After finally getting completely fed up with the ISP that likes to charge for no service, I told Virgin.net that I’d like to move off their £25 a month “no service” plan, and picked myself a new ISP.
This time, I plumped for Homechoice, who were prepared to offer me broadband at twice the speed of Virgin.net (when they deigned to provide a service at all) plus TV on demand through the phone line, at not much more than I was previously paying Branson’s lot (they also offered the option to take all the Sky Sports channels, much to Sal’s displeasure…). Seemed like a good deal to me, and for about 4 hours after it was installed, it was. Unfortunately, since then, and for the last week, we’ve been having some interesting interference problems between the TV service/broadband, and the phone (basically, you can hear the data traffic coming through the phone line, and if you happen to be trying to use the net or watch any of the Homechoice TV channels when you pick up the phone, the TV picture freezes, and you lose your connection). Unfortunately, it seems that Homechoice’s “technical” support might not be all it’s cracked up to be. My conversation with them last weekend went something like this:
Me: …the phone line works fine when there’s only a phone plugged into it, but as soon as I plug the Homechoice Set Top Box into the line as well, I can hear the modem dialling up, and then all the data traffic…
Customer Service Monkey: You’ve got a modem plugged in to the line?
Me: Er, yes. It’s inside the Homechoice Set Top Box that you supplied to me. That’s how it connects to the network…
CSM: Well, it sounds like a filter problem.
Me: I don’t think it is–I’ve tried three different filters, one of which you supplied to me, and two I used with my previous supplier with no problems for the last year.
CSM: Sounds like a filter problem to me. Do you have any other filters you could try?
Me: Er, no. Just the three…
CSM: Can you hang on, I’ll just check with my supervisor.
[a few minutes later]
CSM: Yes. We think it’s a filter problem.
(repeat ad infinitum…)
Of course it’s not a filter problem (or at least it is not a problem with the filter I have plugged in to the phone line, although it may be a problem with the filter at the exchange), and the engineer they eventually sent out agreed (it’s also not a problem with any other equipment inside the house). It’s not a problem with the line, because a BT engineer has already been out to test that. As I say, it may be a problem at the exchange, but Homechoice don’t seem to know/care, or be able to get anyone down there to find out.
Hmm. Which leaves me with a working phone line, and a working broadband/TV connection, but not both at the same time*. So InterWebNet, what’s going on, and what can I do? I’m stuck.
*Needless to say, it may not be a good idea to phone our landline any time there’s a live Everton game on Sky Sports…