BT Update
Well, my customer is off line again, despite the promise this morning of someone calling before an engineer would turn up. The engineer turned up, and a massive surprise he can't get sync. Good job I diagnosed this on Monday.
Now he believes they have
misconfigured the line.
So many issues, and yet they can't seem to just sort it our
Labels: Broadband, BT, unusable
BT & the Internet
Just to follow on from the previous post.
So yesterday out of the blue the customers Broadband started working! Yes after 2 days
BT had indeed found a fault, and had carried out a tie pair modification to get things working again.
Today we visited the site to change the router back over to their router, from our spare one we carry just in case.
Nothing, no sync, no connection nothing, we tried the spare nothing, and just to make sure we tried a brand new router. Nothing, then we changed the filter and tried again, nothing.
The customer phoned
BT Broadband, and as soon as they gave their details the broadband suddenly connected (now
I'm sure this is a
coincidence?), The customer was told yet again, nothing is wrong with the line it mus be your equipment, at which point I managed to get in on the act. When pointing out that there is nothing else connected to the=is master socket other than an
ADSL Filter, and connected to that is a broadband router, of which we have tried 6 combinations and not 1 of them was a
winner. They finally
conceded we need to run more tests, at which point the broadband died and didn't return.
Now if you can take off the faceplate of the master socket and plug it into the test socket we can run more tests. To be fair this did spark a connection, and
Internet connectivity was re-established. Then I got the story if we send an engineer out and they find a fault with your equipment we will charge you- er hello
nothing wrong with the equipment, but there is with yours.
BT you need to start some good engineering in fault rectification, honestly, work done at the exchange fixed the issue, for some 20 hours, so it is logical that the fault is with the customer.
This is like have your exhaust replaced, and when you get in start the car up it rattles. It is so obviously the fault of the driver for starting the car. The
BT question in this case would be 'have you tried a
different key, or a different driver'
Then we got on to question of Broadband faults and engineers just turning up
un announced. This DOES NOT HAPPEN' Really I know of 2 cases in the past week alone, you even get a call when you have your shopping delivered by some supermarkets?
BT Broadband, and
BT Broadband
WholeSale, and of course
BT Openreach. You need to raise your game in customer service. If the customer is seeing a fault, and it was working fine, and they have tried a filter change and a different router
YOU have an issue. You need to get it resolved, if that customer is a business, specially a micro or small business this is likely to critical to that customer. They are likely to be
losing money.
Customer stay calm, and keep contacting them. It may take months, but they will eventually find the faults and fix them.
Labels: Broadband, BT, internet, router
All things Internet
It's been a shambles in Plymouth recently.
Yesterday there were massive issues for Virgin Telecom customers in the city. Apparently the power was being taken off of exchange, and was going to be supplied by a diesel generator. However when the power was taken off the generator packed in. I have to ask would you rely on 1 generator to provide the power. I wonder if that generator is their backup generator, just in case they have a power failure! If it is then I would worry about being a Virgin telecom customer!
BT and Broadband, now this is the BT Broadband Wholesale and BT Openreach people. In February this year my Broadband was moved from the old 20CN system to the new 21CN system. With a pile of issues, I have Broadband since 2000, was 1 of the first to connect to it on my Exchange, and have a rock solid connection at ever increasing speeds. Finaaly reaching between 6 - 7.5Mbs. Then it was all moved, and ever since I have endless outages, and speed issues, resulting in my best speed last week of about 2 Mbs.
BT Broadband Wholesale couldn't find a problem on my line, it was working and because it had been connected for over 7 days there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with it? However as i pointed out, it is pointless being connected if you have no throughput, which actually happened more times than I could handle. Eventually, they ran some test and found I had an high voltage on my line, and a cross connection with someone else.
I have spent 10 months trying to get this resolved, I am now up to a blistering fast 5 Mbs still slower than I had, but at least for the last 3 days I have had a useable connection.
