BT blocks BT IP addresses

THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE in the UK don't have access to telecommunications better than two tin cans and a piece of string. As we've pointed out ad nauseum, this is entirely down to BT sulking because the Government wouldn't allow the telco to use its network to transmit video. As a result, BT put broadband not so much on the back burner, but down the back of the cooker along with the congealed grease, cat hair and burnt chips.

Lottery winners living in the sticks can sign up for satellite broadband, but a cheaper alternative went live last week in the shape of BT Midband. This uses the proven (aka old) Home Highway ISDN technology and connects using one B channel at 64K, automatically bundling the second B channel if up or download traffic starts to get busy. When you've finished downloading the hi-res pictures of Kylie's bum, the software drops back to 64K.

Midband gives you 150 hours of free connect time a month, but if you're connected at 128K, this gets used up twice as fast. After that you have to pay. On the upside, if you're currently using an ISP, you can tell them to push off, as Midband's mini-dialler plonks you straight onto the Wibbly Wobbly Web where you can surf and receive your Hotmail spam.

But if you want to use proper email, or share your Internet connection across a LAN, the mini-dialler is useless and you have to keep up the payments to your ISP and set up your own network connection using the SECRET NUMBER that BT Midband will eventually tell you if you shout loud enough.

So for £30 a month for the rental of the Home Highway ISDN box, an extra tenner for the Midband software, and £15 to your ISP, you can surf for 75 hours at 128K for a mere £55 a month - stunningly-good value compared with the considerably-faster, always-on ADSL at around 20 notes, I'm sure you'll agree.

Bizarre
But needs must when the Devil BT drives, and 128K has to be better than 64K, doesn't it? Well, yes and no. There's one tiny problemette with BT's Midband service that bizarrely only affects people using BT as an ISP. I, rather naively, assumed that if I used BT as my telco, ISP, ISDN and Midband provider, at least everything would work. But of course, it doesn't.

It would appear that BT Openworld has either accidentally forgotten to add the BT Midband IP addresses to its authorised list, or has deliberately forgotten to do it because Midband's ISP-free model could lure customers away.

The result of this is that most POP and SMTP email works perfectly with Midband - my Inq account for example - but that my BT accounts can't send because Openworld's SMTP servers are blocking mail relayed from Midband. I've pointed this out to BT and they say they'll get back to me next week to tell me what they're doing about it.

I'm not holding my breath. µ