* Posts by Ed Marden

11 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jul 2007

Trying to sell your house? It'd better have KILLER mobile coverage

Ed Marden

Re: femotocells

They might well do, but as I'd called a number on the 3 website, been speaking to somebody in 3's "business" team, and was transferred to "someone who can help", "Shebang!" wasn't exactly the response I was expecting.

I'm sure quite a few companies with silly names answer their phones with their silly names, but that's not really the point; I had no idea who these people were, and hadn't (knowingly) called them!

Ed Marden

Re: femotocells

Yeah? Well you must be very special then, as the last time I tried it Orange said "Oh, here's your PAC".

They just did the same with our works contracts.

After the frustration of trying to get 3 to speak any sense, I can't see me ever using them anyway.

BTW, any company who grunts, then puts you through to someone who answers the phone with "Shebang!" aren't serious about selling contracts to businesses.

Ed Marden
FAIL

Re: femotocells

"a femotocell soon fixes that and all the networks will provide one if prompted"

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Please try to order a contract from Three along with a femtocell and see how you get on. Then repeat the process with EE. For a laugh you could then try O2.

Once you've finished wasting your time talking to their call centres, who have no idea what you're talking about (even if you use the brand names they use for femtocells themselves) you'll realise the appalling state of our mobile comms industry.

EE suggested that I sign up for a two year contract, then "if" I couldn't get a signal, then they "might" be able to sort out a solution.

Three have tried that, but then suggested that they wouldn't sell me a contract at all because: "We don't like to sell products where we know there are going to be issues."

I live in a house with 3 foot thick walls, partly sunk into the ground, pretty much nothing gets in or out, no matter what your coverage checker says. They weren't designing for mobile signal in the 1700s.

Vodafone will flog you one though, and it works pretty well.

Yorkshire cops fail to grasp principle behind BT Fon Wi-Fi network

Ed Marden
WTF?

Eh?

Do not allow anyone connect to your wireless internet connection without your authorisation.

Eh? I've only had half a coffee so far, but I don't think that makes sense.

Almost as much sense as the BT Fon spots that don't log in with the standard FON account details.

Tech that we want (but they never seem to give us)

Ed Marden

Re: Voicemail sent to my mailbox as an MP3 attachment

Use Hullomail.

I probably ought to have done a referral link, but can't remember how. Just use Hullomail, voicemail done how it should be.

Smart metering will disrupt weather forecasts, warns Met Office

Ed Marden
WTF?

Re: Alternative

Er, that's exactly how the current (smart) ones do work.

Well, unless you live in the countryside where there's no mobile coverage, in which case a bloke turns up wanders around for a bit looking confused and then goes away again.

I don't really understand why they bother, we always give the real readings, and always get estimated bills anyway. Somehow I suspect they'll carry on doing that regardless of "smart" meters.

Femto fail: Vodafone's Sure Signal gets a bit shaky again

Ed Marden
Flame

Orange UMA? Bah.

Well, I just switched away from Orange because their UMA hasn't worked on either my phone or my wife's for the last 4 weeks. Despite it working for the previous 2 phones I've had over the last 4 or so years.

I've tried all the obvious stuff, and tried to get some support from them, but they didn't want to answer their phones. I tried emailing them, it came back with a rude message saying their email isn't working. I tried them on twiter, where they ignored me for 11 days, then asked for my phone number and postcode.

I'd already spend over an hour and a half trying to get to speak to someone technical about it, and nowt.

Dug out the old Voda sure signal, fired it up and went on a brand new contract with them.

3 said if I wanted one from them, I'd have to sign up for a contract, then they'd decide if I could have one. O2 the same story, when you finally found someone who knew what I was talking about.

Still got to try and cancel the other Orange phone... another hour and a half on the phone to Ireland?

Ed Marden

Re: @Lee Dowling

NO DON'T! It's extremely unlikely you'll be able to cancel due to lack of UMA.

See my rant for my experiences with Orange UMA. If you do want to try it, whatever you do, don't go and take out a contract, they've only got six phones with it on, and they're all on payg anyway.

Blackberries work better than android phones, apparently because the have more of the UMA spec implemented than the rather shonky client Orange have slapped on a few random outdated android devices.

Google ices native Gmail app for BlackBerry

Ed Marden
Facepalm

Because it's already in BIS?

I don't really see the point of the gmail app.

Gmail is supported by BIS, along with a bunch of it's extra features.

I used to use the app, then native BIS support came along, and I switched to that.

In summary: meh.

(I'm sure someone will point out some 'must have' feature, or talk about BES users who want to get their personal gmail, but still, meh.)

SpinVox up for sale - investor

Ed Marden
WTF?

more anti spinvox propaganda?

There seems to be a lot of negative feeling about spinvox. I really don't understand the comments about "no product".

As a spinvox user, I don't really care how my voicemails get made into emails, all I care about is that they do, and most of the time, reasonably legibly.

Other times I'm fairly sure there has been no humans involved in the process, as no human being would think

that combination of words would go together!

Of course, as a company I'm fairly sure I wouldn't want to be in their shoes, as it looks like they're going to have a lot of competitors soon, and they might be competant in both marketing and running a business, unlike spinvox.

Sky hails broadband explosion

Ed Marden

Useless.

I've been unable to get a reliable connection to Sky broadband since I moved to them from F2S.

On F2S I got a steady 5.5meg connection for the entire year I was with them at this address, moved to Sky, and they keep turning down the connection speed to see if it makes the connection stay up for more than a few hours.

So far, despite dozens of calls to them (at not inconsiderable cost!) they have been unable to provide a stable connection. Speaking to their call centres is either an exercise in frustration, or linguistic gymnastics and frustration depending on which call centre you get.

One must be in Scotland, and the other I think is located in a public swimming baths on Mars, judging from the quality of the line.

Every time I call, usually every 2 days or so, I have to repeat the same mind numbing information, because they've closed the ticket. Yes it's plugged into the master socket, yes it's got a microfilter etc. etc. over and over again until my nose bleeds, or one of us dies of boredom.

Third line support don't call back, there's always a queue to speak to them, and I usually get cut off from them after sometime on hold.

I got a lovely letter through the post telling me that they'd fixed my issue and closed the ticket, but couldn't contact me by phone to tell me. I can't believe they tried very hard, and of course they hadn't solved the issue, they'd just throttled my line back another 100kbps.

I'm at the point of insisting on them waiving the 1 year minimum contract and giving my MAC as they are truly hopeless.