Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[toulouse]

Hiya guys (and gals),

I placed an order with Plusnet at the beginning of this month for their Fibre Broadband Essentials and Home Phone services. After extensive previous enquiries via their WebChat service when I was advised that the transfer should be trouble free. I did carry out some research, but the bottom line was that just wanted to get away from O2 (Sky) and Plusnet seemed to be able to give me what I wanted at a reasonable price. MAC key obtained from O2 and passed to Plusnet around 13May.

Initial payment taken 2 May, with an installation date of 20May. Kelly Communications Engineer arrived during afternoon, plugged in Openreach modem HG612, set a tone on the line and disappeared off to the local street cabinet. 20 minutes later he returned to advise me that he could not trace the tone at the cabinet, unplugged the modem, and off he went. I think this is what's called a failed installation !!!!
Initially it looked as if I had totally lost my O2 ADSL signal, but it appeared to come back after a couple of hours - go figure

Installation now rearranged for 23May between 8am and 1pm.

Assuming everything goes OK tomorrow, I would like to carry out some line monitoring from the get go. The purpose of this topic is to try and find out what options are available for monitoring the Openreach HG612 / Technicolor TG582n as supplied by Plusnet. I have previously used RouterStats for gathering stats, but would welcome any other suggestions which might be more appropriate for my new service.



Thanks in advance


toulouse

[guest]

Not really on-topic but :

Kelly Communications <-- that's your problem right there, hopefully you get someone with more competence next time

* rizla has had dealings with Kelly Comms before.....

[toulouse]

That's exactly what I said to the PLusnet Reps, both on Monday and earlier today. The lady that I spoke to today, insisted that their engineers are fully trained and qualified to do the necessary work, but I still have my doubts. She said that her own service at home had been done by Kelly Communications, so she was allegedly speaking from experience.


Time will tell I guess.

[Black Sheep]

Rizla has answered your question. That is absolutely abysmal service from Kelly's !! You obviously have a metallic path from your house to the PCP, as you had service with O2 !!

 

[guest]

My apologies to Toulouse but I can't help laughing at this.

The Kelly guy has most likely never done this before and I just have this image of him opening the cab and looking horrified. "WTF do I do now?"   

Kellys are garbage IME. There's another subbie (Quinns?) who seem to have a better reputation but I dunno. I'm lucky as the normal OR guys round here are great. Not too keen on all the subbies they must have in to install what looks like 20+ VDSL cabs in 3 weeks but we'll see.

[toulouse]

Yes, that's exactly what I thought, BS.

However, my understanding is that Kelly Comms act as subcontractors for Openreach (is that correct). I think perhaps that Fibre takeup is relatively new in this area, and did wonder if these Kelly (and is it Quinn) engineers get drafted into each area as required. I said to both Plusnet reps that I've now talked to about this fiasco, that I would much prefer a genuine Openreach engineer, but was told by both of them that they place the order with BTO and have no control over which engineer is assigned the job. You would think that as Plusnet is part owned by BT, that they shouldn't have any trouble at all getting genuine Openreach engineers to do this type of work for them - or is it not that straightforward. I have to say, I'm struggling to understand what's going on at the moment.

All I know is that I'm happy to enter into an 18 month contract for Fibre, but I do want to be able to use it sometime soon. If it ain't done right tomorrow, I'll be taking it up with the management at Plusnet in writing, as a matter of some urgency. The cheeky b*ggers have already asked me to complete a Customer Services contact survey, but I think that can wait until I've used the service for a little while.

You couldn't make this stuff up, could you.

Just read your new comment Rizla. What you are imagining is pretty much what happened. When he turned up on Monday, before he even managed to get the modem out of it's packaging he took an incoming call on his mobile. It sounded as if he was being asked how he was doing. His reply was that he was having 'a terrible day', and it was gradually getting worse.

TTFN

toulouse

[guest]

If its any consolation toulouse, Kellys are orders of magnitude better than Severn Trents subcontractors (May Gurney) who I am having to deal with now. They have complained about me, the guy I was employing, the neighbours (both sides) and the guy across the road. Reason? We've all told Severn Trent that May Gurney haven't done the jobs they were supposed to. In one case they have left a manhole in a back garden with no cover or frame on it so its wide open. Complete cowboys.

[toulouse]

Now, that is interesting. I may have read some of your earlier comments about 'some problems with the local drains' a little while ago. I used to live near Loughborough many years ago, and I'm pretty sure Severn Trent was my local water company at the time. I never had any problems while I was in that area, so good luck with resolving your problem. The name May Gurney also rings a couple of bells with me, although I'm not too sure of the context. Do they do 'waste management' and that sort of 'stuff' ?
 

