Well I may be in the minority here but I am going to come to NTL's defence, and no I do not work for NTL I am just one of their happy customers (rare I know).
I live in the Brighton area, which was ex C&W. When NTL actually purchased the network of C&W NTL they did not realise how badly maintained the network was, it has taken them the best part of 3 years to get the network to the state it is now. I now have digital cable with full interactive services, telephone line and cable modem capability and I pay a lot less a month for these services than if I had SKY a BT line and the temperamental ADSL.
I know it is frustrating when a service does not work, which seems to be the case for a lot of NTL customers but you have to remember the situation that they are in, it costs a lot of money to upgrade these networks and takes time. To give you an idea, Eurobell, which is now part of Telewest, had to spend £7,000,000 to upgrade their network to support interactive services to just 180,000 homes. When you consider that interactive services are used by about 5% of customers this is a huge outlay for little return, NTL are having to do this around the entire country. It also does not help that they are £12b in debt.
For a lot of you, you do have a simple choice you could get rid of NTL and go for SKY or ITV Digital. Its not that NTL are the only digital provider in the country, you have a choice so if you are not happy with what NTL are providing go to someone else. If you do decided to stay with NTL then you are going to have to be patient upgrading these networks take a long time and a lot of money. Still moan to NTL as this keeps them on their toes but I do think NTL are trying their best to get there networks up to scratch as quickly as possible.
I now look forward to your replies!!!!!!!