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[snadge]

just too let you all know, I got 1 YEAR LINE RENTAL @ £1 MONTH for my troubles...

 but... they didnt call me back as promised and ignored my emails, it took the intervention of forum staff to get the attention of the escelations rep who was handling my case, he called and apologized , thanked me for my patience... and said they are working to change protocols from BT Broadband Engineer beign last resort TO Sky Network Services Engineer being last resort because more often than not BTo LL14 Engineers are not fixing the problems ..so he says anyway, he said most of the time SNS find the problem on BT's loop and charge BT for call out, so it gives BT an incentive to get the problem resolved by them in first place.

[Bald_Eagle1]

Great news snadge.

You can act as my negotiator when I hammer Plusnet with my bill for all my lost/wasted time & inconvenience over the last 11 months 

[Black Sheep]

just too let you all know, I got 1 YEAR LINE RENTAL @ £1 MONTH for my troubles...

 but... they didnt call me back as promised and ignored my emails, it took the intervention of forum staff to get the attention of the escelations rep who was handling my case, he called and apologized , thanked me for my patience... and said they are working to change protocols from BT Broadband Engineer beign last resort TO Sky Network Services Engineer being last resort because more often than not BTo LL14 Engineers are not fixing the problems ..so he says anyway, he said most of the time SNS find the problem on BT's loop and charge BT for call out, so it gives BT an incentive to get the problem resolved by them in first place.

Obviously I'm biased, but that's quite a bold statement stating 'more often than not'.

I can only speak from experience and the ISP's own 'engineers' don't know their ar5e from their elbow. They generally spend 3 hrs faffing around with internal wiring that doesn't warrant faffing with, giving the impression they're doing 'some good'. When they've finished doing the very, very basics of internal wiring, they then say Openreach engineering is necessary to give service back.

I know we have some engineers who are awful. But far from it being the majority. What does need shaking up is the way engineers are measured. If we had the time to chase miniscule faults, the service we give would be a lot better. Again though, folk have to bear in mind we currently work to SIN 349 and that's what we are targetted to. If it passes the scripted tests set to this standard, then job done.

No one is saying it's ideal, but no engineer is going to risk getting the tin-tack by trying to give another 1 meg of bandwidth on a line that tests OK. It's hard to get across to folk just how pressurised an environment it is on Openreach engineering !!! If you dont 'perform' you're out !!!

[connect4king]

I work for a large high street bank as a voice and data engineer in a 3000+ seat office. We get BT engineers in most weeks for DEL/isdn/faults provides and ceases. Its nice to see the look on there faces when I tell them they can put there cable back in the van as the building is totally flood wired. The BT lads are under pressure and none of them are that happy with the situation. A guy I worked with was a BT manager and lasted only a year before he left with stress.

I am very happy with the service from BT. The only time we have real problems is when the BT, Virgin and an ISP all get involved in supplying/fault finding the same circuit.

The treatment that BT give a large business could be different form Jo Blogs but I say what I see.

[Black Sheep]

That's kind of you to take the time to comment, Mr King.

I always maintain, that these types of boards highlight the low percentage of tricky faults. The majority of EU's will experience a good 'Customer experience'.

Now I'm not saying OR have got it right, far from it. Their draconian measures reward the wrong behaviours IMO (well, everybody I talk to's opinion, if I'm being honest). They utilise a completely 'hands-off' management style, using the statistics collated from a plethora of data-systems, to 'manage' their people.

There's no consideration of age, gender, experience, locality, task-type etc etc .......... A 20yr old young lad will throw up 20 spans of overhead dropwire in half the time that a 50yr old lady engineer will. Tough, the 'machine' states it should take 90 minutes to achieve ..... end of. You could pick up a 5v battery contact on a rural route that is 30 miles from your locality. You have no local experience. Tough .... you have 2hrs to clear that task. Then you pick up Bald Eagle's task, you can see it's going to need the A to Z of telecomms engineering, which equates to a lot of time. Tough ..... you are awarded 2 hrs to bottom the task.

In the interests of balance, we do get simple tasks as well, which as connect4king says, is where we end up with a damn great smile on our face, as we know we can claw back some of the 'un-productive' time from previous.

If you start Monday morning and clear just 2 tasks on that day, the stress levels are immense as you are trying to keep your head above the b*******g line. If by Wednesday you haven't managed to recover the loss, that's when the, "The PQT and Eclipse shows there's nothing wrong with your line ..... bye bye", begins to creep in. I wouldn't blame any engineer for doing this, as he doesn't want to be put on the disciplinary route.

If we went back to 'Man managing', whereby your boss know you as an individual, knows your strengths and weaknesses, knows where to get the best out of the individual , then we would be a better team. As it is, a faceless, unempathic machine called 'Work Manager' doles out the work, and a similar machine called 'i-POP', decides whether we are a 'good' engineer or a 'bad' engineer. Wrong on so many levels IMO.

Sorry for the rant and the kidnap of this thread.

[coolsnakeman]

BS,

Totally agree. Just like the helpdesk we are all pulled down by what they call "procedures" and systems that don't even work half the time. Makes everyones job alot more challenging and complicated when it doesn't need to be. There is 1 question i would like to ask and that is where did openreach get that "2 hours" time frame from i can't imagine this to be a random number. I suspect they work it as an average based on stats they have gathered on engineering jobs.

Gary

[Black Sheep]

I know that job times on most network-type tasks are taken from historical data, so can only imagine that DSL tasks are formulated the same way

The problem is, most times were taken when the bonus-scheme's of FRS and SMT were implemented, and engineers were running around like headless chickens !! We cut our own throats on that one, I'm afraid. The D-side Network and 'Routing and Records' went into complete disarray !!

