systems right now, and constantly improving. Where we need improvement is the quantity and quality of our help desk people who are bombarded by “newness” questions not even related to the connection, but the internet / computer stuff in general.)
So that’s my broadband experience.
(addendum) By a strange coincidence, on the very day i emailed you, I finally received a response from our service rep as to whether we had unknowingly been switched to Blink. She said that indeed we had been switched to Blink, and that we would be given a rebate on the excess paid from the time it was implemented. So that chapter ends.
From F...
Here's my TSTT Blink story. I hope it helps you in getting a wider picture on the state of TSTT's non-service.
I would be very interested in learning what the truth behind these problems is. TSTT has done it again! After a couple years of relatively minor problems with their service (which as most people can attest is not very common) I have been experiencing problems since mid-November with my ADSL and land line (suspiciously this time period coincides with when I was told that “Blink” was being implemented in my area).
Continuously, on average 4 or 5 times a day – while I am on the Internet – my DSL connection drops, stays off for a few minutes and then connects again. I tend to listen to Internet radio so I am aware of every “drop” that occurs.
After numerous calls to 824-TSTT and many conversations with some very foreign sounding help desk support agents with very English sounding names providing me with many different stories as to what was the problem and what was the solution, a “trouble ticket” was opened for me.
I was told that this would be dealt with in 6 to 7 working days. 6 days later I called to inquire what progress had been made. The help desk agent supposedly asked someone in repairs to call me, but no one did. I called back the following day and was put onto a very rude repair support agent who basically told me that the trouble ticket is normally takes 6 to 7 working days of it being opened for it to be assigned to an agent.
When I inquired how long after that it would be before someone actually looked into the problem, he said he could not tell me. I asked to speak with someone who could tell me when, to which he replied that no one would be able to tell me, but he offered to let me speak with his supervisor. Interestingly enough, when transferring my call to his supervisor, my call was dropped (just like my DSL connection – except this time it didn’t automatically re-connect).
I cannot recall how many times I have spoken with the help desk, but it has probably been over twenty times since the start of these problems. I also cannot recall how many different “stories” I have been told as to what the problems are. Eventually, I managed to speak with someone (in “Residential Services” I believe) who then forwarded me to what was supposed to be the Blink help desk.
The person I was put on to explained that they cannot help with “technical” problems, but she promised to have her supervisor call me. Lo and behold, the supervisor did call me, at 7 pm that evening.
She very politely apologised for the problems that I was encountering and admitted that they had some major technical problems that they were unable to solve and they were trying to get the vendor of their system to come and rectify the service. Well, more than a week passed, the service got steadily worse, and eventually died altogether on or before Christmas Eve.
Magically, it resurrected itself at 8 am on the 29th of December, but as of that evening it had slowed to a crawl, so much so that it was almost unusable. On the 2nd of January the speeds seemed acceptable and so far my Internet radio is playing smoothly. Hopefully this means they have sorted out their problems.
An interesting side-bar to this episode is that at the same time these DSL problems started, my land line (the one with the ADSL on it) also began giving trouble. Calls from and to Digicel mobile phones resulted in neither party hearing the other and when a voice mail is left on the phone, the dial tone does not change to the one that indicates a message has been left.
I know that these symptoms also occur on another line belonging to a friend of mine in Barataria.
As an addendum to the letter I sent, from the 3rd of January, the dropped connections started back. Today was the first day, since my problems started, that I have not had a single drop out that I noticed (but I was away from my desk for a major part of the day), so maybe they are getting better, but I still have problems with Digicel calls and presumably international calls on my land line.
First TSTT. I have had a fast TSTT dsl line for some time but in recent months [quite a few] it has become extremely unreliable. When you use e-mail for business applications as our firm does then reliability, more than speed, is paramount.
In recent months the e- mail environment has become exceedingly unreliable with possibly as many as 25% of e-mails not getting through. This is quite dangerous because when you think your communications have gone through you may not even get to know if they have arrived or not. Chances are, these days, is that they haven’t.
