BT losing plot on FTTC

FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) is based on a BT plc t/a Openreach product that is Ethernet from exchange to premises service that uses VDSL at the cabinet to an Ethernet port on a VDSL modem at the premises.

The nice thing about an Ethernet service is that faults are very clear cut - the Ethernet packets either flow or they do not. There are grey areas but they are the minority.

With this service the BT VDSL modem works to get sync on the line and present Ethernet packet to the end user's equipment (a router of some sort).

Now, this has a massive advantage over normal ADSL. The issues with any DSL service are the modems and the physical copper pair used. With FTTC the modem is BT's responsibility. If it is not working, they fix it. It adds to the install cost over normal ADSL, but is well worth it if you have a fault.

If there is a fault then BT have to fix it. Simples.

But they are making a change, a very very detrimental change, to the service they provide to us. Now, making this change as a new service they offer is one thing but changing the service we already have is a different matter. There is a clause covering changes to terms and it does not allow them to make unilateral changes which are detrimental to the service. So we are planning to formally reject the change to the T&Cs.

They are changing the service to wires only where they will not "support" the modem they provided.

This is a massive change. This puts us in the realms of SFI charges like ADSL lines, and having to provide modems to customers. This is a massive backwards step.

But it is not even a simple case of a new "wires only" service being the only one on offer. They will sell the "with modem" service until late next year but within a few months they stop "supporting" the supplied modem even on a service with a 12 month min term. How the heck can that work? If the service fails because of the modem then who fixes it?

If they sold the modem then Sale of Goods Act would expect it to work more than three months even.

And what of all of the existing services? A service that is delivered to the Ethernet socket on the modem? They plan to disown their own modem that is part of that service?

To be honest I don't care if they "support" the modem or not - if the service, being a service to the Ethernet port, is not working, then they have 40 clock hours to make it work. If they don't "support" the modem then they can find who does support it and get them to fix it - I don't care - I pay for a service to that Ethernet port and I expect it to continue to work as long as I have the service...

I have to say this is a fiasco.

I hereby formally reject the change to BT plc's T&Cs introducing this change to existing FTTC services as it is detrimental to the service provided and as such against the terms to apply this change.

What the hell are they thinking of?

Taps

It used to be simple when we had a hot tap and a cold tap!

Nowadays there are mixer taps, and so you have to know which way is hot and which is cold. So they use red for hot and blue for cold. Some of my taps at home have no markings do you just have to guess.

The classic version is more like this :-

Now, to my mind, turning the tap so that the red dot is aligned with the water spout should be hot, and with the blue dot aligned with the water spout it should be cold. So this would be hot :-

I am wrong, of course, and what it means is turn tap towards the blue dot for cold (anti clockwise) and towards the red dot (clockwise) for hot. What is confusing is the dots are being moved so you are not really turning the tap towards the dot, you are turning the dots too. If the dots were on some part that did not move, that would work. If the dots were arrows, or even triangles indicating an arrow head, I would cope much better. But I am learning that this seems to be the convention... If only Steve Jobs had designed taps!

But when it comes to something like this, I hope you agree it is different :-

My shower at home is very similar to this with temperatures marked and a button next to 38 degrees which you have to press to get hotter. It has a mark on the base and you turn the knob to align the required temperature with the mark.

The one pictured, I assumed, was the same, but instead of specific temperatures above and below the 40 degrees marked, there are red and blue marks which I assumed meant hotter and colder.

So I assumed that if you you turn so the blue markings are aligned to the notch on the back, that should be colder. Similarly if you put the red markings next to the notch on the back, it would be hotter. This is obvious, surely.

But no! This is like the tap, though in reverse, in that turning anti clockwise gets hotter not colder. Even though the notch matters in that you align the "40" with it to get 40 degrees, the red and blue are not indicating where on the dial is hotter or colder, but a direction to turn the dial.

And just in case you think it was plumbed backwards, no, the button stops you turning it as shown above. I.e. you have to press in order to align the blue marks with the notch to get hot water.

They fix this with a sign saying "Please check the water temperature", which is clearly an admission of a non intuitive interface to a shower...

(this was the shower in the cabin on the cruise).

Cruise

As I have posted a few times on the technicalities of Internet access from a ship, I thought it would be worth posting about the actual cruise holiday itself, if you have never been on a cruise this should give you some idea what to expect, although different cruise lines do work some things a little differently.

In our case, it was myself, my wife, and my sister-in-law for a one week cruise of the East Caribbean on Norwegian Cruise Lines flagship The Getaway.

