My crazy rant about BT’s Midband internet service yesterday wasn’t completely out of the blue. I have spent time with the product. Too much time, in fact. It took me about an hour to wade through BT’s hundreds of customer service and sales numbers to even order Midband. And then I spent three and a half fruitless hours on Saturday trying to get it to work. And failing.
I’m going to be cutting and cruel to BT in the rest of this article, but I do have to give them some credit up front: after spending 20 minutes on hold to their dedicated Midband Technical support help line, the woman I spoke to was top notch. I’ve dealt with a lot of helpdesk operators in my time, but never has first-level support been so clued-up and helpful. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe the Midband people are all like this. Whatever the case, I was very impressed. (The conclusion we eventually came to was that there was too much line noise. An engineer is being dispatched to investigate.)
Anyway, on with the disaster movie.
Ordering Midband
If you want to order BT Midband, there is an initial hurdle to overcome: BT doesn’t seem to want to sell it. Oh, you can visit their Midband web site, and read up on the service. They even helpfully include a “call me now” or “call me later” option where you can ask for a customer sales representative to ring you and discuss options. But unfortunately these options never seem to work. I got a “sorry, this service is unavailable right now” message whenever I tried them.
So do they list a number for you to call instead, rather than waiting for them to call you back? No. You have to go through their normal customer service and sales phone lines. If you’re lucky, you may get to speak to someone who know what Midband is, but they’ll most likely tell you that you have to call a different number to order it. I had to make four phone calls before I found someone who a) knew about the product, and b) was in a position to sign me up for it. And no, the three previous people couldn’t just transfer my call to the different department. I had to hang up and redial each time.
(Just for the record, in case you were wondering: I am actually hooked up to broadband in my own home. I’ve been doing this work on behalf of my parents’ business. Despite living and working a mere ten minutes drive North of Perth, in a brand new estate of big, modern houses, where stacks of people seem to want broadband, they can’t get it. BT hasn’t even set a trigger level for upgrading their exchange.)
The mysterious price differential
If you order midband for business, it costs £43 per month. For home users it costs £35 per month. No-one at BT has been able to explain what the difference is between the services, apart from price. Based on all the on-line documents I’ve read, there is no difference. No difference in product, no difference in service, no difference in support options, no difference in the number of free hours offered each month. (150, in case you were wondering. It’s pay-as-you-go after that. You didn’t think that a mere £43 per month gets you unlimited usage, did you?)
As a business user, of course, you can’t order the “Home” product. They just screw you for an extra £8 per month because they can!
The business service that isn’t
The Midband software won’t install on Windows 2000 Server editions. It runs happily on Windows 98, Millennium, 2000 Professional, or XP Home or Professional. But try it on any other operating system (presumably even the more recent Windows Server 2003), and it will tell you (almost) politely to bugger off. If you want to run midband on Win2K Server, you therefore can’t use the USB interface that comes as default with the product. You have to buy an ISDN terminal adapter instead, install all the relevant software, and configure it appropriately, all by yourself. This method of access is possible, but BT won’t offer you any support with it.
I wouldn’t mind this so much on a Home product, but what software does BT think that businesses use? Say you’re a small business. Say you have a number of PCs in your your office, and a server that ties them all together. Do you maintain separate phone lines so that every PC can access the Internet independently? Or do you have some kind of internet sharing system in place, running through your shared server? The latter option doesn’t sound too unreasonable, does it?
Also, does any of the marketing material tell you it doesn’t support Win2K server? No. When I ordered the service, did I ask if it would work with Win2K server? Yes. Did they tell me I’d have to go out and buy an unsupported Terminal Adapter, and that I’d be on my own as soon as I tried to plug in to the service? No.
Stupid installation tricks
When a BT engineer upgrades your phone line to ISDN, they will leave behind an installation CD. A few days later, you’ll get another CD through the post, this one purely for the Midband product that rides on top of ISDN.
All the installation documents exhort you to install all the software from the first CD, and then all the software from the second one. If you deviate from these instructions, fire and brimstone will rain down upon the land, your children will become barren, and all your pets will start howling and butting their heads against the walls until they bleed from their eyeballs and make a mess all over your carpet.
In the case of troubleshooting, the first question the FAQs and support documents ask is “Have you installed CD 1, and then CD 2?”
Care to guess what’s the first step of the CD 2 installation process?
It gets you uninstall all the software packages that were installed from CD 1. It warns you sternly that if you fail to do so, your midband connection may not work.
Yes, really.
