Over the last week or so we have had a lot of custumers that were with "Fast" wanting to sign up with us urgently because they, rather unceremoniously, dropped all broadband customers overnight!
The good news is that most of their customers are using a back-haul provider we use, and that means that using our login on their existing line "just works".
There may be exceptions, but we have connected loads of ex-Fast customers same day, once they order we allocate a username and password and allow them in. Some are on-line within minutes.
We had to tweak the systems we have to allow this. Normally people can only log in once installed. But with some complicated work on the RADIUS server, we managed it.
Once the day comes to actually migrate there may be some downtime - some re-jumpering, etc. But overall this is a bonus for all those stranded customers. Getting on-line before Christmas matters.
It did rather put a strain on the staff just before Christmas, and even managed to upset my system for attack management that thought someone was pushing automated invalid orders at us! Soon sorted.
But, as ever, we'll aim to offer an excellent service to those customers moving to us, and ensure it all works over the holiday period.
Merry Christmas to all our new customers.
--
Adrian
Director of A&A
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This is amazing!
ReplyDeleteMore top notch work there by yourself and everyone at A&A.
I doubt BT Retail could achieve the same thing in a thousand years.
I remember pushing A&A Wholesale for this facility many years ago as a 'try before you migrate' service; hell, we could make a fortune selling 'Pay As You Go PPP' to those using less-reliable ISPs in their hour of need.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, we never got a useful answer to the question, "This seems technically possible so what are the reasons why you cannot offer it ?", but I am certainly glad to see that A&A Retail now seem to have all the kinks worked out and are offering this to their own (potential) customers, I will make a mental note to repeat my original question in 2017 when staff have recovered from their New Year hangovers.
I does depend on the set up and I think we have been lucky with them using same backhaul providers as us this time.
DeleteIt only works on WBMC Shared and some types of TalkTalk Wholesale lines, not WBMC Dedicated, WBC, or other LLU operators.
DeleteIn this case, it's worked because 186k, Fast et al used the right wholesalers. In other cases, it won't work (such as some Zen and PlusNet lines but not all of them).
As an emergency thing, it's nice to offer - as a product thing, it has too many caveats.
I imagine that would work better with non-BT Wholesale provisions as it seems the others - eg TT, Fluid and the like, are less "sensitive" about realm locking, and I suspect and recall that in this case the customers going to A&A are TT tails and those going to IDNet are generally Fluidone.
DeleteDon't your existing customers get wished a merry christmas too?
ReplyDelete:)
Of course, merry Christmas.
DeleteDid many of the Fast customers require new CPE? Did they need to work out how to put new magic runes into their existing routers?
ReplyDeleteStaff spend some time helping people change their config on existing CPE.
DeleteThe ISP who saved Christmas. Once again A&A have gone above and beyond for their customers. Merry Christmas to you and the team Adrian and keep up the good work in 2017!
ReplyDeleteIt's a good point, AAISP might not be the cheapest, but I cannot picture a single other ISP that would even attempt to assist - it would just be "Sorry, our system says wait to migrate".
DeleteThere literally isn't another ISP that would care enough to try to help.
I'd suggest you're mistaken. IDnet have also been reconnecting people immediately wherever possible.
DeleteWell done IDnet!
DeleteI'd have been surprised if we were alone, but certainly not many ISPs prepared to try... AFAIK none of the big names did.
DeleteNice work!
ReplyDelete