Karoo are very slow on the dongle market as I feel a local dongle could work out cheaper than some of the national isp's.
Outside of BT's 'reach': Karoo continues to plough its own broadband furrow
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Most of us are used to living in BT's world. It has been providing the majority with us with a telephone line for years and despite many of us now being billed by TalkTalk, Sky, Orange, O2 or the rest, we're all still relying on a good part of BT's infrastructure to communicate, both by phone or across broadband. Of course some have the choice of Virgin's cables now, but we've all been touched by the long arm of BT at some point in our lives.
Unless, of course, you live in Kingston Upon Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire. Back when I were still a lad, in 1902, the predecessor of Hull City Council was granted a telephone licence for the area. Over the next 10 years every other exchange in the UK was absorbed into the company that became British Telecom. But not Hull, oh no. It held strong, bought its own national telephone network in 1914, and has been independent to this day. It now goes by the name of Kingston Communications (now KC), with Karoo as its broadband brand name.
While it has its inevitable local detractors, Karoo has a history of innovation rather than following on the coattails of its more illustrious cousin. It became the UK's first fully digital network in 1989, later pioneering services such as ADSL, video on demand and digital TV. Claims it has an unfair monopoly are also unfounded: LLU services are available to anyone that wants them, at a price considered reasonable by Ofcom, but the small customer base (just under 200,000) and the relative popularity of Karoo have been enough to put profit hungry competitors off.
But despite the small number of customers, KC is still managing to score some notable victories. Its response to last month's Ofcom research report suggested (again) that consumers deserve clearer advertising on realistic broadband speeds, KC's director of consumer services Nick Thompson responded: "At KC, we have a long standing commitment to customer service and transparency in the broadband market and have developed a Broadband Speed Map so that users can check and compare actual broadband speeds, on any given post code, before signing up or moving home.
"With the increasing popularity of bandwidth-hungry applications, such as online video, consumers need an accurate picture of the speeds they can access, so we are urging other providers to follow our lead. Strengthening the voluntary code of practice is a move in the right direction and should encourage other ISPs to be more open and honest with their customers.”
A week later, Nick was at it again, this time after the Akamai broadband speeds stats saw the UK fall to 27th in the world on average broadband speeds (we're now down to 34th, by the way, holding steady just ahead of Liechtenstein...). He said earlier this month: "We’re proud to say that customers using KC’s network get to benefit from an average of 7.65 Mb, according to Net Index. The Akamai research suggests that providers are not making adequate investments in their networks and the Government’s unambitious target of 2Mb by 2015 is clearly not going to improve our position on the global stage.”
The latest stats from the same source put it down at 7.34Mb, but this is neck and neck with Be Broadband - the best of the rest in the UK outside of Virgin's cable network (which is miles ahead of the game with an average of around 14Mb) when it comes to consumer broadband speeds.
It seems the company has cause to be a little bullish, although it's so far behind Virgin in the speed stakes its hard to see much justification. Sure, its faster than most of the BT/LLU companies elsewhere in the UK, but just because Virgin uses a slightly different technology, it doesn't mean it's out of the equation - the end result (ie, super-fast broadband) is the important thing, not the means of delivery, and KC is a long way behind right now.
Also, the same Net Index that rates Karoo on a par with Be Broadband for speed, but its a different story on customer service. Be is averaging 3.8 out of 5, while Karoo averages just 2.0 - even poor beleaguered BT manages a satisfaction score of 2.3. In fact, Karoo ranks lowest on the list of the 15 on view right now.
But back to the positive - its looking increasingly likely that KC will have rolled out a half decent broadband network to pretty much every home on its patch in the not too distant future, way ahead of BT (of course Virgin doesn't have to worry about such things, as it can just stick to where it can be most profitable). The next knife it looks likely to stab into the side of its rivals is the rural broadband one - which, politically at least, could be a real blow.
Let us know about your own personal experiences of being a Karoo customer (keep them believable please - we won't entertain its engineers coming round and eating your hamster). Does it deserve its poor customer service record, or are the moaners just getting a louder voice? Or maybe as long as it stays fast, you'll be happy? Share your thoughts below.
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Comments
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Really surprised that they've scored so poorly on the customer service front. Whenever I've called, they've been excellent, their technical support in particular.
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Karoo Broadband it a good service for some of its Hull and surrounding area and has an excellent customer service and support structure, I do feel there are some problems which you touched on. KC used to be a pioneering company and is no longer developing the local infrastructure to enable next gen services such as fibre to the home, it does prevent real life competition by not advertising its LLU cost, it has a different infrastructure to BT which makes it more expensive for anyone to setup (more distribution cabinets than BT per head)
Karoo is currently ranked quite high on the broadband speed front, but read between the lines and what does that mean? if you give someone a 7mb connection thats great, but if you then throttle the hell out of it for some services such as BBC iplayer or youtube then whats the point?
