Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => FTTC and FTTP Issues => Topic started by: bbnovice on June 03, 2013, 05:11:01 PM
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My Infinity and BT phone have been down for over 2 weeks. Fault reported 20 May and not even had a OR site visit yet. Fix date was meant to be 24 May. Complaints to BT call centre dont get anywhere. Just been told by BT that OR are short of engineers. Great!!!! No revised fix date forthcoming so Im left in limbo.
Any suggestions from you guys about how to proceed gratefully received!
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I am assuming that it is a line fault which has caused a failure of the telephone service and, as a consequence, has also resulted in the broadband service failure.
You mention Infinity as your broadband service. Putting all of the information together allows us to deduce that the defect is in the D-side cabling, between the PCP and your home.
If I was in your situation I would compose a concise e-mail message, with all the pertinent facts and send it to --
Ian.Livingston@bt.com
That will set the Executive Level Complaints procedure in progress and you should then be contacted by a named person who will take 'ownership' of the situation until it is resolved.
The other thing I would do is to open an on-line fault report for the failure of the telephone service --
https://www.bt.com/consumerFaultTracking/public/faults/reporting.do?pageId=21
Obviously you will need to avail yourself of some other means of Internet access to do so . . . a neighbour or Public Library, perhaps?
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Hi bcat and thanks for the input. I will mail Livingston pdq. A phone and Infinity fault has been logged from day 1. You are correct in your diagnosis. I know the fault lies in a chamber approx 300 meteres from my house.
There is a lot more to this story but I'm having to use my smartphone for comms so I'm restricted a bit at present.
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Well that failed. I got a reply back from Livingston kicking my request into the long grass and referring me back to the Complaint Team in the repair area who have already totally failed to deal with my complaint. I cannot find on the BT website any way to contact the Executive Complaints Team.
Any other suggestions about how to contact these turkeys?
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Hi BBN,
You could try phoning 0330 133 4150 in Milton Keynes, which is a UK fault processing centre, but you might find you are blocked.
Otherwise I suggest e-mailing:-
claire.horsfield@bt.com
who is in the BT complaints department.
Kind regards,
Walter
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Not knowing the entire background to this issue, it seems the major sticking point is that Beattie, a communications company, is comprehensively failing to communicate with bbn. :-\
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I would advise contacting Warren Buckley instead of Ian, don't be friendly or you will just be tossed away.
warren.buckley@bt.com
Edit: It's worth noting he will re-direct you to BT Care if you haven't tried to resolve the issue with that department, if you have and it's failed you will then be re-directed to the ELC team.
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Thanks for the input everybody. I tried emailing Ian Livingston one last time and this time got a result.
I now have an Executive Complaints person assigned to the case and she has been in touch.
She agrees that the service has not been acceptable. Looking at the contact record on her computer she is also puzzled with the sequence of events and why OR has never showed up. They were meant to be here today on pain of death, but yet another no show.
I feel better about having a personal contact at BT but maybe I'm living in a fools paradise.
I will let you know how I get on. I cant write more as I find dusing a smartphone fir mail etc to be a right PITA .
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:fingers:
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Hi,
I'm back on line but I still have issues with the Infinity 80/20 service.
This morning I noticed that the DSL light on my OR modem was holding steady. So I fired up the router and my PC and internet connection was established! The phone remained 100% dead.
Then at lunchtime an OR engineer phoned me on my mobile. (My landline had been set to divert to mobile by a kind BT UK call centre person. Thank you!). So he was a bit startled when I answered - he did not expect a reply. He arrived at my house 30 minutes later. This was an unscheduled appointment and was the first time in 2 weeks that an OR engineer had made an appearance.
He explained to me that the connection between the houses in my street and the local cabinet had been severely damaged by water. A new cable had been run alongside the old (aluminum?) cable but only those who had reported a fault had been swapped onto the new cable. The old cable was still being used for some customers. I deduced that my fault had entered into never never land and I was one of those who was not swapped over for whatever reason. He informed me that I was now connected to new shiny copper.
The voice connection was then established. The circuit tests revealed a good connection and that the line quality was excellent.
However although the voice is OK the broadband speed has been crippled. I now receive less than 50% of what I got before all this shenanigans. I'm on the 80/20 service and the BT forecast is 52 download. Prior to the fault I achieved a consistent 50 download. I now get just 20.
The engineer (who I would add was helpful and polite) said he was only a voice engineer so could not help further with broadband and suggested I wait for 10 days before taking the matter further.
With that he left. I was happy (relatively apart from the broadband speed issue).
