Is there a BT connection in NTL

[th'engineer]

With all the changes that NTl are making to their services they are now looking more and more un-compeditive in the market place.

I would really like to know how many employees of NTL own BT shares have a BT pension or are on a retainer to BT.

I have mentioned this before, am sure that someone high up in NTL is working for BT.

NTL are getting less customer focused with there authoritarian approach on this and on other simple things.

The CAP being an example .

Port Blocking

I hope that someone in NTL reads this and thinks about it, have you any ex BT employees in senior Management that are thinking up these ideas.

If there are think you have found all the problems in one place looking after a BT pension.

Its as though they are determined to fail

[Ignition]

Can't see how port blocking, a commonly done thing by a number of other ISPs, can be construed as not customer focussed.

If I remember right criticism was being levelled for not doing anything, now that steps are being taken that's apparently wrong as well?

BTW Th'E check www.dslreports.com - a few US cable ISPs have introduced 'soft' caps, IE not set in stone but excess usage = warning followed by service suspension, and another has introduced a monthly limit of 30GB a month down and 7.5GB a month up.

What you consider to not be customer focussed some others might consider necessary steps towards protection of customers and network assets, agree communication could be better however the port blocking is an entirely good idea, as is a properly implemented bandwidth ceiling or other protocol based limit on use.

However uncompetitive you consider ntl to be fact is the broadband product, which you seem to be specifically referring to, is still taking on customers at a more than respectable rate.

[th'engineer]

Can't see how port blocking, a commonly done thing by a number of other ISPs, can be construed as not customer focussed.

If I remember right criticism was being levelled for not doing anything, now that steps are being taken that's apparently wrong as well?

BTW Th'E check www.dslreports.com (http://www.dslreports.com/) - a few US cable ISPs have introduced 'soft' caps, IE not set in stone but excess usage = warning followed by service suspension, and another has introduced a monthly limit of 30GB a month down and 7.5GB a month up.

What you consider to not be customer focussed some others might consider necessary steps towards protection of customers and network assets, agree communication could be better however the port blocking is an entirely good idea, as is a properly implemented bandwidth ceiling or other protocol based limit on use.

However uncompetitive you consider ntl to be fact is the broadband product, which you seem to be specifically referring to, is still taking on customers at a more than respectable rate.
What about connecting to university or college for study how do you get the ports unblocked.

If you are in further education some of these ports are used if you need to connect to college.

Do we have to look for another ISP TV and phone provider

[th'engineer]

Still think there is a BT connection someone is putting the profits up for BT at the expense of NTL .

[Escapee]

Still think there is a BT connection someone is putting the profits up for BT at the expense of NTL .

I know quite a few ex-BT people in the old region of ntl that I worked in, BT made life a misery for all it's technical people and made it so bad that employees asked for redundancy and this finally left BT a shadow of it's former self in sorting out technical issues and implementing new projects.

Sound familiar ntl?

Many of these ex-BT people were employed because they had the right skills that ntl needed, just like people who previously worked for smaller cable TV companies prior to the American involvement over here.
One thing certainly is for sure, and that is most of the ex-BT and Cable TV people that are any good are getting a bit long in the tooth now, this will certainly cause ntl a problem when these people leave/retire.
ntl are not looking any further than the end of their noses and will pay the price in the future with a total brain drain in the industry.

What has gone on in ntl according to many ex-BT employees who moved to ntl, is exactly the same treatment that they got in BT 8-10 years ago. I think the ntl actions are copying BT and possibly some ex-BT people are calling the shots.

[th'engineer]

It is a good point if some NTL management left BT because they did not fit in with the changes, what chance has NTL especially if some have BT shares there would be a conflict of interest.

[BBKing]

Escapee's quite right, in fact a lot of ntl people 'of a certain age' are either Army/RAF/Navy trained (signals, commonly) or ex-BT. Since the ex-BTers were made redundant en masse about ten-fifteen years ago they don't exactly love BT too much. These guys are among the best and longest serving though (if occasionally a little at sea with modern IT :) ).

