Topic: Free 56K Backup Needed.

[chorleydave]

A couple of weeks ago, I finally changed to ADSL. While I don't regret my decision, I do wish broadband providers would give a freephone 56K dialup number as backup.  Last week, I remember Sandra was unable to get on because the Pipex servers were down, and in the two weeks I have been on Wanadoo broadband, I have experienced two down times.

While I appreciate that modern technology is never guaranteed to be problem free, I think that as we are paying for what ISPs deliberately advertise as an "always on" connection, they could provide us with an alternative for when it goes t*ts up.

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[Clive]

That's a very valid point Dave.  I keep a PAYG dial up for emergencies and there were two occasions last year when my ISP went down.  The total outage was three days and unsurprisingly, being BT, they refused to admit there was a problem.  I remember though that one ISP used to throw in a free dial up with BB.  I've forgotten which one it was now.  

[Simon]

Pipex have indeed issued a free dial up number, for when their systems go down, but I have never actually managed to get it to work, as they only switch it on after a certain period of down time.  

[Tony]

I had a problem getting on ADSL for 8 hours once....NDO support said it was not on their side, and we both agree it was BT end as my Modem would not connect. I'd uninstalled and reinstalled the modem etc. So I asked them to put a request into BT this was at 8.30am. I then found it had not been logged with BT till 1.00pm. BT said an engineer would not get the job till the next day.

I rang NDO up and bollocked them, and the nice people that they are set me up with free access 56K dial up account when I asked them.

Bugger me that evening I was on the BT ADSL help site and I read that if the USB modem dropped the line or failed to connect at boot up. Try disconnecting all cables from the Modem, and reboot the PC...and plug the cables back in. You know what it worked....see even though I had uninstalled ...rebooted..reinstalled...I had never actually disconnected the cables  >