And then I got a knock on the door. Two of my neighbours said they had seen an OR engineer's van and asked if I had had a visit. I said yes. They then told me that since then their phone lines and broadband services had gone down. Oh dear, I'm not flavour of the month and this situation is now possibly going to run and run for a lot longer before its resolved.
Anyway. Is leaving the broadband connection for 10 days to see if it stabalises the correct approach, or was it just to shut me up?
BBN
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You will be waiting a long time, just request for a DLM reset to the BT adviser you're in contact with. Would also advise reporting the incident of your neighbors on their behalf to get all this finally sorted...
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However although the voice is OK the broadband speed has been crippled. I now receive less than 50% of what I got before all this shenanigans. I'm on the 80/20 service and the BT forecast is 52 download. Prior to the fault I achieved a consistent 50 download. I now get just 20.
For curiosity, what is your current IP profile from the further diagnosics here:-
http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/
I suspect that your connection has been capped/banded due to the previous issues & it may take a while for DLM to restore reasonable speeds.
Did the engineer happen to mention whether a DLM reset had been carried out or not?
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Hi bald_eagle
Just ran the diagnostic test as you requested. Profile is reported as 29/20 and the actual achieved as 28/8.
Regards BBN
PS I asked the OR engineer about the broadband speed whilst he was here, but he said that he was a voice engineer only and couldn't really help.
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Maybe DLM has started stepping up your speeds then?
It certainly seems an improvement on the 20 you mentioned earlier.
Is it reporting exactly 29 or have you rounded it to that?
If you have been capped/banded to say an exact 30 Mbps sync speed, I would expect your IP Profile to be around 29.04 Mbps i.e. approximately 96.79% of sync speed.
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Hi bald_eagle,
Yes I was rounding the numbers. I've just rerun the test and get:
Profile = 29.04/20.0
Actual = 26.68/7.8
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So, capped at 30 Mbps then.
As that equates to less than 60% of your 52 Mbps estimate, I believe it can be classed as a reportable fault.
I understand 25% lower than estimated speed is the threshold.
As you now know your actual sync speed, I would recommend you request that DLM be reset on a wide open profile due to the connection currently being capped because of the recent faults.
If you are lucky, you will regain your lost sync speeds quickly.
If you are unlucky a DLM reset will be point blan refused.
If you are even more unlucky (as in my case) your estimated speed will simply revised downward thus making it appear that your connection is performing within acceptable limits.
FWIW, this lowering of speed estimates is quite a recent matter, affecting quite a number of VDSL2 users.
Plusnet have reported this to BT as a complaint (not just a fault) & we are currently awaiting an engineer's appointment to be confirmed.
Please let us know if your speed estimate does get lowered, in effect masking a genuine problem.
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Hi bald_eagle,
Should I wait before asking for a DLM reset? I have been told that it takes 50 hours for the DLM to get enough data to enable it to start adjusting the speed?
I have managed to establish a contact with a member of the executive level complaints team. I discussed this speed issue with her this afternoon and she is agreeable to keeping my case open for 10 days to see if the speed improves. However I did get slightly alarmed by something she said to the effect that if the speed did not improve BT would accept a downgrade to my current 80/20 contract. I countered that I wanted my original speed back not a downgrade but we left it at that at the time. What you write has started to ring the alarm bells agaim.
You mention a PLUSNET complaint with BT. Should that be a complaint with OR?
I'm not an expert in this area so excuse me if I'm not fully grasping what you are saying.
Regards BBN
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I would have normally stated Openreach, but this is a copy & paste from my Plusnet fault ticket:-
13.7M-27.4M Downstream, Interleaving Off - 3M-6M Upstream, Interleaving Off
Since the circuit is not syncing at the limit of the profile, a DSLAM override will not improve matters. Unfortunately we have little control over these FTTC circuits. In these circumstances all we can do try to escalate the case through BT's complaints complaints procedure. To start the process I've re raised your fault to BT and we will be back in touch when they have responded.
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If your speed doesn't rise in the 10 days that shes said request the following in this order 'Full DLM reset' then a 'light boost' and if they deny both of those request an 'Open profile'. If they fail to do any of these for a deadlock letter...
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@ ryant704,
I understand a 'Full DLM reset', but what is achievable from a 'light boost'?
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Thanks ryant,
Your advice is timely as I'm going backwards with this issue, as I'll be contacting the complaints lady in the next few days.
Broadband speed has been declining ever since the phone was "fixed", and is now terrible compared to what it was before. Tonight its crawling along - sub 14 Mb download. I show below some of the data/evidence I have.