Not aware of any senior management being ex-BT, I stand to be corrected though. I don't keep a scrapbook of senior ntl management :)

[Ignition]

What about connecting to university or college for study how do you get the ports unblocked.

If you are in further education some of these ports are used if you need to connect to college.

Do we have to look for another ISP TV and phone provider

If your college is using these insecure services there are probably some issues there already, and some hacker or other has already exploited them - in my experience from Uni connections to their servers were made over ssh (port 22) and not on the list of ports to be blocked, more to the point why would the University be trying to hit you on ports that would be blocked by any reasonable firewall anyway? Connections that are aimed at port x do not have to originate on port x on the source machine, and the replies don't have to come back to port x.

Finally JANet blocks most of these ports anyway, to leave an open login prompt for anyone who takes a fancy to it to hit with a dictionary attack is just mad without some proper secure authentication.

[th'engineer]

Getting back on topic any one any views is it why NTL do not move forward

[Gogogo]

Let me get this straight, are you guys suggesting that the problems of NTL are due to BT espionage, that BT sleepers in NTL are engaged in sabotage and mischievous plots to destroy NTL. The thought that all this might be a BT conspiracy, industrial espionage, goodness me.

Now, where did I put that John Le Carre novel I was reading, damm it, I can't find it!

:spin:

[Dingbat]

Escapee's quite right, in fact a lot of ntl people 'of a certain age' are either Army/RAF/Navy trained (signals, commonly) or ex-BT. Since the ex-BTers were made redundant en masse about ten-fifteen years ago they don't exactly love BT too much. These guys are among the best and longest serving though (if occasionally a little at sea with modern IT :) ).

Not aware of any senior management being ex-BT, I stand to be corrected though. I don't keep a scrapbook of senior ntl management :)

Just to make a point on the suggestions that BT made these guys redundant. They didn't.

When BT decided to 'downsize', starting in about 1991, it offered extremely generous VOLUNTARY redundancy across the business. (I am talking about payments of anything up to three-times salary PLUS a leaver payment based on length of service) Some guys came out with over £ 50k in their pocket (bear in mind this was ten years ago and that would have bought you a house!)

A lot of engineers saw also that ntl was recruiting so walked out of one door with a fat cheque into another door with a regular wage.

How do I know these things? I still work for BT, and know a lot of guys who took up residence in ntl Nottingham.

So, please, keep up the good work because I've only got a few years left to boost my pension! :D

[th'engineer]

Let me get this straight, are you guys suggesting that the problems of NTL are due to BT espionage, that BT sleepers in NTL are engaged in sabotage and mischievous plots to destroy NTL. The thought that all this might be a BT conspiracy, industrial espionage, goodness me.

Now, where did I put that John Le Carre novel I was reading, damm it, I can't find it!

:spin:And why not could be a good film and as dingbat says keep up the good work;)

[th'engineer]

To add to my theory of the BT connection went on NTLworld this morning and a few popups came up advertising 02.

Now do BT own O2 yes why do they advertise with pop ups on the NTL customer web site .

Could you imagine NTL pop ups on the BT website do not think so .

First BT get the customer looking for a mobile, then up sell Sky phone and BB.

And all the NTL customer did is click his home page.

There has good to be someone in NTL that allowed the advert for BT

Who ever allowed it did they work for BT prior to working for NTL

[Chimaera]

Get a pop up blocker mate!!

Than they won't be able to subject you to their not-so-subtle money making ploys!

[Ignition]

To add to my theory of the BT connection went on NTLworld this morning and a few popups came up advertising 02.

Now do BT own O2 yes

No, BT and O2 are two seperate companies listed on the FTSE as BT/A and mmo2 respectively. mmo2 were spun off from BT a couple of years ago, their results etc play no part in BT's financial performance. Shareholders in BT were given a x shares in O2 for every y shares in BT, think it was 10 for 3.

