Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Why Switch to Call Flow?

Until last month Temple had some of the slowest broadband speeds in the country.  The best speeds were around three mbps and the worst around one mbps.  They now range from 70 mbps to 110 mbps for those residents that have chosen to subscribe to the Call Flow service.

What does this mean in terms of what a Call Flow customer can do?


  • Use the Sky Catchup feature to almost instantly watch a program in HD.  It used to take hours, if not days for an HD program, but now it will be ready to view in under a minute.
  • Rent a movie and have it be available to watch immediately (even in HD) from Sky, Netflix, Amazon or any of the other online services.
  • Listen to radio stations from London and around the world by streaming them across the Internet without them pausing and/or breaking up.
  • Have reliable and high quality Skype or Facetime conversations with your relatives and friends without constantly worrying about the quality of the connection making for an unpleasant experience.
  • Send and receive emails with large attachments, such as pictures or videos, in seconds where it used to take forever.
  • Update a SatNav with all the latest maps and software (or do anything that requires a large download).  It used to take nine hours and now it takes minutes.
  • Work at home using your company's VPN (Virtual Private Network) as if you were at the office.
What's more...you can do all of the above with your spouse and/or children doing the same kinds of things without anyone noticing or caring about the extra traffic.  Prior to Call Flow you were lucky if one person could do any of the above and now your whole household can at the same time.


Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Sales Literature on Call Flow FTTC Broadband

How is the service supplied? 


The broadband service is supplied by our newly built green street cabinet which is connected by fibre back to the exchange. From our cabinet to your house the connection is made by the copper phone line. This is the only point where the broadband speed will start to reduce in strength. So far everyone who has gone live on the cabinet is able to get download speeds of at least 70 mbps! People closest to the cabinet are getting over 100 mbps.


How long does the process take? 


This is all dependent on the status of your phone line and who your phone services are currently provided with. In order to give you a proper lead me you would need to call us up and we would check for you. Generally it is a 10 working day lead me for the broadband to change over to us.

What Equipment do you provide us with? 


All of our work is carried out external to the property when we take over the phone line and broadband services. What we do provide you with however is a new router to use with our service. This will be shipped out once we have received a date for your rst service to swap over to us. Delivery normally takes 2-3 working days.


Do I need to cancel my existing services? 


No, as we are taking over services already on the phone line we notify your existing suppliers for you when we take over each service. Your current provider will then in turn contact you to tell you that you will be losing that service on a certain date. This date will normally always be a/er our service has gone live.

If I transfer my line rental and calls to Call Flow, do I still need to pay anything to my current provider? 


The only thing you would need to pay is any cancellation fees you may have in your contract with your current provider. We would transfer your line for your current provider and they would be noed of this, therefore you will not need to cancel your contract as they will do this when we notify them of the line change.


Sunday, July 16, 2017

Wifi Issues?

I continue to be blown away by the things that I can now do with a super fast Internet connection.

Last night it was catchup TV where I was able to download and start watching a show in HD within seconds of making the request.  Two months ago I would have had to plan days in advance to watch catch up in HD!

I know that my experience is being shared by other residents but there are some people that have had, or are having, issues with wifi coverage and/or signal strength since upgrading.  The following is a summary of advice that might help if you are experiencing issues.

  1. Make sure that the Technicolor router is located in the best possible position per this topic on the Call Flow website.  Ideally this would be connected to your master socket and the positioned somewhere higher rather than lower. Mounting the router on a wall can be a good option but you may need to experiment with different locations to find the best one for your property.   If you have a phone socket that is more centrally located within your property then try that socket and see if it provides better wifi coverage while still having a good connection for the router.   You may need to compromise between the best possible speed from the router to the internet versus the speed within your house via the wifi network.
  2. It might also be helpful for you to follow this advice on how to "tune" your router to a better channel.
  3. There is a wide range of relatively inexpensive options that help you extend your wireless network.  These include products called range extenders that rebroadcast the wireless signal as well as products that use your ring main (power lines everywhere else in the world) as a hardwired connection between the Technicolor router and a remote access point (or wireless antenna).  In the former case we have seen at least one user that lost overall performance implementing such a strategy due to interference with the wifi signal.  In the latter case the performance of a powerline adapter solution will depend on the condition of your wiring.  I have not yet seen a case where I was impressed by the performance of a powerline solution.  If someone does get either of the two options above working well I would love to be able to update this entry!
  4. Lastly are the not-so-inexpensive solutions.  There is technology called a "whole home wifi network" or sometimes a "mesh network".  This type of network is implemented by using two or more devices that work closely with each other to create a network that can cover an entire house regardless of its size (only limited by your budget for each device that you need to place throughout your home).  One resident, that would be me, purchased BT's solution (around 200 quid) and is only needing two of the three devices that came with the starter kit.  One is in the guest bedroom at the front of the house where the master socket is located.  The second is under the bed in the master bedroom.  We get 115mbps at the router and no less than 100mbps everywhere else in the house including my office which is an addition off the lounge.

One thing that bears remembering if you have an issue now and wonder why you did not with your old service.  Remember how fast that old service was?  It is really easy to move 1-3mbps of data around a network!  It is a lot harder to pump nearly 100mbps around!

Examples on Amazon.co.uk:
Wireless range extender
Powerline adapter range extender
Whole home network