One of my neighbour's seems to have had his phone knocked out when my phone service was restored. It may have been a coincidence, but........He now gets nothing but "white noise" on his phone. The broadband is also u/s - his service provider is Eclipse who from what he says are not happy bunnies about all of this performance.
It seems to me that OR are really struggling to fix these problems. The communication between BT and OR seems terribly poor to me.
Regards
BBN
BROADBAND SPEED - SUMMARY
For the 12 months between May 2012 and April 2013, speed tests were run using the SPEEDTEST.NET approximately twice a month. The average values over that period were:
Ping = 12.58 Download speed = 48.48 Upload speed = 11.56.
I forget what the exact profile was, but I think it was something like 52/20.
Speed tests run irregularly using the BT speed tester over the same period produced very similar results to those from SPEEDTEST.NET
The BT line fault occurred on 23 May, and in my case was not fixed until 5 June. Since then the speed has been crippled and SPEEDTEST.NET reported speeds of 28.06/8.19 immediately following the fault fix,
The speed has declined ever since until this evening (on the 6 June) it is only 16.75/2.1
Immediately following the fault fix, the BT wholesale speed tester reported a profile of 29.04/20 and an actual speed of 26.68/7.8.
Tonight (6 June) the BT wholesale site is reporting a profile of 17.42/20 and actual speeds of 17.13/4.1. Ping = 40
The speed tester accessed via My BT (the retail site) is reporting 17.4/4.11.
As at 6/6/13 (post re-connection) the BT site is forecasting a connection speed of 51.7/13.2 for my line.
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Tonight (6 June) the BT wholesale site is reporting a profile of 17.42/20 and actual speeds of 17.13/4.1. Ping = 40
The speed tester accessed via My BT (the retail site) is reporting 17.4/4.11.
As at 6/6/13 (post re-connection) the BT site is forecasting a connection speed of 51.7/13.2 for my line.
The current IP Profile of 17.42 is bang on for an exactly 18 Mbps capped/banded sync speed (probably actually 17999 Kbps).
So, unless you have been constantly rebooting the BTOR modem, it confirms there is still a problem & not just with your own connection from reading your update post.
Good luck in getting a quick resolution to this.
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Hi bald_eagle,
Nope I have been very careful NOT to power on/off or restart the HG612. I did however reset the HH3 at one point - the BT retail speed tester (via My BT) was showing at one stage that the HH3 was achieving 29Mb download, but my PC was only getting 11 Mb. I've never ever seen anything like that before, but a HH3 reset seemed to fix it. (BTW all the numbers I have been quoting are via wired connections - wireless is never used in this house).
I also now begin to suspect that there may be something dodgy with the phone. Sometimes (infrequently) incoming callers are getting an engaged tone when there is nobody actually on the phone. 1571 is also doing strange things. This is a PITA as the phone fault has now been closed with BT on their system.
This has really gone beyond a joke.
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it is quite clear that there is still a significant cabling fault present in your locality.
In the case of your own peculiar telephony 'happenings', they can be explained by either an earth contact fault or battery contact fault. Either of those issues will also be responsible for a degraded broadband service.
You need to have an Openreach SFI engineering appointment to: (1) find and fix the cabling fault (2) arrange for a DLM reset.
I assume you are not based in the NW of England? As I do know that there is a rather competent Black Sheep who roams that area . . . ;)
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A light boost is basically setting your speed to where it was at but will ignore all previous DLM information stored. If it receives over x amount of errors, etc it will drop the line back to where it was and resume from the previous information and ignore the light boost!
If the light boost is successful and achieves less errors than set it will remove all previous information acquired from the DLM and work with the information acquired from the light boost.
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Hello,
I’ve now been telephoned by my contact at the BT Executive Complaints Team, and informed that my complaint is being handed over to a specialist in the BT Retail Executive Level Technical Complaints department located in Newcastle. The latter has also been in contact to introduce himself and tell me that he is now talking to OR, but that he does not think he will be in a position to provide an update until Monday.
The broadband now seems to have stabilised with a profile of 17.42/20 !! Actual speed is now hovering around 17.1/4.1
Is it now time to get my “spare” HG612 from out of the attic and unlock it? I’ve never unlocked a bit of kit before so hope I don’t foul up.
Anyway I’m fairly hesitant about unlocking the HG and installing it at this stage whilst OR are maybe trouble shooting in the background. There has already been far too much confusion in the handling of the phone/broadband faults to date without me adding to it.
Is this the correct site for the unlock instructions?
http://huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com/about/
B_cat - I’m located in the deep South East.
