![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenIt's all about phones, you see.
My Nokia 7710 no longer works at all. The HTC Universal that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dougs lent to me in March got stolen. So I'm back on an ancient Nokia 6310i. Great phone. Been down the road too many times to remember, down the loo once, still works.
Butandroctonus keeps telling me she never gets my texts. Lots of people at the GBBF didn't, too. I get sent receipts, but they claim they don't get the messages. And its battery life is erratic. It still lasts a few days, but on the last day, it falls precipitously down from nearly-full to nothing in hours, which is vexing.
Also, landline. I haven't got one any more. Bulldog, a wholly owned subisidary of Clueless & Witless, cut me off at the end of July. They failed to setup my direct debit, so I didn't get transferred to Pipex when Pipex bought Bulldog's customers. Now C&W has pulled out of retail broadband, it's byebye Liam.
Only they can't even do that right. My voice line is gone but broadband still works fine. My router's been online continuously for 135d 22:20 now. I can still send through Bulldog's SMTP server, everything.
I've talked to them. They say I'm an ex customer, cut off, gone, i dai pinis up yeh.
So, no more bills. Yay! But no more phonecalls either, in or out. Boo.
So I really need a new provider and I want a new mobile.
I fancy a Nokia E90 Communicator. Looks good: all the features, music, camera, 3G, radio, QWERTY keyboard, big screen, and a numeric keypad and one-handed operation. It's Series 60, which I don't much like, but I'll cope. No touchscreen, also. But ça suffit.
Vodafone phoned me last week to offer me a new phone if I'd stay with them. I can get an E90 for free, but I need to sign up for 18mth. And they don't offer it yet, so I must wait a week. They said they'd call back when it was ready. They haven't yet.
Today, I talked to T-Mobile & Orange.
Orange can do me a new phone and broadband for what I used to pay for either of those individually. This is good. Halves my bill. But they don't offer the E90 and don't think they will. If they did, given it's a £500-£600 phone, I'd need to pay £75 a month and pay £100 for the phone anyway. But they're happy to offer me an N95. Nice enough phone, but it's a media toy, not really what I want. Comments from owners are sought.twistedanimator? How do you like yours?
T-Mobile, well, they offer unlimited Internet access for about £6 or so a month, maybe up to twice that. So I could use whizzy new 3G web phone as much as I wanted, no charge. That would be nice. But they don't offer the E90 either. They say they're thinking of offering the Nokia E series end Sept/start Oct, but they don't have anything that says they'll be offering the E90.
Looks like Vodafone might be my only choice, then. I did switch to them from T-Mobile 'cos they were the only ones who offered the 7710 and it cost me nothing.
Scanning the Voda website, it looks like they do offer home broadband too, so maybe I could get a bundled deal with them, too. That might swing it.
Whoever I go to, I've got to get BT to reconnect my landline. That sucks. I was very glad to leave BT and go to Bulldog, but nobody in the UK now seems to offer what Ofcom call "fully unbundled lines". (In direct contradiction to my friends and colleagues in the IT press, all of whom seem to think that paying line rental to BT and getting all your services from someone else constitutes "local loop unbundling". Newsflash: it doesn't. That is just partial unbundling, of services only, not the line. It's not me saying so, it's Ofcom, the telecoms watchdog, and it should know.)
I really did not want to go back to BT, but I seem to have no choice. This does not make me happy.
If anyone can tell me anything I've failed to spot, I'd love to hear about it!
My Nokia 7710 no longer works at all. The HTC Universal that
dougs lent to me in March got stolen. So I'm back on an ancient Nokia 6310i. Great phone. Been down the road too many times to remember, down the loo once, still works. But
androctonus keeps telling me she never gets my texts. Lots of people at the GBBF didn't, too. I get sent receipts, but they claim they don't get the messages. And its battery life is erratic. It still lasts a few days, but on the last day, it falls precipitously down from nearly-full to nothing in hours, which is vexing.Also, landline. I haven't got one any more. Bulldog, a wholly owned subisidary of Clueless & Witless, cut me off at the end of July. They failed to setup my direct debit, so I didn't get transferred to Pipex when Pipex bought Bulldog's customers. Now C&W has pulled out of retail broadband, it's byebye Liam.
Only they can't even do that right. My voice line is gone but broadband still works fine. My router's been online continuously for 135d 22:20 now. I can still send through Bulldog's SMTP server, everything.
I've talked to them. They say I'm an ex customer, cut off, gone, i dai pinis up yeh.
So, no more bills. Yay! But no more phonecalls either, in or out. Boo.
So I really need a new provider and I want a new mobile.
I fancy a Nokia E90 Communicator. Looks good: all the features, music, camera, 3G, radio, QWERTY keyboard, big screen, and a numeric keypad and one-handed operation. It's Series 60, which I don't much like, but I'll cope. No touchscreen, also. But ça suffit.
Vodafone phoned me last week to offer me a new phone if I'd stay with them. I can get an E90 for free, but I need to sign up for 18mth. And they don't offer it yet, so I must wait a week. They said they'd call back when it was ready. They haven't yet.
Today, I talked to T-Mobile & Orange.
Orange can do me a new phone and broadband for what I used to pay for either of those individually. This is good. Halves my bill. But they don't offer the E90 and don't think they will. If they did, given it's a £500-£600 phone, I'd need to pay £75 a month and pay £100 for the phone anyway. But they're happy to offer me an N95. Nice enough phone, but it's a media toy, not really what I want. Comments from owners are sought.
twistedanimator? How do you like yours?T-Mobile, well, they offer unlimited Internet access for about £6 or so a month, maybe up to twice that. So I could use whizzy new 3G web phone as much as I wanted, no charge. That would be nice. But they don't offer the E90 either. They say they're thinking of offering the Nokia E series end Sept/start Oct, but they don't have anything that says they'll be offering the E90.
Looks like Vodafone might be my only choice, then. I did switch to them from T-Mobile 'cos they were the only ones who offered the 7710 and it cost me nothing.
Scanning the Voda website, it looks like they do offer home broadband too, so maybe I could get a bundled deal with them, too. That might swing it.
Whoever I go to, I've got to get BT to reconnect my landline. That sucks. I was very glad to leave BT and go to Bulldog, but nobody in the UK now seems to offer what Ofcom call "fully unbundled lines". (In direct contradiction to my friends and colleagues in the IT press, all of whom seem to think that paying line rental to BT and getting all your services from someone else constitutes "local loop unbundling". Newsflash: it doesn't. That is just partial unbundling, of services only, not the line. It's not me saying so, it's Ofcom, the telecoms watchdog, and it should know.)
I really did not want to go back to BT, but I seem to have no choice. This does not make me happy.
If anyone can tell me anything I've failed to spot, I'd love to hear about it!