Cost

You can look up the actual cost on the cruise line web sites. Overall I was actually surprised how reasonable the cruise itself was. In general it is less than a hotel room. Of course that depends on the hotel, and the cruise has a similar range of cabins available. The problem is that the cruise (in this case) was from Miami and that meant getting to the ship and getting home again afterwards. The flights were half the overall cost. In our case we upgraded to premium economy which added a lot to the cost.

Travel

Whilst a cruise itself is travel, that aspect is more of a floating hotel. The travel aspect, as well as taking up half the cost, is a significant amount of the overall time and is all hassle.

Part of the issue with time and hassle is that NCL arrange Virgin flights. In hindsight we should have sorted flights separately, and it looks like BA do Miami earlier in the day. In the case of Virgin, we had to fly out on the Friday and stay over night in Miami. That added a day. Miami is hot, humid and damp as you may expect, and the hotel was a very mediocre Sofitel. It was a tiring day, made massively worse by a fire alarm and evacuation at 4am. It was a false alarm, but even after being let back in the alarm kept sounding due to a fault so no chance of getting back to sleep. We then had a coach to the port at lunch time.

Coming back, after the cruise, the later flight times of Virgin meant another very tedious day. We did a sightseeing tour of the city which we were able to book on the ship, but even so we spent 8 hours in Miami International Airport, which is not a very nice airport, before another 9 hour flight home. This was made worse by the fact Virgin check in staff lied to me, offering an exit row seat for extra leg room which turned out to be a bulkhead seat with bugger all leg room. Not impressed.

The last night was slight extra hassle as luggage is put outside the cabin at night, so you end up packing most stuff but with tooth brush and stuff you need for morning in hand luggage that you then have to mess about transferring to main luggage before getting the plane. In my case I only had my camera bag, and it also meant carrying my pillow as I was not packing that the night before!

Obviously you try and put the hassle, discomfort, and cost of nearly three days messing about out of your mind.

My sister-in-law living it up

The cabin

It really is a floating hotel with about 3000 guests on board. Very impressive. On arrival at the dock people take your luggage away, and you queue up. In our case we were escorted to front of the queue and then to our cabin. The cabins are all called "staterooms". This was because we had booked an expensive two room cabin so my sister-in-law had her own room. The luggage then turns up a bit later outside your door.

The cabin itself was very good. It was about twice as wide as most, with a main living room and big TV with balcony. It had the small bedroom and en suite shower and toilet, and separately a large bedroom with proper bathroom with both bath and shower. We had a butler! We took breakfast in the room which was no extra cost. We had access to the Haven area which is a separate bar, restaurant, pool area, and sun deck. Oddly the sun deck appeared to be all gay couples (not an issue, just surprising). I gather there are sometimes group bookings arranged for various groups of people, but no idea if this was such or just a coincidence.

Things were not without issue - the TV stopped working twice, and the door to the main bedroom broke. They had three of them, with ladders and dismantling the wall and stuff for two hours to fix the door, then had to come back next day as still not right. Even so, they were quick to sort any issues.

Food

The cost included the main restaurants, which in our case included The Haven Restaurant, but there we several others on the ship including a very large buffet style.

There are also a number of specially restaurants that had a cover charge ranging from $15 upwards, but then everything on the menu was included for that. I was surprised that they did not have a Chinese or Indian though.

However, alcoholic drinks were not included. If you brought alcohol on, it was taken away until the end of the trip. On top of that, the drinks all had an auto gratuity. I did not argue the toss on that, but it was tempting as the ticket is meant to include gratuities. They even have space to add an extra gratuity! I had the chance to try a number of interesting cocktails.

Specialty restaurants needed to be booked in advance, and by the end of the trip they were fully booked, so plan ahead.

Paying for things

A key card is issued when you board, and you take it everywhere. You can pay for drinks and buy things using it. You do not need cash - everything is on the key card. You have to sign for everything, which is good. In my case the three cards were all billed to me, but it looks like they could have done it individually. At the end of the trip we had racked up over $1000 which they charge to a credit card. They really make it easy to buy extras, including a blue diamond gold ring! The TV (or iPhone app) shows the statement as you go, which handy. FYI, the app is why iMessage works, as, Apple being a closed environment, the only way for the app to do incoming calls and texts is via office Apple push notifications, and that is all tied in with iMessage, LOL.

You obviously need the card to open your cabin, but also when leaving and boarding the ship at the stops.

Even so, it would be perfectly possible to have a trip with no extra costs, and still eat well.

Medical

I started with a cold. I went down to medical area and asked about decongestants. Yes, they could sort me out, but I would have to see and doctor and that was $105 and medication was charged extra on top. So I checked out the gift shop which had a very small selection of medications. I put up with it, having brought paracetamol with me.

