RE: Are BT serious?

["Keith Doxey" <keith.doxey@xxxxxxx>]

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Hi Mark,

Befrore I start my reply......

THIS IS IN NO WAY AN OFFICIAL BT STATEMENT !!!!

...As I remember from my days as a telephone engineer (they ended 4 years
ago) the highest rate guaranteed was 9600 but I believe that since the
entire BT network is now all digital exchanges rather than noisy old
strowger, that has now been increased to at least 14k4. Any line should be
able to get at least that.

Possible causes of not being able to achieve that are...

Line fault - either noise or hum.

Exchange line gain is not fixed - the gain of a digital exchange line is
auto adjusted to compensate for long/short lines, this can play havoc with
a
modem training. The gain CAN be set at a fixed level.

Line is served by DACS - Digital Audio Carrier System - basically 2
customers served over the same pair of wires. The line are totally
independant but the bandwidth is less than that you will get from a nornal
straight copper pair.

The line may not be copper - there was a lot of aluminium cable used in the
70's when the price of copper went sky high. It was discovered that ali was
no match for copper but quite a bit still remains in service.

Other equipment on the line can cause problems. When I visited Mark McCall
he asked me to look at his dads modem as it was really slow <14k4 I
think. I
spotted a "Relate 300" in the kitchen on the way in and said that
was the
cause. Unplugged the phone and connected at 33k6 straight away. At home I
had a Relate 300 that caused me to connect at 16k8 or 19k2 but after
unplugging it my modem connected at 28k8 (Max speed for the modem).

As I said above, these are MY comments NOT BT's.

But I am disappointed with the offical help you got :-(

Hope that helps a little

Keith



-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Harrison [mailto:Mark@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 21 September 2000 15:44
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Are BT serious?



I've just spent a frustrating few hours with BT Business Tech support about
a customer of mine who can't get any kind of dial up. (Despite several
different PCs, all of which work elsewhere.)

Within the first 5 minutes, BT told me that "we don't guarantee data
over
normal PSTN lines, you need to upgrade to ISDN or ADSL."

Oftel confirmed that this is indeed the case.

How can a PTT get away with this in the year 2000????

M.