Consumers in Hull are disappointed that the revenue KC make from its local business is also then spent on KC trying to establish a National Brand, re-badging themselves as KC, selling services in BT world such as Eclipse Broadband (mid package is currenlty cheaper than Karoo in Hull!!) and offering services such as online backup, while doing very little to prepare Hull and the surrounding area for true next generation services. In the mean time Virgin and BT look to rollout these services with some cities such as Bournemouth using fibrecity to become next gen cities.
Hull is being penalised to the extent that some businesses don't come to Hull because its "Different" from and infrastructure point of view. I know of one company that actively left Hull because it wanted a better deal on its Network than KC could offer.
If KC invested heavily in the infrastructure and got fibre rolled out across the city I could see the city developing in to a mecca for digital services such as Cloud Computing, Server farms and any other companies that need bandwidth hungry services, but while it continues to pretend it is offering its costumers "super fast" broadband, token gesture upgrades, and a service which is throttled to hell I reckon it will continue to get poor customer satisfaction.
Come on KC work with your local community properly! I want you to be successful, but you need to stop spending our money we give you on the national concern and silly projects such as online backup and start to run fibre to our homes and throughout the network, invest in some fat pipes onto the internet, offer real competitive deals and unlimited services and entice those next gen businesses into the city.
Make this your service shine again as a pioneering company you once were, I'd love to be with you on that journey, but if you continue as you are soon Hull will be a Wimax city and you will loose everything. I'm already with a WiFi company (not mobile) offering 10mb up and 10mb down unlimited for 19.99 per month which is great for everything and I don't even need a home phone line (I use VIOP and have an 01482 number!)
Regards Al.. -
You give KC too much credit for what is a really just a so-so service. In truth, Kingston has done a great disservice to the city of Hull. As real pioneers with DSL, KC were ahead of the field but blew it completely by investing the substantial profits they make from what is still essentially a monopoly on a string of misguided ventures and pay-offs and paypackets for very mediocre exceutives. Today, they still make big profits in Hull but its somewhat ironic that they use these to support broadband services in the rest of the UK via their Eclipse brand which are cheaper than Hull. Bear in mind also that Hull is now outside of BT's 21st century programme, probably the only city of its size in the UK that will be saddled with old infrastucrture that will do little to improve the economic fortunes of the city or as a place to locate a business in the future. The company has ripped off the people of Hull ever since it floated and actually left the city worse off, while offering better priced packages to people outside the city. It's a disgrace really.
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Karoo does offer a passable service, and I've been fortunate enough to only require their 'technical support' services twice in the last five or so years. If you're lucky, you'll get someone who knows what they're talking about. If you're unlucky, you're screwed. That, and the lack of a 24 hour support service is totally unacceptable for a broadband provider in this day and age.
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Just a response to some one who mentioned the role out of fibre into hull. The total cost of installation would be £80m, not including rural areas. Karoo itself does not own this capital, and if hull where to see a fibre optic infrastructure it would be provided via a third party.
For those interested, look up the FttH project. Plans are already in place to bring fibre optic technology into Hull. All we have to do is show our interest!
As for my opinion on karoo, I get a 12Mb/s connection. All I had to do was call their customer service department and ask for my 8Mb/s connection to be tested for a maximum line speed and they did it in just under 10 minutes. I spent £110 on a new broadband router and new telephone cable. This increased the quality of my connection, allowing for the increase in speed.
So that sums up their customer services. Now for the service itself. Many people complain that Karoo( KC) often take a turn for the worst every few weeks leaving the whole city without broadband. In actual fact it's more close to a few times a year, with the worst indecent been a complete black out for two days when a major piece of equipment died. Karoo are actively developing their network all the time, so many of these small outages are because of this, and more than not limited to just a few post code areas.
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It is my opinion that that kc are a millstone round the neck of all the people of hull & beyond they stifle choice & hold a ugly monopoly over us. , They have somehow bamboozled Ofcom & other european regulatory agencys into thinking they are giving us a great & fair deal , but i know the truth. I have a friend that lives in wombwell near barnsley & he gets his phone from tesco's & his net comes from sky & from both he gets a great deal & he mentioned that he was thinking of going to tiscali to try it out ....just because he could........... not in Hull.......oh no all because kc has this nice little nest egg witch they refuse to give up. It wasnt all that long ago that you couldnt use xbox live hear because kc wouldn't allow it & they still frown on usage of other communication software such as skype & they can ban you for use of such software they are a wart on the face of hull & i hope they go bust :(
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Cost is the biggest ripoff by Krapoo by far.
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