Quite the opposite in fact BT are soon launching their own mobile service, BT Mobile, which will compete with amongst others O2.

Next! :p

BTW Regarding my possibly off topic comments on College connectivity, was a straight rebuttal to your claim that port blocking would compromise student's connectivity to their colleges. Only thing it may block really is connectivity to Exchange servers, and that can be easily remedied by using the web from end interface over SSL (https:) rather than using SMB and the other vulnerable ports.

[th'engineer]

Just by any chance you do not happen to have worked for BT or NTL do you :angel:

[Ignition]

You already know the answer to that one :angel:

[th'engineer]

;) You already know the answer to that one :angel:Thought you might want to share it with others.

[Ignition]

;) Thought you might want to share it with others.

Made no secret of the fact that I work for NTL, my first post on this board mentioned it (though it seems to be like working for MI6 on this board), and this is getting a tadge off topic. You've come up with two big points, both of which I've debased, regarding college connectivity and port blocking, and the O2 connection which doesn't exist.

If you've nothing else to add to this your case looks quite a lot like unproven paranoia, not unlike anticap. Gotten anywhere with those US ISPs who have dared to restrict their users with either firm or 'softer' limits? No messing with them, letters sent out demanding users adjust their usage within two days or they get temporarily suspended :) Surely worthy of anticap atttention?

Anyway if you can strengthen your case regarding ntl + BT I'd be interested.

EDIT: To correct some really poor grammar :)

[th'engineer]

I was just floating this idea as a possibility. Being a long time supporter and customer of the company. I was trying to understand why they get things wrong, from not understanding the customers needs. It sometimes seems that to fail at something is desired.
Surely you must admit there are many examples of this in all the services provided to customers.
E-mail service, customer communication, TV service

[Escapee]

I was just floating this idea as a possibility. Being a long time supporter and customer of the company. I was trying to understand why they get things wrong, from not understanding the customers needs. It sometimes seems that to fail at something is desired.
Surely you must admit there are many examples of this in all the services provided to customers.
E-mail service, customer communication, TV service

I think the company changed from it's attitude in the earlier days in the ragion that I worked in, we used to be amazed how the company then that was really CableTel using the ntl name used to bend over backwards to help customers.

Many of the ex-BT people used to comment on this and say that BT would just tell the customer to push off elsewhere if they didn't like it, but times changed and ntl started taking the same attitude as BT whilst BT started to realise they had better treat customers better or lose more of them.

If customers could of seen it from the other side in those early days where huge amounts of credits and engineers time was wasted on one single customer who was not going to be happy whatever you did for him, they would be amazed. I often got sent along to customers that were really trying it on because word got around that constantly complaining about a fault that didn't exist would get you free service for a period of time. I could go into individual cases that were bordering on stupidity in the way that they were giving free service to "Professional moaners" I was sent along to some of these customers as a last resort to either agree that there was a problem and sort it out or report back to the CS manager that there was no fault and we could do nothing for the customer.

To get to the point where CS would accept this, (CS allways beleived the customer because the engineers were lying!!!) took a very long time and a lot of wasted engineers hours. Then the whole **** started over again when the Retention department tried to save the customer from disconnecting :banghead:

I am not anti-customer focused, but there are a small amount of people out there who will never be happy with the service they get and others will go to extreme lengths to get something for nothing!

It is quite amazing to visit a customer who is trying it on and has no fault, very often CS have been very sympathetic and the technicians visiting the house have been afraid to tell the customer as it is. When the big bad person comes along and tells them the truth that the service is the same as every other customer is getting in the area and they will have to start paying like everyone else, they usually throw a wobbly and get verbally abusive or agressive because they have been found out.

ntl have cut down on the amount of things they are giving away through incompetence, but it is being paid for with the large amount of disconnections that they currently have in some areas.