Kingston Comms loses BT connection

Kingston Communications, recently rebranded as KCom, has lost its connection to BT and, therefore, the wider world beyond the Humber. Several concerned Hull residents, and Reg readers, got in touch to say they could not access bt.com or other sites on the BT network because of a routing problem. KCom provided us with the …

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder

where this sits with our business SLA...

Kingston need to improve the resilience of their network, what's the point of being independant and yet unable to get connectivity?

The sooner some other ISP provides competition in the Kingston Monopolised Hull area the better.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: business SLA

Seems these days the "out of our hands" is the get out of any SLA. If you can spread blame widely enough then you can never be responsible! (look at government!)

[Steve Browne]

What a load of rot

The internet, by definition, routes around problems, the whole thing has been designed to be attack resilient. Knock out one chunk of the network, it routes around it automatically. So, why is it that only 1 company is affected.

Do these people think we are all as stupid as they are ?

[Jaster]

Kingston is a special Case

Kingston communications is a special case they were an independent communications company before BT even existed

They were the only independent telecoms company in the UK for nearly 100 years and so this means that if you live in Kingston upon Hull you almost certainly get your telephone connection *and* Broadband from them, they are the default carrier rather than BT

What this means is that if they have a problem then so does everyone in Hull .... It's like if BT has a problem then so does everyone in the UK ....

The internet cannot rout around the problem if there are no other routes ....

[Simon Westerby]

Surprised they didn't blame it on the floods...

Water logged cables slowly being degraded... etc etc

[Phill]

@Jaster

"they are the default carrier rather than BT"

wtf?

[Kevin Kenny]

Wrong type of....

...leaves on the cables?

[Chloe Cresswell]

Connection to BT..

I was affected at a site by this one, it's great, I can get to some of our demon IP range, and not other parts of it!

KCom brings me more problems then almost everyone else I deal with! Roll on someone else providing connectivity in Hull.

[iain]

I am affected

I live in Stoke on Trent which is nowhere near Kingson or Hull; my ISP is Eclipse who are part of KCOM and I'm having very slow access to the Internet. :(

[bruce]

Coincidence or is the mighty Zen also effected by this

http://status.zensupport.co.uk/index.php?serviceid=5&incidentid=680

[Anonymous Coward]

Zen

Now why did someone at zen call their gateway Gay... is it something to do with the fact that it is their connection to BT, or did they want a sniggering laugh whenever something goes wrong with it? Are the others known as Queer, Pufter and Homo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Zen? Gay?

I thought in this day and age we were past sniggering at the word gay, and certainly past using the other words in the post in whatever context.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too small to cope, too large to care

If anyone's reading this, it's Monday 27th August at 15:10 and the problem still persists.

Hull's great! Chavs, floods, crappy telco/ISP, no IT jobs

Come on down some time

[Martin]

Title

STILL can't connect to bt.com

[John Dougald McCallum]

@Zen/Anon

Or it could be :-

Hellen,Irene,Julia,Kate,etc you know that thing called the ALPHABET made into FEMALE names!!!

[Chloe Cresswell]

KC Speaks! Or it would do if it could reach anyone!

Well, KC's still having problems, but they have updated their status from "3 hours expect to fix" on Friday to:

"This is due to a hardware failure on a complex piece of equipment.

Replacement kit is being sourced with our supplier Cisco and a plan of work is in place to implement this once it arrives"

And a hope it will be updated at 12:00.... I don't have that much hope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tuesday - And still having problems. Or having problems again (not sure which)

2007-08-28 @ 09:27:00

Status [Problem]

Estimated Time 4 h

Time Remaining 0d, 2h, 59m, 56s

Description Customers will be experiencing intermittent web-site connectivity issues.

Business customers may experience VPN connectivity problems.

This is due to a hardware failure on a complex piece of equipment.

Replacement kit is being sourced with our supplier Cisco and a plan of work is in place to implement this once it arrives.

The next update is expected at 12 noon today.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kingston Communications

Now a further 8 hour delay on top of the 4 hours posted this morning. Do they have any clue what they are doing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Single point of failure

I am a network engineer by trade and I cannot believe the incompetence of KCOM, every network should always have redundancy and no single points of failure. Once again I believe this highlights a major issue with KCOM being allowed to operate a monopoly, if you were a customer who received this flaky level of service repeatedly you would move to another provider. Unfortunately as a Hullygully I do not have that luxury.

Bskyb , Orange and Talk Talk offer free broadband but no one in Hull can take advantage of these services, if I subscribe to any of the aforementioned companies I am literally subsidising the rest of the countries free broadband, its ridiculous! The sooner other telcos move into Hull exchanges and offer an alternative service, the better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why no other ISP comes to Hull

KC have made a number of strategic choices.

1. The first 1Km of wire from the exchange is normally 0.5mm sq. Kc have chosen to use 0.3mm sq. Remember the problems they had with KIT - the wire size played a part in the problems... The key point here is that the DSLAMs in the exchange for connecting the ADSL are much more expensive for 0.3mm cable.

2. KC have installed about 9 times for exchanges than would be used in a BT area. The ISP would have to haul fiber to something like 30 exchanges rather than the 2 or 3 in BT land.

The combination of these 2 mean that a prospective ISP would have to spend 9 times more on kit which is more expensive and more back haul links to get to 350,000 prospective customers.

Ofcom have very little to say on the matter other than KC do not run a monoploy. This is quite true; any other telco, ISP etc can come into this area; but when they are dependent (or dig the road up) on using the local copper circuit and find it is not compatible with what they have and then to be faced with 9 times more cost to "buy in to Hull", then you can see the problem.

I had heard rumours that the Karoo Infrastructure was creaking, but nothing specific.

In the light of the recent layoffs fuelled by cost savings, one might suggest too much cost cutting left KC in a position without a spare, resilience or diverse networks...

[Anonymous Coward]

How poor is this situation ?

I am in charge of IT within one of Hull's fastest growing organisations and I can honestly say that we the business community are crying out for someone to come into Hull and offer some cost effective alternatives to the current provider.

KC are arrogant, losing focus on the customer base, inflexible and downright bloody expensive.

I cannot believe that a company like KC has got into a position that leaves the entire area of Hull without effective Internet access for nearly 5 days now - what the hell is going on and who is responsible ?

P*ssed off at the lack of viable options.

[James Baker]

Sign the Petition

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/end-the-kc-monopoly-of-hulls-internet-services

[Anonymous Coward]

No Competition reasons

Its simple when someone does try to compete Kingston puts them out of business via sharp business practices. A number have companies have tried but KC does things like trebling its line rental costs to them with 2 weeks notice - hand delivered by taxi! No warning, no communication, just make an amendment to their terms and conditions and enforce it.

Oftel - useless - find in KC's favour every time.

In addition they appear to operate Karoo in such a way that no one can compete. Sure you can set up in Hull offering ADSL like others do in BT land but the cost split between the charge from KC for network access and the cost you could sell it for is so small you can generate enough business. How Karoo operate on these margins is anyones guess. I am sure you can figure it out for yourselves. It would be interesting to see comparison figures KC v BT for such access. I am sure the figures would be very different.

Complain to Oftel or your MP about the monopoly and you get told its not a monopoly as anyone can 'in theory' operate in the KC area regardless of the fact that KC make it impossible in practice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Complain to Ofcom

Please anyone who has an issue with KCOM monopoly call Ofcom 020 7981 3040 and state your case. Let them know how people in Hull have no option to use another operator, we have no choice and therefore KCOM has no incentive to improve services or reduce costs.