However, cruise ships are a tad paranoid over hygiene! It makes sense, cramming so many people in to a small space. Dispensers for alcohol hand rub are everywhere, along with people to encourage you strongly to use it. On getting back to the ship they spray your hands as you arrive. As I say, good idea, but feels over the top even for someone that tries to keep clean hands and consider hygiene anyway.

Photos

There are ship's photographers everywhere. They had the camera wired up to a small tablet and they would key your cabin number on them. I hear on some ships they use face recognition instead. Anyway, you can review the pics on various displays and the photo shop, and buy them if you want. Yet another way to pull you in to spending more. We did not do that, and took our own pics :-)

Entertainment

There were loads of shows and events. We saw a performance on Legally Blond, as well as a Comedy Club, and a magic show. All quite good.

The shows need to be booked in advance, even though most are no extra cost. Indeed, if you don't attend they can charge.

There was even an art gallery and auctions, which they seemed to keep inviting us along to with small presentations with sparkling wine, probably because we had a posh cabin. We even had VIP cocktails with the captain and crew (and the rest of Haven).

The ice bar was disappointing because it was so small. You would expect some ice sculptures maybe, but just a chair to sit on. It ended up being too cold even with the coat they provide. Yes, I know, I am not one to complain of the cold!

Activities

There are a lot of activities including water slides and rock climbing. To be honest we did not go in for them. We did go out on to the Sponge Bob deck to see what it was like. It was was packed and looked very Bultins. Mostly the girls sun bathed on the Gay Deck where they met some interesting people. I mostly watched TV, went to the bar, or tried to get the Internet working on the sat phone.

Islands

Of course, part of the point is to visit some islands. This trip of a week involved three stops. You dock in the morning, and there is a time you have to be back in the afternoon. They have loads of activities and tours you can book while on the ship.

We went for a wander and some shopping on St Maarten. We did an island tour on St Thomas. We went to a market and a few shops on Nassau.

However, in all of these places, and indeed on the ship, and pretty much everywhere around the Caribbean, you get jewellery shops. Loads of places selling diamonds, and some selling emeralds and so on. You end up under a lot of pressure to buy your wife something shiny.

Was it fun?

It was an experience. It was a bit more that just staying in a nice hotel for a week. The islands, and the fact that there are loads of things on the ship (and a big choice of food) was better than just staying in a hotel. Overall it made a nice break, and the girls liked it a lot. The traveling to and from the ship really does dilute it though. If I lived near a port it would be a no brainier to take a cruise. But yes, it was fun.

Still at sea

So, a few days at sea. We are now at the second port of call, St Thomas. Yesterday was St Maarten. Fun little islands. Loads of pictures today from a sight seeing tour. I'll upload pics when I get back for obvious reasons.

There have been a few discoveries re the Internet though.

First, the Iridium Go! - which works well for tracking my location with 5 minute GPS updates. I'll collate the data on to a nice map for the whole trip once I get back, but it is cool that it works. This is simply on the cabin balcony 24/7.

However, I did take it up on to the sun deck on Monday. We are in an exclusive little area (expensive tickets) and so not at all crowded. Very different to the Sponge Bob deck (where the muggles all go) which is packed. I put the Iridium Go! on top of something high up - where it could see almost totally uninterrupted horizon to horizon view of the sky - so perfect for satellite use.

It worked very well - it tracked satellites and stayed in a data call (albeit at 2400bps) for ages. It did fail at one point, and refused to reconnect for several minutes, but mostly it was just working. It made ssh/irc very usable. I was very impressed with compressed ssh actually - the screen refresh when switching tabs on irssi was instant, suggesting it was compressed to one packet (using 576 MTU). It is all plain text, so plausible, but it made irssi very usable. The problem was, even in the shade, that it was hot and windy up on deck, so I eventually gave up. Sadly on the balcony, with only a half view of sky, it will drop data calls every few minutes. It drops NAT sessions (which is a really pain) so means a new connect which takes ssh around a minute. Hence not really very usable from the cabin, which is a real shame.

However, the ship's Internet has some interesting quirks. On this ship it is only done using per-minute packages, not per MB. I was able to buy 250 mins for $100. You connect and disconnect as you wish. They use minute based start and stop times so you can end up paying for up to an extra minute each time you connect, which is a bugger. Interestingly, when in port, they clearly use a local land link as latency drops to something sensible. At sea it seems to be Inmarsat, so good speeds but high latency.