Regards
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Yeah that is the correct website, it's not really difficult to unlock. There are only a few basic instructions!
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Is it now time to get my “spare” HG612 from out of the attic and unlock it? I’ve never unlocked a bit of kit before so hope I don’t foul up.
As long as you follow the instructions, exactly as shown, then there should be no problem.
Anyway I’m fairly hesitant about unlocking the HG and installing it at this stage whilst OR are maybe trouble shooting in the background. There has already been far too much confusion in the handling of the phone/broadband faults to date without me adding to it.
There is no reason why you should not perform the task on your spare HG612, ready for use once the fault(s) have been resolved.
Is this the correct site for the unlock instructions?
http://huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com/about/
Yes, that's correct. Look at column on the right of that page and follow Instructions for unlocking the Huawei HG612 (http://huaweihg612hacking.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/hg612_unlock_instructions_v1-3.pdf). Obviously you will also need to download the firmware image (https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B6wW18mYskvBZDE0YmNkMzAtZmEzMC00MjhiLTk2N2ItNDNhYTNjOGJlZTBj&hl=en_US).
B_cat - I’m located in the deep South East.
Ah, ha. More like Eric's part of the country. :)
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More like Eric's part of the country.
I don't claim ownership, merely residency. :)
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Hi,
This is an update and a renewed request for further advice. I’m appending this to the old topic rather than open a new one.
To recap:
My Infinity 80/20 was knocked out due to a faulty cable in the network between the house and the cabinet. The issue affected the whole street. A part of the cable run has had a new cable run alongside the original, and some (but not all) of the residents moved over to the new cable.
I did not have voice of broadband service for 2 weeks (about a week later than everybody else in the street) and during that time I did not have a single visit from OR despite being promised. Eventually and OR engineer arrived and reconnected the voice. Broadband connection was re-established at the same time and a download speed of 28Mb. I queried the slow speed but the OR engineer said ne was not a broadband engineer and that I should wait for the speed to improve.
After he left the broadband speed began to degrade. It ended up at around 16Mb download. The profile was 17.42/20 according to the BT wholesale speed checker. It remained at that speed for several days.
I also got a visit from one of my neighbours who had noticed the OR van outside my house. He told me that his phone had started to play up (“white noise” on the line) and that his broadband speed (unsurprisingly) had halved whilst the OR guy had been working on my line. His voice circuit was fixed several days later by a further OR visit, but his broadband speed has not recovered.
So I complained again to the BT Executive Level Complaints Team, this time specifically about the broadband speed.
Since the morning of 10 June my profile has improved to 31.36/20 and I’m actually achieving 31.2/11.7 at the time of writing.
Before the line fault in May BT Wholesale were forecasting 51.7/13,2 for my street, and for the 12 months prior to the fault I was averaging around 48/12. I forget the precise profile but it was something like 52/20.
So my current speed is just about what I used to get when I was on my previous Infinity 40/10 service.
However BT are now saying that 31/12 is the best I’m going to get on this line, and by implication I will have to live with it despite being on the higher BT tariff. This seems to bear out Bald Eagle’s prediction he made in an earlier post. Another annoying thing is that I’ve just extended my Infinity broadband contract with BT for 12 months in order to get BT Sport. This might limit my options about migrating away from BT any time soon if they hold me to it.
However BT has agreed for an OR broadband engineer to visit this Thursday.
I note that I’ve been advised in an earlier post to request a “Full DLM reset' then a 'light boost' and if they deny both of those request an 'Open profile' “
But is there anything else I should ask the engineer whilst he is here.
Ideally I would like to unlock my spare HG612 and get the monitoring scripts running, but I don’t think I’ll have enough time for this before his visit.
Any advice appreciated.
BBN
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Personally I cannot think of anything more to ask the engineer but others may have valid questions!
There is no point arguing with BT, just ask for a deadlock letter on the matter and then contact the Ombudsman (if the outcome is bad on Thursday).
It really depends on the engineer but you would have to get lucky to be honest, as stated request a deadlock letter with whom you're in contact with!
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Hi:
An update.
The OR broadband engineer visited today and I seem (fingers crossed) to have got a result!
He tidied up the wiring in the cabinet (to reduce cross talk), replaced the incoming cable into my premises from an OR external junction box also on my property (don’t ask!), relocated the cable run so that it now connects directly into the rear of the OR NTE (to standardise cable size), and replaced the OR ADSDL faceplate with a proper VDSL one (should have been done 18 months ago as part of the original installation?). The error rates on the line were now substantially reduced but some residual and sporadic errors remained. Luckily these were identified as being caused by a powerline ethernet adaptor in the same room as the modem/hub. Disconnecting the adaptor resulted in the random errors disappearing.
