topic Re: Oh dear, what have OR done in Broadband

Oh dear, what have OR done

daveaspy — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 19:38:54 GMT

I've had steady high 60s for a while now, but Openreach have been in the area installing fibre infrastructure and on Friday they put an overhead fibre feed to our pole (which I'm very excited about :D) - however since 10am Friday my FTTC connection has been all over the place! Lots of disconnections, noise margin swinging from 0.5 to 6.5dB, currently at 54Mbps. I'm hoping they come back tomorrow and sort out whatever they touched on Friday!

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 19:45:38 GMT

Have you done a phone Quiet Line Test?

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

daveaspy — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 19:47:09 GMT

no, I suspect it will be very scratchy though Haven't had a landline phone plugged in for ages, might have a root around to see if I can find it

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 19:50:35 GMT

That would be a great idea, as I suspect they have disturbed your copper line, which would be the quickest way to report a fault.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:03:13 GMT

You could also do a line test using - Plusnet - troubleshoot by text

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:05:11 GMT

@Anonymous Good point - although they are not 100% reliable.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:08:33 GMT

But at least it's automated, costs the price of a text, gives a quick result, and if it does find a problem will book an engineer visit

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:09:24 GMT

Fair enough.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:15:25 GMT

In another year or two, doing a "quiet line test" will be a thing of the past when analogue phones are phased out.

Then what will we do ?

😧

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:19:18 GMT

AIUI, when almost everyone is on FTTP, the OR system/network monitoring will pick faults up automatically - well, that's the theory as I've read it, anyway.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:35:32 GMT

For me that will be a long wait.

I'm planning on upgrading from FTTC+landline to SOGEA+VoIP in the next six weeks

but Openreach plans to install FTTP in my area are sometime after 2028 and possibly as late as 2030

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:43:05 GMT

Interesting. My ISP is being proactive and doing that for all their customers anyway. My FTTP availability is supposed to be by mid next year - OR are currently installing the kit on some of our poles at the moment, but in a very haphazard manner. They are certainly working on it, but seem to have 'gone for a lie-down' this past few weeks.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

daveaspy — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 08:59:32 GMT

Dropped again during the night to less than 20Meg, but the test is unable to find any performance problem

Just spoken to the OR engineers fitting the fibre infra and they reckon an underground cable has gone down, but it was definitely, certainly, absolutely nothing to do with them.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 09:05:33 GMT

@daveaspy If you are on Fibre Extra - as your original post clearly indicates - then that BT test above is a total load of rubbish.

Report a fault, and insist it is looked into properly.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

corringham — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 09:37:14 GMT

@jab1 wrote:

AIUI, when almost everyone is on FTTP, the OR system/network monitoring will pick faults up automatically - well, that's the theory as I've read it, anyway.

Thre's going to be a long time - possibly a decade - after PSTN is switched off before every connection is FTTP. There needs to be a way to check a line which isn't the quiet line test.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 09:48:01 GMT

Tell BT/OR, not me - like every other member of the public, I can only go on what information is in the public realm.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

daveaspy — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 13:34:24 GMT

gone altogether now, been off for nearly 3 hours. I did the text thing which replied with

"Our diagnostic testing has found that your broadband service is being affected by a network problem in your area. Network issues are usually resolved in 4 hours."

is there any way of getting an update on how long it might be out?

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 13:38:54 GMT

Simple answer, @daveaspy , is no - Openreach do not advise ISPs or end-customers in these situations directly, but if you enter your full phone number in here: https://status.zen.co.uk/broadband/ it may give you a little more information - unlikely but worth a try.

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

daveaspy — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 17:31:22 GMT

Thank you for your time, after testing your connection today we have detected that you are being affected by a  an Openreach AR. declared by our suppliers.
This is currently being investigated and the current estimated resolution time (ERT) is 04/08/2023 17:40:00 Please understand that this is an estimate and may be subject to change. Due to the agreement we have with our suppliers, we are not able to chase for further updates on these cases until the ERT has been missed by 48 hours.

Great timing, with school hols and chucking it down outside 🙈

Re: Oh dear, what have OR done

jab1 — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 17:34:00 GMT

I doubt OpenReach wanted a network failure - but these things happen.