We have been getting reports over the last few weeks, from various Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), about ongoing problems with British Telecom and their Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) range of products.
SDSL is growing in popularity throughout the UK, due to the fact it can transfer data at the same speed in both directions (Symmetric), where an ADSL line upstream rate is usually only a quarter (or sometimes less) of the downstream rate (Asymmetric). SDSL also comes with a Service Level Agreement and offers a contention ratio of 10:1, compared to ADSL, which has no SLA and a contention ratio of 50:1 (usually). This makes the BT Business SDSL range of products ideal for use with SME email servers, or so BT would have you believe.
One particular UK based SME contacted us today to explain the problems further. The SME told us they had subscribed to BT Business SDSL around six months ago and due to the amount of email traffic they send and receive, they subscribed to two SDSL lines, effectively giving them 4MBit/Sec bandwidth in both directions. They were charged $1,200 (œ700) installation (plus a further $1,400 (œ800) for routing equipment), signed to a minimum contract term of one year and are currently paying over $16,700 (œ9,500) per annum in rental costs.
Happy with the SDSL service at first, problems soon started to rise. The problems were not with the connectivity or bandwidth, the SME in question was quite happy with this, the problem was with sending email.
Most email servers and junk mail (or spam) filters have the ability to use something called Realtime Black Lists (RBLs). These RBLs are lists of IP addresses which have been flagged or "blacklisted" for various reasons, including known spam offenders and insecure relay servers. Some RBLs also contain lists of Dynamic IP addresses, again a common source of spam.
When BT Business SDSL is installed, customers are assigned a single static IP address which allows them to run their own email server on the SDSL line. This information is promoted on the BT Business SDSL web site, under the section 'How can it help my business?' and reads: "BT Business Broadband Advanced gives your business the ability to reliably host and maintain your own email and web servers in-house."
The SME we spoke with today noticed after only a couple of weeks use that some emails being sent were getting bounced back as undeliverable. Upon further investigation of the problems, it came to light that the IP range assigned by BT to the SDSL products is classed as Dynamic by a couple of RBL providers, due to the Reverse DNS (rDNS) lookup of the IP range. Conducting a reverse lookup on the IP of the BT Business SDSL lines does indeed show they resolve back to "host81-137-*-*.in-addr.btopenworld.com". Because of this rDNS issue, the SME is now finding it more and more difficult to send email out, as more and more companies are employing the use of RBLs on their email gateways.
We asked if the SME had contacted BT Business about these issues. The SME told us they had asked BT to change the rDNS entry for their IP or range, but were told BT were unable to do this. The customer then asked for the IP address of a relay server through which they could send their email via the BT SDSL email relay server. At this point, the customer was informed that only 7 domain names were allowed to relay, per SDSL connection. This meant the customer could have only added a maximum of 14 domains (due to having two SDSL lines) to the BT relay server. The problem there is that the SME in question has 104 domains that are used for email purposes. There is no mention of a seven-domain limit within the terms and conditions of the SDSL contract. The SME then went on to ask if BT could add their email server IPs as "trusted", to the BT relay server, enabling them to send email from any of their domains. Once again, BT said this was not possible.
This has left our SME in a rather awkward position. They are unable to send all their email and are locked in a contract costing $16,700 (œ9,500) a year, with a provider that is unwilling to help them.
Having spoken to our legal team about the SME position in general, and having gone over "the small print" in the terms and conditions of contract on the BT Business SDSL products available from BT, our legal team have advised the SME that they are fully within their rights to exit the contract, without penalty. They are currently seeking an alternative internet service provider.
Our legal team are also speaking to the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK today, as the BT Business web site is clearly selling a product that is not "fit for purpose".
We contacted BT today, but they declined to comment on the matter.