Broadband ESSENTIAL to life, titsup ISPs must cough up - court

Any service should pay you back (if paid in advance, or lower your next bill if not) if they are not providing the service you are paying them for.

If the service is not being provided then money should be returned, and it is a pain in the rear to get them to do this even if they admit fault.

Small outages are not bad but I anything more than a few hours should warrant a refund.

At the very least, there should be a pro rata refund: if I pay £30/month (i.e. £1/day) for broadband, and it's out of order for 3 days, I should get a £3 credit/refund, since I haven't actually received the service on those days.

Back when I was getting FTTC installed, BT screwed up and failed to install first time, then failed to show up for the second appointment. When making the original appointment, it was emphasised to me that if *I* failed to be there, I'd be charged £85+VAT ... apparently, though, BT failing to show up doesn't oblige them to pay me, though it really should do.

I wouldn't be at all troubled by this wiping out the bargain-bucket "ISPs", cutting every corner known to man; the world would be a better place without them, particularly the draconian traffic limits, shaping and port blocks with massive oversubscription.

So, I'm guessing that Sky and Virgin won't be doing a lot of .de business any time soon?

Anon as I'm an ISP phone monkey

I hate it when people make the "I'm losing business" or "this is costing me money" arguments. If you're income relies upon a £10 connection, you are doing something wrong. If you haven't got done sort of backup or SLA to ensure service... Why are you risking your livelihood on it?

The second you can argue that there is no other way to do something official than to do it online...

...then the same applies in the UK and I look forward to BT showering me with cash.

Tax Returns are getting close to this stage.

So based on reliabily record to date...

... Virgin Media is screwed?

@Ragarath

"Any service should pay you back (if paid in advance, or lower your next bill if not) if they are not providing the

> service you are paying them for."

someone needs to tell the train companies that

When will Ofcom accept Broadband as Essential?

The problem in many parts of the UK is that we have a monopoly provider of telecoms circuits, and their licence was written in the early 1980's before home data was on the horizon for anything beyond hobbyist use (and then only by dialup modem).

While Government and commerce are increasingly migrating their services onto an Internet-only basis (most job applications, university applications, many travel reservations and confirmations just for starters) - so the regulator Ofcom still treats the provision of a data service to homes as an optional extra, which can be repaired as slowly as it suits BT to do so. Our village lost electricity due to a substation failure and a team worked 24/7 to restore service. A few weeks later, an exchange fault took a dozen or so Broadband users out of service: repair action couldn't be countenanced until their homes had been visited by office-hours-only engineers, with appointments at least a week away.

Ofcom's explanation of why this is OK: "... despite its popularity, broadband is not regarded as an essential service, i.e. there is no risk to safety of life and consumers living conditions are not affected detrimentally by them losing their broadband service."

Is anyone game to help me come up with a "No 10" petition that government shouldn't extend use of the internet as a means of interaction with citizens until it has modified the BT licence to make Broadband an Essential service that is to be repaired as quickly as electricity supplies?