They also hijack logout.com and mycounter.com, which I assume they do not own, as well as IP address 1.1.1.1 which is also not theirs. Obviously no IPv6! If only I owned logout.com I could kick up a stink :-)

However, I have left the most useful quirk to the end. This has to be deliberate, but does not seem to be documented. If I connect to the ship's Internet, and then disconnect, it seems that the Apple push notification systems stay connected and not charged. This means notifies for apps like Facebook messenger, and twitter pop up (even though twitter does not connect). I even get incoming FaceTime calls and can make them but not actually connect the call sadly. Usefully iMessage continues to work, both ways.

I checked, and it is not simply a matter of open TCP sessions staying up (shame). It is not even a matter of port 5223 staying up (as I tried that, mapping for ssh). Hence, I can only assume it is intentional. But the result is I have working text iMessage at no extra cost 24/7, which is cool. Note that images in iMessage appear to be done by reference to something via another port, and so that does not connect, so only text works, but still...

I am still battling with the mobile carrier to get our SIP2SIM service working on these islands, USA, and ship's GSM network. I am able to connect and get inbound texts (no idea on calls as thankfully nobody has tried calling me yet), but I cannot make calls, send texts or connect on data. I know the costs are scary, so would be doing only to test (as some customers would really like this to work). But hopefully my testing and reporting back will get it solved. It looks like a soft problem (tariffing config) so should be solvable while I am here.

Apart from that - the holiday is going OK - I will have to blog on what a cruise is like, having never done one before - it is quite an experience, though I understand cruise ships do vary from ship to ship. We do seem to be following the Disney ship though :-)

At sea

This is my first cruise, and so far so good...

I'll post more on the holiday later, but for now - what about Internet.

There are several options. One, I brought with me, is an Iridium Go! which provides 2400bps connectivity. There is a package that allows unlimited data and free texts. This basically works, but trying to use it from the balcony it does occasionally drop the data call. The only real use you can make of the data is something like ssh/irc, which works quite well, or batch email using their app.

However, the Iridium Go! does have a couple of other features. One is calls (which are expensive) but the other is texts. These work like normal texts and have been a good way for someone to contact me. I can see on its screen that a text is waiting and pick up on my iPhone. Pretty much all other ways to access the internet involve me logging in to check, so random delays . This is more active.

The other key thing, and perhaps the main usage for the Iridium Go!, is that it is texting a GPS location ever 5 minutes. This is quite cool as friends and relatives are seeing where we have got to.

However, there are other methods of access. The phone can roam on to a ships mobile signal - but my SIM will not work (yet). I know that if I did use that it would be expensive, even for incoming texts. We are trying to get the SIM sorted as these should work in the US (it didn't) and on the ship. This is probably the most expensive option, but is by the MB for data.

Finally, the ship has wifi based Internet. Annoyingly it is charged by the minute. It it was by the MB, I could leave my laptop on irc all day and use bugger all. By the minute it is $0.75/min, or if buying 100 minutes $0.55/min. It is based on Inmarsat, we think, so horrid latencies but reasonable speed. I was able to check email, and make this post. What was quite impressive was a working FaceTime call - and being charged by the minute for FaceTime is probably not such a bad deal!

Next thing will try is the Iridum on the top desk rather than a balcony - see if it can properly stay in a data call.

Thank you British Gas

Why would anyone change energy provider when what you buy is the same?

The only reason is the tariff and billing. It seems to be that most of the different tariffs expect you to gamble in some way - commit to X years at a fixed price and hope prices don't fall, for example. Some work on budgets that are DD regular amounts and can get out of step with reality. All I want is to pay for what I use at a fair price, no messing about.

Well British Gas keep messing about. They have chased (and probably filed bad credit reports) bills that they had never sent, and done that several times.

Their latest - a bill on my door step today, 17th September 2014, that clearly states "Your payment is due by 27th August".

WTF? Unless they mean 27th August 2015, I am seriously unimpressed. What is the point of sending a bill over a month after the bill date (13th Aug) that is already overdue when it arrives.

This sort of crap really does make me think about switching supplier.

SatPhone (Callmonitor Ltd)

I now have a working Iridium SIM from SatPhone (Callmonitor Ltd).

What a difference!

We ordered via on-line chat, with an emailed confirmation I had to complete (took a few seconds). The SIM was activated for us, and was biked over. They sent confirmation of order. They sent confirmation of SIM and number and so on. They use a courier with real-time tracking of the bike. They even had my POD in my email from the courier before I had walked back in to my desk with the SIM. The SIM just works.

They have the same package for a similar price, but apparently they send a proper VAT invoice in GBP and then DD the amount they invoice. What a novel idea!

Overall I have to say very slick indeed. Well done.