Is there an easy way to tell whether broadband has been activated on a given
line, by quoting its phone number?

A customer wants to use a new broadband supplier because she is getting
nowhere with Orange who have recently tried to upgrade her to broadband
after seemingly pulling the plug on their dial-up service.

So far they have sent her an modem installation CD for Vista, despite her
saying clearly that her PC has ME, and seem to be unable to confirm whether
this modem will work with ME - certainly the Vista CD encounters an error
during installation. There was confusion over which of her phone lines she
wanted broadband on, and she's had no information by post or by email to say
that either of the lines has been activated.

Is there an easy way to tell whether broadband has been activated on a line,
so she knows whether to simply place a brand new ADSL order with her new ISP
or whether she'll need a MAC from Orange to give to the new ISP?

Mortimer wrote:
the line has an acticve DSLAM on it - the modem will synch to that in
any case, even if the overall ppoa link doesn't work.

Mortimer wrote:

Assuming its a BT telephone line...

If really stuck, try a consumer ISP broadband registration service such as
BT's. On BT's screens, after putting in the phone number and postcode, they
will check the line status, and report back that there is already another
provider on the line ( ask for the MAC code). If it doesn't ask for a MAC
at that second screen, its not provisioned on the line. Drop out of the
registration at that point.



If not already fitted in the PC, I would recommend that your friend gets a
cheap ethernet card for their computer (well under a tenner at PC-World),
and then accesses the internet using a wired router. Many ISPs will give a
router in their bundle ( a few don't). Thus, she won't need any special
driver software on her PC, so problems over Windows ME being ancient won't
apply. It also has side effect of better security, and usually better speed
is seen (due to PC not having to work the modem driver).

She may still need the ISP's CD to setup the router, or to setup things like
email accounts on the PC. A computer literate person can do all this
without the CD, but those less knowledgable may need the CD.


(A BT consumer broadband router works out of the box, no setup required for
network connectivity. If the PC has DHCP set for its wired ethernet network
(normal default), just connect all together, plug in, and it works. Does
need setup for various more advanced features, such as Voice-over-IP, and
setting up mail accounts in outlook express, included anti=virus package,
etc. ).


- Nigel



--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

On 12-Dec-2007, "Mortimer" <me@privacy.net> wrote:

Unlikely she will get anything other than conflicting
information as to whether her line has been activated.
She can't use broadband without a modem or modem/router,
it should come with an ADSL filter which plugs into the
phone line, generally T shaped.
Plug the filter into the master, where the incoming line
terminates, phone socket, then the phone into that.
The modem/router should come with a cable with a small
plug that plugs into the filter, plug this in.
Power up the router/modem.
If the Carrier light comes on you have broadband.
There are several comonly used router addresses,
such as 192.168.1.1, if Orange haven't provided
any connection details other than on the CD, you may
have to try several, plug the PC's RJ45 network connection
into the router.
Put the router address into the browser, no http://
or anything before it. With the right router address
you should get to the router config. screen.
If so all you need is Orange's username and password,
no CD should be needed, and maybe a little help
from Orange to configure the connection parameters.
But basically it should work out of the box, and
if it is a new modem/router, with a booklet, its
default IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx should be
in the booklet/manual/configuration instructions.
So you plug it all together, if you gat a carrier light,
things are looking hopeful, if you get the routers
IP address from the manual, it's looking even
better, and if your browser connects to the
router even better still.
Put in usernam and password.
Then try to reach Google.
Post results here.

"Mortimer" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:13lvfj4ib32il91@corp.supernews.com...
Apply to a reputable ISP. They will tell you whether ADSL is already
provisioned on the line, and may help with ideas as to how to resolve the
problem.

Ring the ISP you propose to use and ask to speak to their technical support
department. If they won't let you, or don't give sensible help within a
reasonable time, then don't use them, try somebody else.

-- Graham

Graham J wrote:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/adslchecker.php

Enter the phone number and the postcode and it will tell you..the stats
are generally FAIRLY up to date.