Greetings, Eric!
On 15-Dec-05, at 8:02 AM, Eric Dondelinger wrote:
On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 04:49:37PM +0100, Mike G.
wrote:
I hope no-one is bothered by a post that
isn't particularly about
Linux.
we do have some experience with networking, so you're in the right
place ;-)
Thanks for making that clear, Eric! I'm glad I didn't end up
violating the list purpose. Thanks also for relaying your knowledge
of Brent Frere's assessment of Alternet - I'm responding to his post
separately.
There is, for
instance, no website that collects information and
complaints about ISPs.
No idea though on the independant website collecting such
info for
Luxembourg, I did know such pages for both Germany and Switzerland.
I wonder how hard it would be to set on up - or get one of the other
ones to expand to include Luxembourg. Has anyone tried? Is there one
for Belgium or France? I guess one of the drawbacks is that after you
sign up, the information is irrelevant for a year, because you can't
leave the contract unless you leave the country or die! (That's just
so extremely unbalanced between the provider and the customer!)
I did hear some negative stuff about Coditel - AFAIK
they're being
sued by the local consumer's rights association...
I'd like to hear more about this lawsuit. Anyone know what it's
about? Know where I could find out more? This is the Union des
Consummateurs we're talking about here? I find their website is
pretty limited - I ran several searches on it for information about
ISPs and came up with little.
My own experience is with P&T's LuxDSL
[snipped] They're most
probably not the cheapest, though ;-)
No, they're not. They don't even offer flat rate/unlimited plans.
Apparently they used to, until one day they unilaterally imposed a
cap, lowered the fee, but imposed a hefty rate on usage beyond the
cap. This was something I did find on the consumer's union website. I
also in general just shy away from offerings from dominant players -
they're usually aiming their service at the mass market, and padding
the costs for tech support for dummies and things like portals and
various extra services.
I've heard some good about Visual Online /
Netline.
These two ISPs are in a group that has not tried to match Tango/
Tele2's deal. They seem to be linked directly to whatever P&T is
offering. Visual Online in particular had very complex descriptions
of their offers. These factors eliminated them from my consideration.
In some PDF found on the
www.luxdsl.lu website I found
exact specs
which
the DSL equipment needs to fulfill - it's in the "conditions
particulières
LuxDSL/SpeedSurf".
Just to be clear about my experiment - I emailed the ISPs already
having a good idea of the answer. Of course, it would help if I could
test the modem on someone's line, but everything I saw, including
stuff from VOXdsl and Alternet, told me my modem should be able to
work here. The point of the email was to see how fast, and how well,
the ISP answered such a query.
Thanks again for your reply to my post.
Mike