Spontaneous Monotony

BT have never really had ‘fans’, being the former monopoly telecoms provider and generally charging more than competitors for their internet service (in between making questionable use of their near-monopoly against said competitors). However, until recently their saving grace has been that the internet service is generally fast and reliable. Unfortunately it has been deteriorating rapidly in recent times. Many BT IP addresses are listed on spam blocklists (I’ve had quite a few ‘email not sent’ messages to this effect from my mailserver), and in the past week or so BT’s network has simply stopped connecting anyone to NCSoft’s network (their websites, as well as the Guild Wars, City of Heroes and Tabula Rasa games). Perhaps it is in fact the reverse - due to the aforementioned spamlistings, servers in between BT and the destination are discarding connections due to security concerns? Either way, BT’s fault.

Problems with the distance from the telephone exchange, or with the weather, are understandable if irritating. What isn’t acceptable though is for the actual service - connecting the paying customer’s computer with whatever servers he or she wishes to access - to be so indefensibly dire.