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Author Topic: Openreach  (Read 783 times)

Edinburgh_lad

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Openreach
« on: April 15, 2022, 09:38:28 AM »

Hello everyone

Following a 14th visit (!) from Openreach (since Jan last year), the engineer has finally stated in his notes that he's provided a temporary fix and that a permanent one needs to be applied. He stated in his notes that he needed to speak with 'dcoe' as this was a 'brick wall' job. (For everyone's information: nearly all previous had palmed us off with 'WiFi issues' and closed the job.)

I'd like to ask the following questions:

- what is a 'brick wall' job?
- who is 'dcoe'?

And finally, since Openreach have been aware of the issue for *at least* 16 months and done f*** all to even attempt to fix it, even after we wrote to CEO at Openreach, how do you actually get Openreach to fix something like that?

The other question I'd be grateful for an answer for is:

The main reason the 14th engineer was called in was our speeds reducing from 50Mbps to 30Mbps (we're paying for up to 70Mbps, by the way, as we're on the Fibre+ from Plusnet) and the GAE report returned: 'Impairment in copper joint detected'. However, the engineer explained that the reduction in speed was caused by someone else's service being terminated. What's the relationship between the two?

Thank you.
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Weaver

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2022, 10:03:40 AM »

Can’t help you with these strange expressions, I’m afraid. Perhaps our friend Black Sheep might be around at some point. Did the temporary fix fix it? What on earth has Plusnet been doing?
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burakkucat

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2022, 10:35:22 AM »

- who is 'dcoe'?

DCoE (Diagnostic Centre of Excellence).

Unfortunately I am unable to assist with your other queries.
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j0hn

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2022, 10:45:46 AM »

DCOE is Dedicated Centre of Excellence, or something along those lines. Basically the Control Centre for engineers.

Edit: I see B*cats paws beat me to it.

As to the last point... You can't lose speed from someone terminating their service. It's very much the opposite. Someone activating a service can take a very large chunk from your sync speed although that sounds excessive.

I've never heard the term brick wall job.
At a guess it's a job that needs fixed but it would be to expensive/complicated to do so.
You would be offered to accept the line as it is our you can leave penalty free.
Not all issues can be fixed. It could be an impairment in the copper in a directly buried section or cable under a main road.
They simply can't fix all issues, especially now that they are replacing the copper for the majority.

Quote
how do you actually get Openreach to fix something like that?

If it means what I said, you can't.

Brick wall job probably means something completely different though :D


Openreach are in the process of rolling out the major spine cables for FTTP on the Dalkeith exchange.
Hopefully you come under that rollout and you can retire the ageing copper.
There's also Virgin and YouFibre rolling out to provide alternatives.
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Talktalk FTTP 550/75 - Speedtest - BQM

Edinburgh_lad

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2022, 11:00:10 AM »

Can’t help you with these strange expressions, I’m afraid. Perhaps our friend Black Sheep might be around at some point. Did the temporary fix fix it? What on earth has Plusnet been doing?

Like with other ISPs, Plusnet can do so much. They're effectively at the mercy of Openreach and will have to accept what they say. So, over the past 16 months or so, Plusnet have applied a number of (effectively punitive) measures that are meant to stabilise the connection: capping us at 50Mbps, putting us on a super stable profile, sending us a new Zyxel router. Although these have reduced the number of disconnections, they've not eliminated them or outbursts of noise on the line. 
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Weaver

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2022, 11:04:20 AM »

You could always do as i did for an impossible-to-fix fault, and that is, order a second line, then cease the first one.

J0hn wrote:
> It's very much the opposite

I’m glad you said that, just what I was thinking. Utter nonsense from the OR engineer. He or she said it backwards way round.
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Edinburgh_lad

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #6 on: April 15, 2022, 11:12:23 AM »

DCOE is Dedicated Centre of Excellence, or something along those lines. Basically the Control Centre for engineers.

Edit: I see B*cats paws beat me to it.

As to the last point... You can't lose speed from someone terminating their service. It's very much the opposite. Someone activating a service can take a very large chunk from your sync speed although that sounds excessive.