Next a DLM reset. There have been so many faults and work done on the local OR network over the past 3 weeks that a “clean start” was considered essential.
Finally a general circuit test (I don’t know what this was but it was done by using my phone to call some test system) and this reported back to his mobile phone that there was an “un-rectified error” (I think that is what it said). However as the circuit (voice and broadband) tested 100% OK (several times) at the NTE he assumed that the fault is somewhere in my internal extension wiring. He quickly tested if the extension wiring was “reversed” but apparently this was not the case. As the fault seems to be in my extension wiring he obviously could do no more.
The overall result is that (according to the BT retail speed tester) the line synched at 62.2, and the download/upload speeds were 59.1/13.6. Compare this to the BT Wholesale speed estimator forecast of up to 51.7/13,2, and the average actual speed over the 12 month leading up to the recent outage of 48/12. That speed was just about constant over that period.
So I’ve got a lot more download speed than I’ve had at any time over the previous 18 months. Let’s hope it stays that way.
I’m left with a suspected fault of some kind in the internal phone wiring but as it does not seem to be affecting anything am I safe in ignoring it for now?
BBN
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Good result...
I wouldn't "ignore" it but just monitor your connection...
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. . . this reported back to his mobile phone that there was an “un-rectified error” (I think that is what it said).
I suspect that it was actually referring to a 'rectified loop error'. This is where one of the joints is somewhat suspect and it is actually acting as a semiconducting device. The cure will be quite straightforward. Isolate your telephone extension wiring at the SSFP by removing the lower front face-plate. Assuming that the lower front face-plate was fitted by the Openreach engineer, we will ignore the connections at that point. Systematically work back along the telephony extension cable to each socket in turn and remake every connection. When you reach the end of the 'daisy-chain', you should have cleared the fault. :)
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Thanks for the advice and I will certainly do as suggested as soon as I can.
But I have been somewhat poorly recently, hence my question about ignoring the possible extension wiring fault for the moment. Is it likely to upset the broadband or is it not really possible to say?
Thanks
BBN
PS: I forgot to mention in my previous post that he bought an ECI modem with him "just in case", but it was not needed. Mine is an HG connected to a Huawei cabinet etc. Just to confirm what others have posted, he told me that OR now only supply ECI to their engineers. Luckily I have a spare, new and unused HG courtesy of ebay.
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Rectified Loop Faults
Corrosion (or verdigris) across PCB tracks or between adjacent pins on telephone sockets are prime examples of this type of fault condition. Whilst stable linear loop faults do not give much cause for concern to DSL systems, rectified loop faults are more of a problem because they are nonlinear and introduce cross modulation (a sort of self interference which cannot be equalized away). They are also often very dynamic in nature and can stay in an "inactive" state until they become activated, e.g., by a DC line polarity reversal which may be associated with the application of ringing current to the associated analog interface. Essentially, these types of faults are "turned-on" when an incoming call is received at the ADSL customer's analog interface - the customer has no problem making outgoing POTS calls but may experience problems with premature ring trip (false answer) and high ADSL bit errors on incoming calls.
There is a BT socket here that caused a long-standing rectified loop fault in my parents house. It confounding the rookie engineer (me!) who was instructed to repair it. Only on closer inspection in good light was a fine coating of verdigris discovered on the pins in the socket (the sprung pins which contact the BT 413A/613A plug).
If only to prevent corrosion, there might, arguably, be something gained from using gold plated connectors! A photo of the point of corrosion might be useful for the OP (BBN) and others fault-shooting.
cheers, a
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A good spray with Electrolube Switch & Contact Cleaner (is it still obtainable? :-\ ) and the application of a cotton-bud may have been all that was required to clear the fault. :-X
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Ok
What I've done as a temporary measure is to remove the lower part of the face plate and connect the main phone into the test socket. The extensions obviously don't work now, but they are not often used anyway.
I will let the broadband connection do its own thing for the time being - any fault/speed issues that arise from now on will not be attributable to my internal wiring.
This will let me examine/fix the internal wiring when I feel up to it and have the time.
The powerline ethernet bridge has been removed, but this means that I can no longer connect my SKY HD box to broadband for TV Anytime/Catch Up. I see that Sky offer a wireless connector for £20 which allegedly addresses this requirement but from what I've seen on their support forums they do not appear to be much good (difficult to set up/unreliable).
Has anybody got any alternative broadband wireless adapter/Sky TV suggestions?
Thanks for your patience.
BBN