Diallers. How quaint. How totally useless.
The documentation does not give you any phone numbers for creating your own dial-up network connections. Instead, you have to user their dialler software. You get two dialler programs: one for use with your free hours (150 per month), and one for use after that time. The two diallers connect to two different access numbers: one for your free hours, and another for your pay-as-you-go time after that. YOU are responsible for knowing how much of your free time you have used. BT, however, kindly provides a web page with a usage meter, and suggests that you set this as your home page.
How do most people have their home internet set up? Dial on demand. You set a default connection, and your PC will dial it when needed. If you’re a business, you’ll have a router/server set up to dial on demand. How does dial-on-demand know whether you’ve used your free hours? It doesn’t. If you want to use dial-on-demand, and you regularly use up your free hours, then at some point each month you’ll have to manually change your default connection from one to the other, and then remember to switch back again at the start of a new month. Alternatively, you use the dialer programs whenever you want to connect to the internet. Who still uses dialler programs these days? BT customers, that’s who.
If you have one user connecting to the internet, that’s one thing. But if you’ve got a server set up to share the internet connection (using Internet Connection Sharing, or some other proxy/router software), you need automatic dialling. Is this just a way for BT to stop people sharing their connections? As with the lack of Windows 2000 server support, this raises the question: does BT think business still have a separate phone lines and internet connection for each user?
I was only able to get hold of the actual access numbers by calling technical support. If you have these numbers, it is possible–and in fact very simple–to set up an ordinary dial-up networking connection with the ISDN line. Apart from Compuserve, all the ISPs I’ve ever used have assumed that users are capable of doing this for themselves, and they include full instructions for doing so. Why? Because using diallers is unnecessary, and makes it a damn sight harder to troubleshoot any problems you’re having.
Also, what happens when you dial the free access number, and your free hours are used up? Does it disconnect you? Do you not get connected in the first place? Does any of the on-line documentation say? Pfffft.
HOW THE HELL CAN ONE OF THE LARGEST TELECOMS COMPANIES IN EUROPE NOT WORK OUT A SYSTEM THAT LETS YOU DIAL A SINGLE NUMBER, AND THEN BILLS YOU APPROPRIATELY?
Stupid usage limits
Heavily used dial-up services often cut off your connection after you’ve been on-line for two hours. You can re-connect immediately again, though. This is a mechanism to stop people from hogging scarce resources, like incoming dial-up lines.
Midband does this, too. It doesn’t matter that you’re paying more per month for what is billed as a higher quality internet solution. It doesn’t matter that you’ve gone out and bought this service for business purposes. You’re still treated like a second-class bandwidth hog, and told to get off after two hours, just as with the worst of dial-up providers.
Unless you’re using software that allows you to resume file downloads (i.e. NOT Internet Explorer), this limits the size of files you can download to 115 MB. That might sound like a pretty big file, but how big is the latest service pack for Windows 2000? 132 MB. Do we see any problems here?
Buried under its own complexity
When the Midband software installs, it doesn’t just install drivers for the USB ISDN adapter. It also leaves you with four different ISDN configuration and monitoring applications:
- a basic ISDN channel status monitor
- a program for dynamically allocating and de-allocating the second channel (twinning and call bumping)
- an extensive ISDN setting and configuration application
- a loopback status testing app
Welcome to networking and configuration Hell, folks. If you’re using the USB connection, most of this will end up pre-configured for you. If, like me, you’re being forced down the Terminal adapter route, you’ll probably have to figure all of this out for yourself, because all of these fancy helper apps are part of the package that doesn’t install on Windows 2000 server.
Oh, you wanted email?
The Midband service is “wires only”, and doesn’t provide any web space or email services. If you want to use email, you’ll need to use (and pay for) a third-party service. You could use a free web-based email provider like Hotmail or Yahoo, but then you won’t be able to use email programs like Outlook or Outlook Express. Email/web space isn’t even available as an optional extra.
Okay, so I knew about this one up front. In fact, when I went up to visit my parents, I expected to spend most of my time reconfiguring their email to use different POP3/SMTP servers. But it’s still a nuisance, especially when BT has a vast email infrastructure sitting there, and quite capably serving hundreds of thousands of dial-up and broadband customers already. The fact that email is not included is one of the reasons I think that BT isn’t making any money on Midband: they’ve had to strip it absolutely to the bone in order to offer it at even these high prices.
But what does it all mean?
In summary:
- Midband is more expensive than both dial-up and broadband.
- Midband is more complicated to install and configure than both dial-up and broadband.
