IN view of the ongoing saga with BT and its reluctance to bring broadband to Redditch, I thought your readers may be interested to hear my story.

I moved to Redditch in May last year and had two phone lines connected so I had a dedicated internet line.

After a month or two, BT contacted me because it "wanted to save me money" by signing me up to a Surf and Talk Together package which would give me free internet access 18.00 - 08.00 weekdays and from Friday 18.00 - Mon 08.00, for a fee of £12.99 per month (current fee).

Sounds great, doesn't it? I took them up on the offer.

However, yesterday I received a notice of my violation of the terms and conditions section 10.3 (see below) because I am spending more than 12 hours online at the weekend (er... isn't that what I'm paying for?).

10.3: If you are a user of a service other than pay as you go, you should be aware that these services are not intended to be 'always on' services during unmetered access periods.

Accordingly, we can suspend or terminate your access to the service as explained in paragraphs 14 and 15 if we think that:

(i) your internet connection is online for 12 or more hours of unmetered access in any 24 hour period; or

(ii) your computer is automatically redialling your internet connection during unmetered access periods.

10.4 Also, if you are a user of a service other than pay as you go, online sessions during unmetered access periods are limited to two hours.

Between the peak hours of 19:00 and 22:00, we may limit the session to 90 minutes. You can re-connect to the internet by using your dial-up connection.

BT subsequently informed me that if I continued with this practice, my agreement would be terminated.

As soon as I got home, I saved them the trouble and terminated it myself, going back to a standard tariff.

BT did suggest I might want to sign up for broadband and that I would have 24-hour connection. Yes please!

MARK PORTMAN BSc (Hons)

via e-mail