I've never heard the term brick wall job.
At a guess it's a job that needs fixed but it would be to expensive/complicated to do so.
You would be offered to accept the line as it is our you can leave penalty free.
Not all issues can be fixed. It could be an impairment in the copper in a directly buried section or cable under a main road.
They simply can't fix all issues, especially now that they are replacing the copper for the majority.

If it means what I said, you can't.

Brick wall job probably means something completely different though :D


Openreach are in the process of rolling out the major spine cables for FTTP on the Dalkeith exchange.
Hopefully you come under that rollout and you can retire the ageing copper.
There's also Virgin and YouFibre rolling out to provide alternatives.

I think you're right: it is probably a big job that will require some big work. He told me they had already fixed the problematic joint issue at Eskbank Toll.

When you say we'd be offered to accept the line as is, that's of course a problem, as there is no alternative, even though you pay the same amount of money for a line rental as our neighbours further along the street, who are connected to a different cabinet and with a different cable, and have no problems. Plusnet were so fed up with the situation that they didn't even wait for us to approach them to leave penalty free but had simply enabled us to leave without even us knowing about it. 

Yes, Virgin Media are putting their cables in in Eskbank, which is probably why there's this extra activity by Openreach to fix all these old jobs.

One thing for sure: competition is always good.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2022, 11:38:56 AM by Edinburgh_lad »
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Edinburgh_lad

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #7 on: April 15, 2022, 11:13:48 AM »

You could always do as i did for an impossible-to-fix fault, and that is, order a second line, then cease the first one.

J0hn wrote:
> It's very much the opposite

I’m glad you said that, just what I was thinking. Utter nonsense from the OR engineer. He or she said it backwards way round.

Yes, I know. However, the engineer made it clear that the whole of the pole (at least 10 properties) is affected by this interference and so I don't think it'd make a difference. It's some kind of issue that affects the cable or joint in the cable. (We'd already been put on a different pair, which I presume would be similar to what you're suggesting, so I don't think it matters.)

So, ordering a new line and/or changing (DSL) providers will make no difference.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2022, 11:23:31 AM by Edinburgh_lad »
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Weaver

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #8 on: April 15, 2022, 11:22:50 AM »

Remind me what the symptoms were?
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Edinburgh_lad

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #9 on: April 15, 2022, 11:32:32 AM »

Remind me what the symptoms were?

- disconnections throughout a day and night, usually at 27 or 57 minutes past and before, respectively, the hour, the most common one being 12:57am
- outbursts of noise on the line, resulting in CRC errors and 50% of severe CRC errors for every 1 CRC error. In other words: for every 2 errored second, there was 1 severely errored second
- this outburst of noise would appear at regular increments, as if corresponding to a boiler firing up/heating up and then resting; a constant cycle. However, Black Sheep said it was as a result of cross talk
- Min. effective data rate on Fritzbox incrementally reducing to just 3 kbit/s from 54989 kbit/s. So, the speed would reduce to something like 30000 kbit/s and then 15000 kbit/s or something very similar, until it remained 3. This doesn't mean that the overall speed was reduced, but presumably means that at some point, the speed of a connection was just 3 kbit/s.
- when I pick up the phone and dial a number, errored seconds appear on the upstream
- when raining/windy, of which there's plenty here in the Lothians, we'd sometimes see an increase in errored seconds
- issue getting worse in the winter
- lots of FECs, which suggests cross-talk/re-transmission
- on the GAE report, it shows as 'interference detected daily'

If I remember anything else, I'll add it here.

They don't think it's REIN. He called it 'interference', whatever it means. On their systems, this shows as a Higher Resistance fault, but I only know that because when Openreach engineers from the Borders were called in to help in the area, they told me that. The others maintained the line is fine and it was a WiFi issue, which they stated 13 times in their reports. (You'd think Plusnet would get suspicious that a WiFi issue is causing so many problems that an Openreach engineer is called in so many times, but this shows that there's no sense of ownership in modern ISPs, with some faults being picked up by new stuff not knowing the previous history etc.)


 
« Last Edit: April 15, 2022, 11:40:53 AM by Edinburgh_lad »
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burakkucat

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Re: Openreach
« Reply #10 on: April 15, 2022, 11:35:28 AM »

Remind me what the symptoms were?

Here is the link to the original post which introduced us to the problem.
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