[guest]

If you see some vehicle with "Onsite" labels on it then that's May Gurney. They do all sorts of stuff but are basically subbies for utilitity companies. Probably quite OK when it comes to things which will be officially inspected (ie public works), not so OK on other things.

Both they and STW are subjects of takeover speculation IIRC, no surprise there given water is a private monopoly in England & Wales. License to print money and of course STW has been convicted in the Old Bailey of defrauding customers before now....

* rizla takes a chill pill and thinks soothing thoughts that don't involve water

[Black Sheep]

Hiya guys (and gals),

I placed an order with Plusnet at the beginning of this month for their Fibre Broadband Essentials and Home Phone services. After extensive previous enquiries via their WebChat service when I was advised that the transfer should be trouble free. I did carry out some research, but the bottom line was that just wanted to get away from O2 (Sky) and Plusnet seemed to be able to give me what I wanted at a reasonable price. MAC key obtained from O2 and passed to Plusnet around 13May.

Initial payment taken 2 May, with an installation date of 20May. Kelly Communications Engineer arrived during afternoon, plugged in Openreach modem HG612, set a tone on the line and disappeared off to the local street cabinet. 20 minutes later he returned to advise me that he could not trace the tone at the cabinet, unplugged the modem, and off he went. I think this is what's called a failed installation !!!!
Initially it looked as if I had totally lost my O2 ADSL signal, but it appeared to come back after a couple of hours - go figure

Installation now rearranged for 23May between 8am and 1pm.

Assuming everything goes OK tomorrow, I would like to carry out some line monitoring from the get go. The purpose of this topic is to try and find out what options are available for monitoring the Openreach HG612 / Technicolor TG582n as supplied by Plusnet. I have previously used RouterStats for gathering stats, but would welcome any other suggestions which might be more appropriate for my new service.



Thanks in advance


toulouse

Just reading this again, Toulouse, and trying to pick the meat from the bones. You say he firstly plugged the Openreach modem in, and then put a 'tone' on the line ??
For this to happen, he must have fitted the VDSL front-plate in order that the modem be plugged into the top jack-plug (DSL), and the 'Lollipop' (an adaptor for connecting the tone to) plugged into the bottom jack-plug (PSTN).

If this indeed is how the job progressed, then it's little wonder he didn't receive his 'tone' at the PCP ?? They struggle like hell to work through the componentry that is within the VDSL front-plate, and having tried it myself once a long time ago (NTE2000), I soon realised the best course of action was to remove the SSFP and plug the 'Lollipop' directly into the NTE test socket.

This faux-pas doesn't excuse the 'workmanship' though. All he had to do was find your 'E-side' where your dial-tone appears in the PCP (The routing of which he has to have, in order to perform a FTTC install) .................. and follow the 'Jumper wire' from this 'E-side', through to the 'D-side'. A challenge a small child could probably accomplish ??

I'm wondering if there's more to this than meets the eye ?? For example, the VDSL port may have been faulty when the 'Kellys Hero' arrived at the PCP ?? It takes approx. 45-60 mins to have a co-op call and be given a new port and that's if all goes to plan. Bear in mind, the contractors get paid per job, he may have thought it frugal to dump the job and move on ??

This really is just me thinking out loud, as FTTC installation PCP work, is a menial task.

So, can you confirm that he had installed the VDSL front-plate and then plugged his 'tone' set into it ?? Cheers.

[toulouse]

Ok, BS, thanks for your further thoughts on this.

While I've been with O2, at around the same time that all the nice new shiny Fibre cabinets were being installed locally, I did experience some stability type issues. Could have been coincidence I suppose. Anyway, after a couple of Openreach engineer visits arranged through O2 (i seem to remember 3 or 4 perhaps, but that could be a bit of an exaggeration) things kind of settled down again, but coincidentally I believe most of the cabinet work had finished by then. This would have been around the latter part of last year. Then, one day, there I was minding my own business, and completely out of the blue another Openreach engineer appeared. I think he said he was an SFI specialist or something like that ? Anyway, over the space of around 1.5 hours or so, he went to a great deal of trouble tidying up my internal wiring (it didn't need much sorting because you [i think] and a few others had assisted me with the removal of an old extension socket which I thought had already been disconnected) and the split VDSL faceplate was installed at that time just in case I wanted to have a fibre service installed anytime soon. This must have been around December 2012 as we talked for some time about the upcoming introduction of Fibre services in the area that I live. I think he told me that I might see around 35-36Mbps if I did go onto a fibre service. As I've found many times before with BT engineers, this guy was extremely helpful as have most BTO engineers that I have met before.