- Midband doesn’t give you with any email functionality
- The use of dialer software, and different access numbers for your free and pay-as-you-go usage makes it impractical for homes or businesses that want to share an internet connection between multiple users.
- ISDN is outdated digital technology. The only reason BT are pushing it as an internet solution is because it’s more widely available than ADSL. Even so, BT is uncomfortable about selling Midband, and cagey about supporting it. I suspect that the service is actually costing them money rather than generating revenue. I don’t expect it to still be available in two years time.
Does Midband have any redeeming features at all? Actually, it does:
- It is faster than dial-up.
- The quality of service (the consistency of the networking connection between your computer and your ISP) is better than dial-up.
- It is more widely available than broadband.
- It has two channels available, so you can be using an ordinary phone on one line while accessing the internet on the other. (Note that you still have to pay normal phone charges for the phone line.)
So who is midband suitable for, then? Look and see if you fit these criteria:
- You live in a “remote” area not served by broadband, and you’re not expecting broadband to be available any time soon.
- Your dial-up service is often slow (connecting at speeds substantially less than 56K), is often engaged, or often drops the connection. (Hello, Freeserve.) And you’re unhappy with this situation.
- You think being able to use the phone at the same time as the internet would be quite useful. (Trust me–it is.)
- You only have one computer to connect to the internet
- You’re tech-savvy enough to install/uninstall your own software, and mess with networking connections
- You use a web-based email service (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.), or you’re happy arranging a third-party PO3/SMTP provider yourself.
Midband is probably NOT for you if:
- Broadband is available (in any form) in your area already
- You’re happy with your dial-up service
- You have multiple computers to connect to the internet
- Your email is provided by your existing ISP
- You’re not comfortable doing maintenance on your own computer
- You like things to “just work”
I’ll be going up to my parents again next week to install the terminal adapter, and try again to get Midband working for them. Wish me luck.
Hi is it possible to give out the BT midband Access number, I normally share my internet connection between my desktop and notebook using a Wireless connection. BT technical has been less than helpful
The access numbers that Midband Technical Support gave me were 0808 99 33 327 for the 150 hours of free access, and 0845 60 41 594 for pay-as-you-go access after that. I’m kind of intrigued to find out what happens if you dial the first number after your free time is up…. If anyone knows, please do write and tell!
I am thinking of getting Midband as Broadband will not be available in my area “for some time”.
I currently have a 56K modem (that rarely betters 33K) and a 4 computer home network which I have configured under ICS to allow everyone to get on the ‘net. Your article mentions the problem with two sperate dial up numbers, but accepting this situation, will my current set up work albeit I may have to manually change the dialler on the ICS “master” from time to time?
Or is internet connection sharing not feasible for other reasons?
I am trying to get midband to work with an ISDN router, but there’s no username or password to input….any guesses on how I can get this to work?
Pete, midband only uses a username and not a password. if you want the username go to your network connections and you should see a midband connection created as part of the dialer software. Double click it in the normal way and then use copy and paste to copy whats inthe username part……..thats it! I’ve created manual dial up connections (as opposed to using the dialer software) no problems.
If you want to know what your dial up number is connect to midband then double click the dynamic 128k settings, then connections, then look in the “connected with” box the number will begin 1470…thats it…hope that helps everyone!
Jason
When I was on the phone to their Tech Support, they got me to create a couple of plain dial-up networking connections, connecting to 0808 99 33 327. They got me to use “test” as both user name and password. We managed to get this to work once–the line noise must have interrupted all other attempts.
As for using Internet Connection Sharing over a connection made with the dialler… I haven’t tried this yet. I’m not terribly familiar with ICS, as I tend to use WinProxy (http://www.winproxy.com/) as a proxy/gateway solution. Winproxy has a useful setting: “always own dial-up connection”, which allows it to grab whatever network internet connection you’re using, regardless of whether it was established with a dialer or not.
I’ll be going back to visit my parents again later this week, so I may give the ICS thing a try to see what happens.
Oh Yes this sounds very familiar. I have had no real problems with connectivity and the 128k dynamic connector works well with my PCI based TA. However the Direct Dial is a real problem for house full on non-techie users; I’m more worried about them forgetting to disconnect! Does anyone know if BT have an SMTP server that will relay from a BT Midband connection? I have been through every combination of mail servers / Outlook / Outlook Express with other dialups etc. trying to get a reliable combination of BT Midband plus email.
