So lets blame

"housing slowdown and booming sales of mobile broadband"

and forget the lack of trust, and data pimping issues.

I'd say the kind of person who gets their broadband through CPW doesn't even know what Phorm is, let alone what's wrong with it.

@Anonymous Coward

Concerns over Phorm and the like really are confined to the IT geek chatosphere. The average broadband subscriber has much lower expectations and is much less informed than you think.

with the housing marking in full scale decline pretty much anthing can now be blamed on plummeting house prices, it's fair game

Dont they use Opal telecom's LLU net? thought thats why they acquired it.

Well at least BT offer voip phones and set top boxes and Virgin offer cableTV. wheres as CPW offer?? spamwebcentral?

Well, I assumed they both use different systems as I work for CPW Networks (the new name for Opal telcom) and have worked on some aspects of Talk Talk's network in my time.

Plus there is the fact that AOl use one supplier for their kit and CPWN use another supplier will also imply that they are different networks?

not necessaily, just that they use multiple vendors, indpendent networks have their own Autonomous System (AS) numbers.

@ Andrew It maybe that AOL UK customers have been shunted onto CPW Networks' LLU network (which would make more economic sense than trying to operate two infrastructures) and so the customers of both brands will be served IPs from the same IP address block which would explain what you are observing.

The RIPE database is a good place to check IP block allocations http://www.ripe.net

I really really hope that company goes titsup

They provide a dire broadband service (I've never used them but know plenty of people that have) with dire support, DNS problems, throttling of applications that aren't P2P at all, you name it, they can screw it up.

As for dealing with their core incompetency let me twll you of my couple of experiences with this dreadful organisation.

1) About 8 years ago I had an excellent Ericsson S868 mobile, unfortunately it fell off my belt one day onto its aerial which bent and seemed to be affecting call quality, when I got home I proceeded to look on CPW's site for a replacement one (went to the site thinking that it was unlikely that they would stock such a part in my local branch)

Found the screw in aerial I needed and proceeded to order.

When it turned up they had sent me an aerial for an A1018 rather than an S868, therefore it would not fit, fair enough, mistakes do happen so I ring up 'customer services' and tell the guy that I had been sent the wrong part and asking whether he could arrange a swap "what do you want me to do about it?" was his helpful response.

So I went to the local branch and asked to speak to the manager, the salesbod was unwilling to get the manager or give me a refund until I told him that I would hand the matter over to my credit card company to recover the purchase price, the manager came out and was extrenely apologetic and said he would feed back about this, he checked for the part and said they did not have one at all in CPW and so gave me a refund.

2) Fast forward a few years and I was looking for a SIM free Motorola V600, I went with CPW as they were the cheapest, I ordered the phone and got a delivery date (which was a saturday) I booked the day off and nothing showed up (it showed up on a tuesday while I was at work and so I had to go down and pick it up from the courier depot.

I mailed to complain, even just an apology would have been nice, but I got bugger all response from them so frankly I think its not surprising that their sales are decreasing.

Here's to a bankrupt Charles Dunstone.