BT Openworld

[SLF 999]

Has anyone on the forum have any experience of BT openworld (ASDL).
I have just oredered it and want to know if there is anything that I should look out for or is it worth the £40 PM for 500k access. I have until 20/08 to cancel it !
Also what ISPs do people use on it , Im currently with BT Anytime and am assuming that it will continue to work with ASDL.
Any comments would be useful.

[touch&go]

Hi SLF999,

I have been using BT Openworld since February this year, and now enjoying the benefits of a fast connection, but I had at first real problems with the service.

The problem I was experiencing was a error 650 which caused me to re boot by PC every couple of hours, and BT tech support couldn’t solve the problem. After being driven to despair I took my complaint to the chief executive of BT in London, and also an article in the Dot Com section of the Daily Telegraph ran a story on the problem.

I have now have a fix to the problem and list the following things YOU MUST DO!!!!!!.

1. The problem is the Alcatel modems drives aren’t supported by Microsoft.
2. You motherboard after boot up controls its power to thing like USB ports and after a couple of minutes the power is limited to the USB Alcatel modem if it isn’t used, when you try to use you modem the drives can’t wake up the modem and the only way to use the modem is to do a power cycle, this means re booting you PC.

The Fix:

1. Set your PC on boot up to auto connects and open IE, this gets your modem working while its got power.
2. Also on boot up set your Outlook Express to open and connect on boot up, also you need to set it to check for emails every minute, this will keep your modem awake, this activity will keep power to your USB port and stop your motherboard limiting the power to the USB port.

I have done the above and now have a fast and reliable connection, which has not crashed in 2 months. There are some broadband site which great, you can watch films, music videos in real time with excellent stereo sound, and also being able to down load data in no time, I was downloading songs from Napster in 90 seconds.

All you PC experts, I’m not an expert, and you may pull to bits my posting, but it was a problem, and it took Alcatel, BT and other companies to come up with the above fix, and it works.

[Wrongstuff]

Much the same problem with mine. As I use a laptop, I just disconnect the USB cable for 5secs, which re installs the modem (quicker for me than a re-boot)as I don't have to crawl around the back of a desktop case.
I have installed some new drivers from Alcatel and the problem is not as bad as it was, just intermitent, but I can live with it.
As far as the ADSL itself, it's very good. It is expensive but I reckon the net cost to me is around £10/month. The real advantage is I can connect at anytime and for folk that work funny hours thats a big plus. Before ADSL if I arrived back in the house at 9 in the morning I would think twice about hooking up because of the cost of the call. I know it's possible to get a 'normal' modem all inclusive connection but thats where the speed is a real bonus. Now when I go to to sites and they say "you need to download the latest player etc" and it's 18mb you can just hit the download button, with ADSL around 3 minutes, that makes a huge difference.It actually makes the Internet a neat place to surf because of the speed, no more waiting for pages to load,some of the sites are very graphic intensive. Go for it I don't think you will regret it.

[SLF 999]

Thanks for the hints, I was going to plug the modem into a powered USB hub, so that it has power all the time, but Ill also consider getting outlook to check for mail every minute just to keep it awake.
Also means that after the 2 hr auto disconnect will reconnect by outlook checking for mail (assuming of course I get the settings correct!) :D

[touch&go]

SLF999

The use of a powered USB hub was used to try and get over the error 650 but didn't work, the port will still limit the power if not used, I as well as BT thought it would fix the problem, but it didn't. The only fix to the power problem is to keep the USB port busy by checking for emails,

Also the 2 hour disconnect is if you haven't use the service for 2 hours then it will disconnect, by checking for emails you will never be disconnected.