Quick update – looks like someone listened to the guy. I just tried sending outbound SMTP messages via mail.btopenworld.com – and it worked, although there’s still nothing to advertise the fact. Still, it’s better than dialup and cheaper than satellite, and I don’t have access to broadband like you City Slickers!
I’d ordered Midband and it was supposed to have been installed yesterday, but BT had forgotten to tell the engineer so he didn’t come. glad he didn’t, having read the comments above!
I’m in a rural area which won’t get Broadband until at least the year 2300, and internet access is both slow and unreliable. Is there an alternative to BT Midband which would be worth considering?
Ken
I’m getting midband put in tomorrow and am now a little dubious on it!! I also live in a rural area and have been used to having adsl until i moved here and discovered no broadband!! My dialup is absolute rubbish,very slow and i am often unable to get all the windows updates down before i get kicked!! Am i doing the right thing in changing to midband i wonder!?
Back to Pete’s router issue .. I’m trying to do the same thing but see all sorts of chap authentication requests going on. Again, I need more input. Has anyone reading this managed to do this yet?
Thanks.
Got BT Home Highway installed last week and I’m using BT Midband dialler (free 150hrs at 64k etc). There have been occasions where I simply cannot connect the error reported is: ‘The modem (or other connecting device) has reported an error’. That’s all. No help whatsoever. So I phoned up HH helpdesk and they reset my equipment, also saying that they couldn’t find it at first, so it’s as if my dialler software throws an error which in turn disconnects me from Home Highway. I eventually used the Connection Test in the BT Digital Access USB software installed with HH and it failed. So I disconnected the usb from my pc and reconnected it and ran the test again and it worked. What’s going on??? Am I going to have to phone HH helpdesk every time I get an error to have them reset my equipment? Should I just ditch Midband and get an ISDN compatible ISP?
Sonja,
Your problem sounds a bit like one my parents were having. In their case, it turned out that there was a lot of noise on the line. The dialler software and connection test software would work intermittently, and any connections that did get created were droppped very quickly. They were also getting the unhelpful “modem has reported an error message”.
As far as I know, the Midband helpdesk deals with technical issues relating to the Midband service. I don’t think they actually deal with problems with the line itself. However, they *will* know who can sort that out. It might be worth giving them a call and asking them to get an engineer to check for line noise.
Pete Saysell .. I’ve got a connection to BT Midband via a Cisco 803 router .. works a treat.
If you’re still trying to do this, give me your email address and I’ll send you a sanitised config.
I’ve got the Netgear RT328 ISDN router and am having real troubles connecting throught the midband dialler. Does anyone know how to configure a router to work without id/password authentication as I keep getting a ‘line down<1>‘ error?
Help appreciated!
Anthony.
Hi,
im considering getting midband and am wondering if i can share the one connection between two computers and if i can what equipment do i need
Don’t think people are aware that the 35 per month you pay for midband can be split up as follows:25 for the ISDN and line rental. 10 for the ISP part (including 150 hours). You don’t have to take this second part. You can instead use another ISP. Other ISPs have different cut off periods (or none at all, i.e. Clara don’t have a cut off period). I currently use a Clara business account (at 27.50 a month is expensive but I probably use it for 300 hours a month).
Steve,
If you’re using Windows ME or later (Windows 2000, Windows XP), you can use its Internet Connection Sharing feature to share the connection with another computer. You’ll need network cards, network cable, and possibly a hub or a switch to hook the two computers togethr, too. Alternatively, you can plug your internet connection into a gateway/router, and plug both computers into it.
There are many technical guides available on the internet to setting up a small home network. I’d recommend you do a little snuffling around before actually investing in any equipment.
I have recently installed ISDN and it works ok, except that the USB drivers (I believe) are failing every 3 or 4 hours and giving me the blue screen of death on my Win2k SP4 PC. I have a friend who has a similar problem. My PC before was 99% reliable (for Microsoft, thats not bad!), yet since I installed these drivers, it crashes regularly, but only when Im surfing. Any ideas? Are there any newer drivers out there? I have v5.72 USB drivers for Win2000/XP installed and the dynamic 128k v1.5 Build 27. I presume using a seperate TA would help, but will this still dynamically switch between 64k and 128k?
The TA I’ve been using doesn’t support the dynamic 64/128 switching. There might be other ones on the market that do support it, but I couldn’t find any three months ago…
my (isdn) conection is lost every time i reset or switch off pc. ive disconected and reconected the isdn cable, but no luck. the only way i can get it working again (slow) is to uninstal then reinstal. is there a answer??
