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Author Topic: On-site ISP internet engineer  (Read 970 times)

Weaver

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On-site ISP internet engineer
« on: March 29, 2020, 06:15:40 AM »

I need to hire my own self from 15 years ago. If you are an ISP and you have a confused, busy, absent, elderly, disabled, ill or simply non-techie user and your networking kit needs to be installed or debugged, tested or pretests need to be done before your line is tested then the ISP and/or the user needs an engineer who is networking literate on site if the user isn’t up to doing certain work items for themselves or isn’t even there. ISPs could do with an army of such engineers that they can hire to sort out these in-house jobs. BT iirc will do some jobs if you have the right kind of engineer available, but is that only for BT Retail end users? And do these folks just assume everything is a "Home Hub" which is what BT calls their combo CPE wireless modem-routers I believe, so would be hopeless with a random ISP?

If you had a freelance engineer, like the old me, who did a lot of DSL installations, or a highly retrained specialist BT engineer, then that person could do on-site work for a CP and/or end user, either using their in-depth knowledge or where it is an unfamiliar ISP or CPE or incomprehensible CPE, then that on-site person could perhaps be talked through a job by an engineer at the ISP.

When I was doing this kind of networking installation work, I only ever worked on my choice of kit and ISP; I didn’t work on stuff that I knew nothing about. If someone had a problem then everything they had would go in the bin and I’d start with known good kit and maybe an ISP change too. One existing customer presented me with a load of random hardware and an unknown ISP suddenly. I very politely wished them good luck and departed, leaving them astonished.

Whenever my ISP, AA, wants some physical activities carried out here as a test, eg involving things such as swapping kit out, doing a test from a test socket of an NTE or whatever, then I have to beg help from my beloved, who hates it and worries that the ISP AA will expect her to understand techie stuff. As mentioned earlier, there is a long list of cases where users cannot do these things for an ISP or even there’s no one there at all. The likes of AA, say, could become the go-to ISP for all these classes of users if they had some kind of solution involving a network of local engineers or aforementioned possible specially retrained BT engineers with remote hand-holding. If you’re disabled / ill / elderly / non-techie etc “then this is what you need”. When I was looking into getting an internet connection installed for Janet’s mum, who is ~450 miles away, down in England, I had this exact same problem. Even though AA would pre-configure everything that’s not remotely enough given Janet’s mum is 93 and has vertigo so she would not be able to plug everything in and test it. I did some research, looking for my former self locally to be the on-site helping hands, and even ideally deliver some iOS incredibly basic training on an iPad if they were able - might be lucky in that the engineer might also have such iOS literacy. Alternatively, I could perhaps find one of Janet’s mum’s many friends who speaks iOS, which is not at all impossible. I looked into local Firebrick dealers and found an amazing three very close, in North Staffs all. That means they would speak AA too.

Unfortunately there are not that many of these people and they are not all over the whole country. Neither is it a joined-up system. It needs to be a bit like the RAC who know where all the local garages are and have relationships set up with each one.

I just wish there were one such person to be found up here who has lots of clue and was trustworthy, so could be trusted with very basic physical tasks to be carried out for AA or for me so I don’t have to stress Janet out begging her to do jobs she hates and finds confusing or even overwhelming. Mind you, she’s an expert in modem reset-hole-poking now, given a brief recap she’s great at doing the 20 secs hole-poke until the flashing red led goes solid and maybe is starting to even hate it a lot less.

Leaving AA aside for a moment, what about larger ISPs such as Zen and then giants such as TalkTalk Home or Business ? Do they have solutions? Perhaps that’s a unique advantage of BT as an ISP then? - Because they maybe do already have such people that I’m yearning for? I just know nothing about BT Retail/Business.
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niemand

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Re: On-site ISP internet engineer
« Reply #1 on: March 29, 2020, 04:14:50 PM »

Insanely expensive. The solution most try is offering things that just work and trusting customers to handle their own devices.

ISPs have to have a demarcation of responsibility at some point and their end of their router is as good a one as any.

There are third parties that offer these kinds of services, though.
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ejs

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Re: On-site ISP internet engineer
« Reply #2 on: March 29, 2020, 04:36:56 PM »

TalkTalk's Engineer charges page suggests that they do have their own engineers that they can send out instead of Openreach.
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niemand

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Re: On-site ISP internet engineer
« Reply #3 on: March 29, 2020, 07:35:04 PM »

White label outsourcing ftw  ;)
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gt94sss2

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Re: On-site ISP internet engineer
« Reply #4 on: March 29, 2020, 08:44:16 PM »

BT have "Home Tech Experts" who will come to your property and help set up kit - for their own customers.

Some information at:

https://newsroom.bt.com/more-than-half-of-brits-own-tech-they-dont-know-how-to-use-according-to-new-bt-home-tech-study/
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