This really makes the use of e-mail as a business tool for communications questionable. Another problem in recent times is that the system just goes down – maybe ten times a day! Look that sort of service is totally unacceptable in the first world. Remember that is what we are striving to become. Reliability in the first world is measured in ‘nines’ – like 99.99% reliability.
In Trinidad is probably somewhere around 75% these days. So, when it comes to e-mail, while speed is important – reliability is paramount. Someone needs to explain this to TSTT. It really comes down to an attitude about ‘service’ as opposed to ‘sales’. So as TSTT pursues the holy grail of kilobytes we should remind them of these basic needs we, the customers, have.
So hungry is TSTT to ensure market share in the quest for speed they will pay for huge newspaper advertisements whipping up a frenzy appetite for speed at the blink of an eye that they will ignore their own customers who have paid for dsl lines for years without even offering them preferential terms to convert from dsl to blink. And when they actually get around to providing you the blink service your mail will probably shut down completely. Why?
Because TSTT is not really interested in service – just your sale – you, as a customer, must now spend hours on the phone trying to get the service, which is all you really want. You will be shunted around from India to a whole bunch of people who are trained to be polite but who actually do not help you at all – though they all promise to help because that is what they know you want to hear.
Eventually, if you are really persistent and enterprising you will get a number of a local guy in the field who is the guy you really need to speak to – he is the guy that can actually help you. But then he has to run a whole series of test – some of these tests are done by different departments. First they have to test the line. Then they change the router.
Then they have to check the exchange ports. Then they have to help you reset the router. You ask yourself – did anyone bother to think this through? FLOW is not much different. They advertise sales. Try and call them. No there is nothing wrong with your phone.
(Response from Rhea Yawching... Yes we still continue to face this problem especially over the last 2 months when thousands were trying to subscribe to the new movies and sports packages. Right now we are waiting on our telephony service to get up and running and then we will be launching a new number with our own new lines.)
I learnt a little trick – dial all but the last number and hold it for about 30 seconds before completing the number (RY...never heard of this) with luck you might get through– then you have to get through the dial this number, then that extension – eventually they give you an appointment to inspect the premises – “December 04 in the afternoon”. But do they come? No. Try calling them again? Get the drift yet? It’s the same story.
LISA is different. You do get service here. They do turn up when they say they will. You do get a dedicated broadband speed that is ideal for an office situation. They do install a demo to let you try their service. Then you have to reset all your settings. Only to discover the cost of get a reasonably fast speed that is needed for a modern office situation where you need to upload/ download large files to extranets. The price is exorbitant. What a pity.
This could have been a solution but can you afford it? Well this is my story. I take the time and trouble on this Christmas morning because I would really like to see this attention to sales rather than service end it reminds me too much of the cell phone service. No joy for many this Christmas!
From V...
At the office -in Woodbrook- we've had for a couple years now, TSTT's fastest available business connection- 1.5 mb. It worked as advertised most of the time, topping out at 1.3mb. We switched to TSTT from Carib- Link's wireless service which was giving too much trouble for too long. As with everyone we were excited about the new broadband services that rolled out, and signed up online immediately to "switch" to blink's service.
We were going to go with a business package that was faster but cheaper than our existing one. We spoke to our corporate rep but she said that our area wasn't as yet Blink enabled so we sould have to wait a couple weeks. A week or so after we spoke to the rep our connection went dead for 4 days straight after a period of unusually spotty service.
Calling support only put me through the same script that they follow each time, and ended with the (local) support tech saying that they would have to talk with their technical people to solve the problem.
I kept calling and was finally told that they were in the process of switching networks and that we wouldn't have service for 4 days (including Sat and Sun). Could you believe that? No warning, nothing. Typical TSTT right? They knew all along what the problem was.
A couple weeks after that I noticed our speeds increased dramatically. 3.5- 4MB downloads was now the norm. I contacted Blink again and they still maintained that our area wasn’t yet Blink enabled. It has been about 2 months now that we’ve we have had our 3.5mb to 4mb connection while still signed on to our original 1.5mb high speed package.