IMO, we're still recovering from that period.

[coolsnakeman]

BS,

What job would you say is more complex PSTN or broadband? I would of said that there is more involved when troubleshooting a broadband network issue and you have more to break down than on the PSTN. We have ex engineers that work on this desk and they beg to differ on that one.

Gary

[Black Sheep]

BS,

What job would you say is more complex PSTN or broadband? I would of said that there is more involved when troubleshooting a broadband network issue and you have more to break down than on the PSTN. We have ex engineers that work on this desk and they beg to differ on that one.

Gary

Broadband by far and away !! Just show your mates this forum to make them see sense !! 

The only reason Broadband Faulting could be deemed as 'easy' by others, is that the line TOK when the fault arrives on our laptop. This of course means finding the actual fault is harder than receiving a PSTN fault that says, 'Loop' ... or 'Dis at 96%'.

Seriously, I tend to find engineers who think PSTN faulting is difficult not really knowledgeable about the bigger picture. Ask them about Insertion Loss, AC Balance, Impulse Noise Counters, Wideband Noise Induction, REIN, PEIN, SHINE, Interleaving, CRC, HEC, FEC ............. then mention Spectral Analaysis right at the end to really screw their nappers up !!

PSTN ?? It's had its day, especially when VOIP becomes more prevalent, seeing as the trials BT were running have now passed. I could teach PSTN faulting to a reasonably minded individual in a couple of weeks, I'm still learning where BB is concerned.

[coolsnakeman]

Always thought myself that broadband fault finding would be alot more complex than PSTN only cause there is alot more involved in the setup of broadband and alot more out there that can cause faults with it. Think that particular work colleague is a bit smug with himself and probably believes he was a master engineer in his day  I would believe more time would be given to engineers to repair broadband faults since it is more complex.

Gary

[Black Sheep]

Just ask him what effect providing a PSTN only circuit, over a split-pair would have ?? Answer = Nothing much at all.
The same circuit but with DSL provided on it ?? Answer = Mayhem.

Similar question as above, but the line tests ok using various old-style meters. PSTN only circuit works perfect, but when DSL is applied it loses synch and has thousands of errors. Answer = The pair of wires are in contact with another pair of wires (usually underground), but the 'other pair' is what we call 'dead' ..... ie- not a working line. This will throw the capacitance readings and AC Balance readings and leg-resistance readings all over the place, but will only affect DSL, not PSTN.

Like I say, ask him what various terms are and how they relate to a circuits integrity, and if he can answer them , he may be what he professes to be. I'll have a pint on it he has no idea. 

[Bald_Eagle1]

Similar question as above, but the line tests ok using various old-style meters. PSTN only circuit works perfect, but when DSL is applied it loses synch and has thousands of errors. Answer = The pair of wires are in contact with another pair of wires (usually underground), but the 'other pair' is what we call 'dead' ..... ie- not a working line. This will throw the capacitance readings and AC Balance readings and leg-resistance readings all over the place, but will only affect DSL, not PSTN.

Like I say, ask him what various terms are and how they relate to a circuits integrity, and if he can answer them , he may be what he professes to be. I'll have a pint on it he has no idea. 

Ah, so that's what might have caused the high "insinuation" level on my connection then (as one visiting PSTN engineer called it) - unless he was insinuating that I was insinuating something else.

[Black Sheep]

Similar question as above, but the line tests ok using various old-style meters. PSTN only circuit works perfect, but when DSL is applied it loses synch and has thousands of errors. Answer = The pair of wires are in contact with another pair of wires (usually underground), but the 'other pair' is what we call 'dead' ..... ie- not a working line. This will throw the capacitance readings and AC Balance readings and leg-resistance readings all over the place, but will only affect DSL, not PSTN.

Like I say, ask him what various terms are and how they relate to a circuits integrity, and if he can answer them , he may be what he professes to be. I'll have a pint on it he has no idea. 

Ah, so that's what might have caused the high "insinuation" level on my connection then (as one visiting PSTN engineer called it) - unless he was insinuating that I was insinuating something else.

  I was hoping you might get one of our 'original' (been on since A.G. Bell invented the phone) engineers from my patch, visiting your abode, BE. A few of us have explained to him that the dilithium crystals tend to overheat at higher frequencies, causing slow-speeds. He actually said that he knew this ??!!! 
We were tempted to introduce terminology such as 'Warp factor' and that not only is resistance a key player in a circuits integrity, but it's also 'Futile'. He soon turned the convo back to the old dial-phones. 

Although we are having a bit of a jest here, there are some greatly knowledgeable old-soaks still left on BT. But to reiterate on coolsnakemans point, PSTN faulting is a walk in the park compared to DSL.

[burakkucat]

I was hoping you might get one of our 'original' (been on since A.G. Bell invented the phone) engineers from my patch, visiting your abode, BE. A few of us have explained to him that the dilithium crystals tend to overheat at higher frequencies, causing slow-speeds. He actually said that he knew this ??!!! 
We were tempted to introduce terminology such as 'Warp factor' and that not only is resistance a key player in a circuits integrity, but it's also 'Futile'. He soon turned the convo back to the old dial-phones. 

Although we are having a bit of a jest here, there are some greatly knowledgeable old-soaks still left on BT. But to reiterate on coolsnakemans point, PSTN faulting is a walk in the park compared to DSL.

Just wondering if the above "Old Timer" is aware of the havoc that can be created on a simple PSTN circuit when one reverses the polarity of the neutron flow? 

[Black Sheep]

Ha ha ..... circa 'The Good Doctor' .......... who ??