Yesterday I had a call from a customer who had lost there broadband, they described the lights on the router, and it obvious they didn't have an ADSL Sync light. It transpired they were moving their telephone lines back to BT, and as a thank you BT have cut their Broadband off! That was 20 hours ago, they still have no broadband this is going to cost the customer thousands of pounds their whole business is based on the internet. This sort of issue is just NOT acceptable.
A couple of weeks ago, I went ot a presentation given by the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, about connectivity. They have come up with a wonderful plan, and I personall hope the H20 (A company who run fast internet connectivity through the sewer system) do actually invest in Plymouth.
It would give another option to businesses in the city, and would enable customers to have a fail over system.
What we will be recommending to all customers, whose business is reliant on the internet is to have multiple providers and to utalise that, with a router, able to both bond the connections to give faster speed, and also able to failover to a single broadband connection.
Labels: Broadband, BT, plymouth, Virgin trouble
Extra Tax to have a phone line
So the UK Government announced a plan yesterday to charge an extra tax to have a phone line, to help cover the cost of the move over to fibre. This is to enable the 15% of the population who can't get over 2Mbps, and to move us up the League table (we are currently 7th) and to get to the top we need to get 100Mbps to the majority of the population. And simply with this plan it isn't going to happen!
Some of this money is also going to help fund regional news programmes on the Commercial Channel, and to my mind the key word here is Commercial, if it isn't commercially viable then it can't be run as a commercial concern and should be run as not for porfit community interest companies.
For me I will in the coming months look at what we have both personally and commercially in the way of phone lines, and we will reduce these lines by about 50%, I would urge everyone home users. or businesses to consider the line you have, and consider using the very thing that this is designed to improve, your broadband connection and use
VoIP (Voice over IP)Certainly the days of homes getting extra lines installed, just to have more than 1 phone line due to kids usign are gone. And remember this tax will be here to stay.
Personally I would perfer for the backbone to sold off from BT and sold to a commercial company to be run as a commercial concern, this may mean a slight increase in Broadband charges, but then at least those of us who use the net to extremes will be paying for it instead of evreyone paying for it regardless of your internet usage.
Labels: Broadband, BT, phone tax, uk, voice over ip, voip
April was a busy month. We were busy with all sorts of issues.
we have been replacing laptop screens at the rate of about 2 a week, and it is amazing what hits these to cause them to break! Our recommendation is if you aren't using your laptop close the lid, and place the laptop out of the reach of Children and animals. This should help you save around £100.
Yes it is repairable, and the price comes in around £100 depending on Screen size.
A network install, which still isn't complete. BT are such a pain it is about time that BT Realise how important a Broadband connection is to business. It is no longer a nice to have, in business it is essential.
A high number of Hard Drive failurers, a stunning amount of drive failurers. Whilst these will happen make sure you have your data backed up, being able to restore your data makes the whole process so much less painful.
Labels: Broadband, BT, data backup, hard drive, replacement laptop screen, wireless network
BT
Why oh Why are
BT so useless???
This week our telephone exchange (for our home phone) was upgraded from 20
CN to the new 21
CN (This is the new backbone of the
BT infrastructure).
This went really well for most of our customers, but our line took 24 hours to migrate, and then when it was complete our Broadband still didn't work. They (
BT) sent out a phone engineer who
tested the line, and yes the phone worked. (We knew this) what I wanted was to get my Broadband working. I needed a Broadband Engineer! We phoned up the
wholesaler who said they would pass our message on as it was obvious that the splitter at the exchange had failed, it was either that or that our filter had failed in the house (Something we had tested).
Once this was passed on, the fault was fixed, we are now on the new network. Now all I have to
do is summons up the courage to move from
ADSL to
ADSL 2. To see what speed we can get out of the line.
But please
BT so often you send out the wrong type of engineer, train up more Broadband engineers.
Labels: 20cn, 21cn, adsl, adsl2, Broadband, BT