Normally that would be a good thing but the problem is that we’re still paying the higher price that we originally signed on to. So we have Blink Broadband (it seems) but paying the old higher price. The service itself? Pretty good I think. We would get the occasional blackouts but it doesn’t last for long, a few minutes max. With Azureus I’ll get 400-500k downloads. Upload is about 65/75k.
The best results on a speed test I’ve had is 4.2mb down 660k up Flow is always an option but we’re a bit wary about their being new, and would probably wait a few months until they’ve stabilized their systems and tech staff to really consider it. (RH...we have extremely good levels of stability in our systems right now, and constantly improving. Where we need improvement is the quantity and quality of our help desk people who are bombarded by “newness” questions not even related to the connection, but the internet / computer stuff in general.)
So that’s my broadband experience.
(addendum) By a strange coincidence, on the very day i emailed you, I finally received a response from our service rep as to whether we had unknowingly been switched to Blink. She said that indeed we had been switched to Blink, and that we would be given a rebate on the excess paid from the time it was implemented. So that chapter ends.
From F...
Here's my TSTT Blink story. I hope it helps you in getting a wider picture on the state of TSTT's non-service.
I would be very interested in learning what the truth behind these problems is. TSTT has done it again! After a couple years of relatively minor problems with their service (which as most people can attest is not very common) I have been experiencing problems since mid-November with my ADSL and land line (suspiciously this time period coincides with when I was told that “Blink” was being implemented in my area).
Continuously, on average 4 or 5 times a day – while I am on the Internet – my DSL connection drops, stays off for a few minutes and then connects again. I tend to listen to Internet radio so I am aware of every “drop” that occurs.
After numerous calls to 824-TSTT and many conversations with some very foreign sounding help desk support agents with very English sounding names providing me with many different stories as to what was the problem and what was the solution, a “trouble ticket” was opened for me.
I was told that this would be dealt with in 6 to 7 working days. 6 days later I called to inquire what progress had been made. The help desk agent supposedly asked someone in repairs to call me, but no one did. I called back the following day and was put onto a very rude repair support agent who basically told me that the trouble ticket is normally takes 6 to 7 working days of it being opened for it to be assigned to an agent.
When I inquired how long after that it would be before someone actually looked into the problem, he said he could not tell me. I asked to speak with someone who could tell me when, to which he replied that no one would be able to tell me, but he offered to let me speak with his supervisor. Interestingly enough, when transferring my call to his supervisor, my call was dropped (just like my DSL connection – except this time it didn’t automatically re-connect).
I cannot recall how many times I have spoken with the help desk, but it has probably been over twenty times since the start of these problems. I also cannot recall how many different “stories” I have been told as to what the problems are. Eventually, I managed to speak with someone (in “Residential Services” I believe) who then forwarded me to what was supposed to be the Blink help desk.
The person I was put on to explained that they cannot help with “technical” problems, but she promised to have her supervisor call me. Lo and behold, the supervisor did call me, at 7 pm that evening.
She very politely apologised for the problems that I was encountering and admitted that they had some major technical problems that they were unable to solve and they were trying to get the vendor of their system to come and rectify the service. Well, more than a week passed, the service got steadily worse, and eventually died altogether on or before Christmas Eve.
Magically, it resurrected itself at 8 am on the 29th of December, but as of that evening it had slowed to a crawl, so much so that it was almost unusable. On the 2nd of January the speeds seemed acceptable and so far my Internet radio is playing smoothly. Hopefully this means they have sorted out their problems.
An interesting side-bar to this episode is that at the same time these DSL problems started, my land line (the one with the ADSL on it) also began giving trouble. Calls from and to Digicel mobile phones resulted in neither party hearing the other and when a voice mail is left on the phone, the dial tone does not change to the one that indicates a message has been left.
I know that these symptoms also occur on another line belonging to a friend of mine in Barataria.
As an addendum to the letter I sent, from the 3rd of January, the dropped connections started back. Today was the first day, since my problems started, that I have not had a single drop out that I noticed (but I was away from my desk for a major part of the day), so maybe they are getting better, but I still have problems with Digicel calls and presumably international calls on my land line.
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