We expect companies to actually beleive this, but we don't expect their telephone reps to say it aloud. This rep is going to be in so much trouble when her supervisor hears this log...

Extract from actual conversation:

Rep:	Basic line rental for digital costs £11.99 {Ed. Same for analogue is £9.57}
Rep:	You get the basic package in that {Ed. Same for analogue}
..
Cust:	Also, one of my channels has gone, 38, it's just showing the TV guide now
Rep:	Yes, that's been moved across to digital
Cust:	So, you're moving channels across to digital, in order to try and force people to upgrade, and charge them more?
Rep:	It's not charging more
{Ed. A LOT of pricing waffle, talking about how the cost depends upon which packs you subscribe to, and what channels you want to watch... and then the important line...}
Rep:	But as you say we are moving five of the more popular channels to digital, to encourage people to move
{Ed. Our emphasis}
Rep:	Of course we are going to move across to digital completely

So - what can we extract from this?

NTL are deliberately worsening the basic analogue service, while keeping the price for it the same. Less service for the same price? That's a bit evil. Add to that a twelve month lock-in contract and things get a bit dire...

NTL are also claiming that the price is somehow the same, when, obviously, the pricing structures are different. I don't know what combination of channels you'd have to choose to get the prices to align.

They also charge an upgrade fee (to come in and give you a new set-top box) to move to digital...

You can't pick and choose channels, only buy them in 'packs' Come on - this is meant to be the age of mass personalisation.

In unrelated NTL bashing, they are currently sufferring some network problems. The link through alter.net was failing to route for all of yesterday (the same is true for uu.net, so it's probably not alter.net's fault) and DNS has been patchy.

Also, there is at least one person spoofing IP address' on the network - it's probably someone with a misconfigured box, but with the huge number of portscans everyone's been getting recently, maybe not...

It's not all doom and gloom though. They are offerring a decent cable internet service, don't seem to be cracking down upon people running servers, seem to give out static IP address' have good bandwidth and latency... and in this part of the country it's cheap. They are also talking about offerring a cut down 64k service (cheaper, I hope. And preferably with the option of NOT paying for TV and phone too)