Re: E****** apology

["patrick_o_matic" <patrick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Paul Gale" <groups@s...> wrote:
>
> I got it - a refund of at least a day's subscription would be nice
though - and maybe prevent a load of users migrating somewhere else!
>

Whilst I empathise with those who've had problems, the ToS of the
majority (all?) broadband suppliers are such that there is no
guarantee of uptime. I guess this is for two reasons - firstly to
differentiate the higher-priced business products that do guarantee
availability, such as leased lines, and secondly because the nature of
the beast is such that the providers feel there *is* a significant
risk of outage which they can't control for, and they therefore cannot
afford to underwrite the risk. Margins on ADSL service provision are
pretty thin, I believe.

The principle problem with the eclipse failure seems to hinge around
their monitoring system. Even if it is not possible to take on the
financial risk of underwriting an outage, it is perfectly possible to
monitor subscriber connections and react pro-actively rather than
waiting for the customer to inform them. This was an area in which
Andrews & Arnold excelled - such a shame they had to go and introduce
a ridiculously low cap...

Patrick