Alex,
I’m afraid I don’t know. Have you tried calling BT’s Midband technical support? Make sure you speak to *Midband* support rather than their general technical support, though. They’ll probably be able to help you.
Had cause to speak to a very helpful technical chap at BT after BT lost my order (but subsequently managed to switch access on in 30 minutes).
He said that there are 10 access numbers in the range from 08089933327 up to 37 and for the pay as you go a couple – 08456041594 and 1593.
The implication was that it didn’t matter which ones were used.
Certainly agree with all the preceding comments regarding diallers. far more trouble than they’re worth.
Maybe I’m just a satisfied customer…..I’d already got Home Highway i.e. ISDN and was up & running after ordering by phone within 20 mins by accessing BT’s website & downloading the software. It works happily via a USB connection on a laptop running W2000 & ISDN card with WXP. I’ve had to use the BT Help Desk only once & found their support far better than other ISP’s I’ve dealt with in the past. I have to admit the switch between the ‘free hours’ & pay-as-you-go is a bit of a pain.
I just find BT or is it the government ?? annoying when it come to Broadband. I live in the wilds of the Yorkshire Dales & it looks like I’ll be waiting a long time for Broadband… But is’nt it going to revolutionise the rural community so should govt. just bite the bullet and subsidise installation.
I’m getting Midband + isdn this week and am eagerly awaiting an ISDN router (BT person on phone said yes you can use ISDN routerseven though its not docuemented in the leaflets/site so I don’t think there’s any technical support for it)
If anyone has a hypertec router and knows how to confugre them, then reply here please
Whenever I get the dialog box telling me that the modem (or other connecting device) has reported an error, I just unplug and then plug back in the usb cable from the box. That seems to do the trick. Also has anyone any idea how to get the USB Modem to work with Longhorn 4051. I get as far as dialling but then the comp restarts. Any ideas would be gratefully recived.
I have had several requests for copies of my Cisco 803 config for connecting to Midband.
Thought I’d post it here to make things easier. Much of the config is specific to me and the organisation that I work for, but the generic config options hold true.
You may want to change the username / password set.
I’ve been deliberately savage with the inactivity timeouts in order to optimise the 150 hour limit. Playing with this, and the load thresholds on the dialer interface could have drastic effects on your time quotas.
The config allows for a firewall behind the router,so that the way I work from home is no different to the way I work in the office.
I have a regular phone connected to the router, hence the pots options. What I can’t do is get the line to return an engaged tone whenever I use the phone; any ideas, please let me know.
I’m no Cisco expert, so please don’t ask any in-depth config questions ;O)
Here goes:
Current configuration:
!
version 12.0
no service pad
service timestamps debug uptime
service timestamps log uptime
no service password-encryption
!
hostname ###################################
!
enable secret ###################################
enable password #################################
!
!
!
!
!
!
pots country GB
pots encoding alaw
pots tone-source remote
pots disconnect-time 100
pots silence-time 2
pots dial-tone remote
ip subnet-zero
!
ip dhcp pool LOCAL
network 10.24.19.128 255.255.255.240
default-router 10.24.19.129
domain-name yourname.co.uk
netbios-name-server aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd
dns-server aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd
lease 0 9
!
isdn switch-type basic-net3
!
!
process-max-time 200
!
interface Ethernet0
ip address 10.24.19.129 255.255.255.240
no ip directed-broadcast
ip nat inside
!
interface BRI0
description ****BT MIdband Link****
no ip address
no ip directed-broadcast
ip nat outside
encapsulation ppp
dialer rotary-group 0
dialer-group 1
isdn switch-type basic-net3
isdn incoming-voice modem
!
interface Dialer0
ip address negotiated
no ip directed-broadcast
ip nat outside
encapsulation ppp
dialer in-band
dialer idle-timeout 60
dialer string 08089933330
dialer hold-queue 20
dialer load-threshold 10 either
dialer-group 1
ppp authentication chap callin
ppp chap hostname arse
ppp chap password 7 06071D3249
ppp multilink
!
ip nat inside source list 101
interface Dialer0 overload
no ip http server
ip classless
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 Dialer0
!
access-list 101 permit ip
10.24.19.128 0.0.0.15 any
access-list 101 deny ip any any
dialer-list 1 protocol ip list 100
snmp-server engineID local ######################
!
line con 0
transport input none
stopbits 1
line vty 0 4
password ####################################
login
!
end
martin p, did you ever get anywhere with your crashing problem – i have exactly the same thing happening?