connect the cable modem to your TV/radio socket - I am sure you must have at least one of those?

Hi guys,

just moved to Lausanne and rented an apartment. I am looking for internet providers and basically found swisscom and cablecom. According to Cablecom's site, Lausanne is not yet covered so I'm left with swisscom.

I went to a swisscom store and the service I was interested in costs 45 chf/month + phone line access (which basically I don't need). also I need to make a 12-month commitment. The issue is my stay in switzerland is initially for 6 months (may be extended later but as of yet I don't know)

Can anybody provide alternatives?

Thanks

Same.. My contract might be extend .. but its hard swisscom ask for the permit.. pergh...I want to get swisscom coz i might cant connect from my cablecom. I try to connect the cablecom through the tv connection but yet.. not working.. im frustrated... no internet.. Sad..

cablecom 10000/1000 users - restart your modems please

http://perftest.cablecom.ch and smile

Your internet is Marion Jones FAST! I must be old skool on 4500/550 kbit/s

after the reboot, I am on 15000/1500

LOL, this is a thread for moaners.

It's clear that customer service is important. ADSL is a best-effort service. You get what you pay for. If you buy a leased line in some form or other - dedicated access - the telco or ISP that purchases the line will monitor pro-actively and rectify the fault on your behalf. Because you have paid for that service.

ADSL/Cable is a cheap and cheerful solution for the masses. Telco's don't make any money from you in spite of the network build-out that is required and so they don't waste their top engineers on dealing with crappy queries like "my internet is not working" or "it's slow today, let's do a traceroute, that'll show them!" Go figure.

Let me quote this answer for posteriority LOL. ISPs don't make a money from the small customers because they have to build an infrastructure that basically has been around for how many decades now? Why have the ISP prices headed south ever since there was some sort of competition in the country?

Have you a direct backbone connection at home or are you just the usual holier than thou troll?

If you ask me, this is a thread giving information about what's available - naturally with a few people complaining about their service. Strikes me that junos maybe has spent too much time working in first-level support LOL ROTFLMAO etc etc

It has nothing to do with service levels and everything to do with getting a response when you were cut off due to the companies error with invoicing, wanting to change your subscription or change address and have it work first time or even wanting to know if the company offers the service in your area. These are basic customer service requests that should be well handled and straightforward. If a company can't handle the basics because it's a "best efforts" service then they shouldn't offer the service.

Yes, well in an ideal world, we would all be sent a bottle of champagne every time there was an outage by way of an apology. But we don't pay for that SLA, so we don't get it. You can argue, as I do, - and you may, like me, sometime get one - but I'm a special case because I am a backbone network engineer for an ISP and I can argue my case. The reality is that it doesn't happen very often and even when it does, I agree that even for me - it can be a headache to get back online.

Customer service is important in any business but like I said, domestic hi-speed internet really is a low margin business for telco's and ISP's. Many go bankrupt because of it. And this is why that only the larger ones and incumbents tend to survive. Because, like the airlines, - they concentrate their customer service effort on business customers and providing for what they want and need. Business customers pay and as the saying goes - you don't get something for nothing. This is not just for the technical side but also for the admin side.

Change ISP's. Some DO provide a better service than others.

PS I deal with telco's all day long - and I have the "inside" numbers to actually get through to the right people in NOC. I hear you man, I hear you.

PPS With a name like JUNOS, Lob, I don't think I'm likely to work in first-level support, do you? Go back to your cocoa. Lemon.

I said it has nothing to do with service levels, I know I don't pay it and I don't expect to get it, I just want somebody to deal with my billing error or whatever.

I have never, ever had a problem with my internet connection in which it would have helped to get through to the NOC, and I have had my fair share of problems. Even if they could help they wouldn't, they'd be pissed off you'd called them direct. Sorry but I really don't think you know what you're talking about.

I just want a ISP where I can phone up, speak to a helpdesk or customer service bloke and they will say "yes Mr Peach this will be sorted in 3 days" and actually have it sorted in 3 days. I feel I have found this with Swisscom.

LOL, I wouldn't bank on it with Swisscom. First thing this morning had customers call up complaining they couldn't access bluewin. You know why? Because some ejut in their NOC had published their range with a PRIVATE AS in it which all ISP's (at least the brighter ones) policy filter at the border just like we filter default routing and private ranges. While this can happen to anyone - it's easy to make a typo in the configs - it shouldn't have happened for an outfit like swisscom - whose whole network is reproduced in the lab and every change is carefully controlled.

But you still don't seem to get it with the billing or tech support, do you? What you want ain't what you are gonna get.

Yes I do, it affected us.

I'm on a 3500/350 line, just restarted my modem and was very pleased with the performance test

Anybody have VDSL? I got an offer from my ISP, but only with a phone I don't want.

Can't really imagine any domestic customers wanting VDSL except maybe those hard-core downloaders, p-p or peeps simply wanting to watch Bluewin TV.

Those sorts of speeds are really only going to appeal to business customers and I find it hard to imagine that even they will realistically find the need to fill those sorts of pipes at the moment. But if business customers want it then ISP's and Telco's will invest in it. Also, DSL is a bit "cheap". I despise any business that uses it even as a backup solution. DSL is only ever a best-effort service.

Metro-Ethernet is starting to make an impact finally.

I have a friend at Swisscom who is a bit "leading-edge" with his home-based technology and he told me 6 months ago that Bluewin TV wasn't up to scratch even though he had VDSL. Yet. But it will get better. Like IP telephony. I've worked on lot's of IP telephony projects in the last 8 years and they haven't been so successful. Don't believe the hype.

BT are trying to converge their old TDM voice network onto IP with a redundant Juniper and cisco network but I bet it won't be quite ready just yet. Too much marketing chat and not enough realism.

But the more bandwidth that the punters want means the more project work I have upgrading the core - so keep with it!

The throughput that you might see with a provider for testing your line is really only local to that ISP. Often they will place an ftp server on a LAN inside their network and tell you that the line is not broken because you can reach them. It's fair comment. But not the end of the story. The true story has alot to do with their IP transit and peering uplinks on their backbone.

With DSL, you only have a single user on a pair of copper wires from your house to the local exchange so there cannot be any contention. But once the traffic is on the core it is.

In essence, because you have good throughput to an ISP test server is only interesting for the ISP in closing the call or ticket. But it doesn't challenge - among other things - their uplinks or peering points where bandwidth may be congested due to over-subscription.

I'm posting this as OFF-TOPIC somewhat, but useful info nonetheless.

Hi,

About a month ago, I upgraded my 10 meg broadband to the latest 25 meg. I was always happy with the speed on the 10 meg, and whenever I downloaded stuff from usenext, (which I pay a subscription to because of the ultra fast downloads achievable), I could always get the full 10 meg.

The first night of the upgrade, it averaged between 14 and 18 meg, which I could deal with. Then all of a sudden, the maximum download speed I can get is 4 meg, (usually alternating between 256K and 4 meg). I contacted cablecom and they said that the area was overloaded and would be upgraded in just over a month. In the mean time I am still expected to pay more for crappy service.

It would appear that cablecom first get all of the punters, then only create the infrastructure to handle it when they have everyones cash.

Anyone else experienced problems after the upgrade?

Monopoly is a wonderful thing ... the best thing since sliced bread !

I had much the same with Cablecom last year when by 10Meg connection was running at 1.5Meg. I sent their customer service dept the link to my speed stats page from cnlab.ch and they charged me 3 months at a lower rate until they upgraded.