So, Kelly Comms turn up late on Monday afternoon, he takes the previously mentioned call on his mobile and then inspects my existing setup. Plus points to him, as he noticed immediately (without prompting) that I already had the correct faceplate installed, but he seemed a little confused by the fact that I already had an active ADSL line using a TG582n on the O2 service. In addition to this, I have been taking part in an Ofcom / SamKnows line monitoring exercise, so have the router connected to a Linksys Broadband router which monitors all broadband traffic on my line. I told him that he didn't need to concern himself with that. He then unpacked the Hg612 modem, and connected it to the faceplate and power and switched on. He then unplugged the phone cable from the lower part of the faceplate and then inserted what I think you referred to as a 'lollipop'. He then passed a bit of kit (which I wasn't quick enough to see), but he waved it around the 'lollipop' and we heard some tones being emitted. He then went off to my local street cabinet and returned around 20 minutes later, unfortunately with bad news. My first thought was that maybe he had been to the wrong cabinet, as there is one around 100 metres from my flat, and another which I think is around 700 metres. My line is routed through the 700 metre jobby. He confirmed that he had been to the correct one, and he had also talked to his HelpDesk who apparently told him that there was some kind of problem with the change over. I suggested that maybe he might want to talk to Plusnet about this, but he wasn't going to do that. I tried to get through to them - not too easy with the phone having been unplugged !!!, and while I was doing that he removed the Openreach modem and repacked it and then left.  Once I had worked out why I couldn't get a dial tone on the phone, actually a 'no brainer'  when I remembered that the phone had been unplugged for the tone generator exercise D'oh !!!! Contacted Plusnet to let them know that I wasn't at all happy with this guys performance, and next time that they arrange for an engineer to call can they please ensure that it is someone who knows what they are doing. Preferably a BT Openreach engineer.

The initial response from them was that they didn't know why the job had failed, but I have since been told that it may have been because on the same day as the fibre service installation was being done, they also placed an order for moving my Home Phone service from O2 to Plusnet, although the date for that was specified as 4June2013.

Anyway, if things don't go well tomorrow morning, I shall be contacting some senior people at Plusnet in Sheffield.

Sorry for the verbage, but I always think the more detail supplied the easier it is for a knowledgeable person to provide help. Wish me luck for tomorrow, and TTFN


toulouse
 

[Black Sheep]

Thank you for the reply.

It does indeed sound like he has tried to put a 'tone' through the VDSL face-plate. 

As far as the phone call to the Helpdesk, unfortunately we/you only have his word for this and the only thing that would halt progress of the FTTC install, is if there was a 'V21' fail, which are as rare as rocking horse plop these days, (they were common'ish in the early days of FTTC). Or, no spare ports should the original be faulty.

The very best of luck for tomorrow, and hope you get a decent engineer. He'll be as happy as you to get the task, as it sounds like a dream of an install. Probably not be on-site long enough to demolish tea and biscuits ?? 

[toulouse]

Thanks for your good wishes. I'll definitely have the kettle on standby, and a large selection of biscuits at the ready, just in case. Will comment further tomorrow.

[toulouse]

OK, just a quick update on the disaster that occurred last Monday.

Another Kelly Communications engineer arrived this morning. Plugged in the HG612, and set his tone generator thingy going. He went down to the street cabinet and returned after about 20 minutes. He then connected up the Plusnet router (TG582n) and carried out a speed test at speedtest.net - and guess what - >36Mbps D/L and >6Mbps U/L. He suggested that these may go up a little over the next few days - WHOOOPEEEEEEE. Plusnet had estimated a D/L of around 30Mbps, so I've done pretty well, I think. I would still like to get some monitoring software that will work with the HG612 / TG582n combination up and running, so any suggestions would be most welcome


Total Success, I would say, wouldn't you all ?

Thanks for all the comments, toulouse is now a VERY happy bunny.


TTFN


toulouse

[ryant704]

Glad everything is working for you!

Though I doubt you will see a speed increase, the first sync is normally the highest amount you will see on the line. Though obviously if you have a problem with your line at the moment, you could see an increase in the future though I doubt that very much!

I use DSLStats which can be found here. [1]

You also have BE's graphs which you could try!

[1] http://www.s446074245.websitehome.co.uk/