Extremely frustrating experience

[#1]

Sorry for my absence i have had to be away from work for a week so have not been able to directly monitor this as much as i would like
Now that I'm back i am taking control over this fault again to make sure that this gets fixed
Today we have had the tie pairs changed which essentially is the same process for a C&R, moving you to a new circuit board with a new circuit reference.
This work is now completed and the results seem promising so far and naturally due to the nature of intermittent faults only time can time can tell
When call parties are happy the fault is fixed we can get some compensation back for this case, this is not from BT but a goodwill gesture from Plusnet, as there's no point doing this before as we don't know if it is actually fixed yet but I'm confident this time the issue may be resolved.

[#2]

Thanks for the support neilhy69.
Well the new circuit board didn't work - the connection is still dropping. It did seem to be promising for a while, but after several hours it started dropping again.
Interestingly, when it hasn't dropped and is connected, I'm getting 700K, which is a bit more than the 100K I was getting last week. Anyway, still useless because of the dropping (and of course it is one tenth the speed that it should be).
Tom - you were going to investigate an iPlate? I didn't hear from you today.
No doubt BT is energetically investigating and working on this fault right as I type... er yeah, right.

[#3]

You should send a copy of this thread over to the two newbies before they even get to sit down at their new desks. http://community.plus.net/blog/2008/11/13/changes-at-the-top/#comments
If plusnet staff won't escalate it beyond assigning the trainee to feed you lines like "there's no point doing this before as we don't know if it is actually fixed yet but I'm confident this time the issue may be resolved" then maybe the two new guys who have just been transferred ahead of the 10% staffing cuts within BT will be able to prove their worth.

[#4]

This is sounding a lot like a problem I had with my line back when I first joined Force9.
That was before the days of "up to 8mbps" service - it was a 2mbps line.  Bizarrely, the router would only reliably sync with the exchange if the phone was off-hook!  Once the receiver was replaced the SNR margin would slowly decrease over the next 20-30 minutes and the connection would drop.  Equally bizarrely, having lifted the telephone receiver I could hear squealy-scratchy-modemmy noises faintly in the earpiece.
Faulty microfilters, you're thinking?  Nope, tried that, and plugging directly into the linebox with nothing but the router connected made no difference.  BT came out and took a look, scratched their heads, fiddled with something in the exchange that didn't really help.  So I bought another router - one that didn't mind a low SNR margin quite so much, and lived with it, just lifting the telephone receiver every so often to "kick start" the internet connection!
Then the exchange was upgraded to handle "up to 8mbps", and I could no longer work around the problem. Lifting the receiver to kick-start the line no longer worked, because it would train to an impossibly high speed and drop the line rapidly as the SNR margin degraded again!
So BT came out again, and swapped out the linebox.  This *appeared* to fix the problem - the SNR margin jumped way up to about 27db but slowly dropped over the next couple of hours, and we were right back where we'd started.
Finally, BT sent out someone else who swapped the cable between the house and the street box, and I've been connecting at around 7000mbps ever since.

I'm reminded of my case by some elements of your unhappy saga here - especially the part about BT thinking lifting-and-shifting pairs has fixed it, when in fact it only helps momentarily if at all.
Silly question, maybe, but do you hear any crosstalk between the router and house-phone as it syncs up with the exchange?  And if you look at your router's status page, does the SNR margin change significantly if the phone is off-hook?

[#5]

Quote from: blackfive

This is sounding a lot like a problem I had with my line back when I first joined Force9. That was before the days of "up to 8mbps" service - it was a 2mbps line.  Bizarrely, the router would only reliably sync with the exchange if the phone was off-hook!  Once the receiver was replaced the SNR margin would slowly decrease over the next 20-30 minutes and the connection would drop.  Equally bizarrely, having lifted the telephone receiver I could hear squealy-scratchy-modemmy noises faintly in the earpiece.

This sounds like a poor joint in the cable -
the Plain Old Telephone System - works by having a DC loop between exchange and telephone. When you pick up the handset, it "goes off-hook" - i.e. the phone makes a DC path - so a DC current starts to flow. This is detected by the exchnage - which connects the line to a "circuit, and provides an  AC audio path puts on dial tone. - When you hang up or go "on-hook" the dc current stops and the exchange clears down the call. 
Any way - this Direct current - although only small - but it may be enough to "clean" the poor joint?
So the fact that on replacing the cable between house and street box fixed the fault - just confirms this.

[#6]

Quote

Finally, BT sent out someone else who swapped the cable between the house and the street box, and I've been connecting at around 7000mbps ever since.

Thanks for sharing this. I am also starting to feel that the physical line between my house and the exchange is probably where the fault lies.
Of course I've tried new microfilters, all new cables, removed the phone altogether, used 4 different routers, etc. and the box I plug into here is a new one put in by Openreach in September (the start of this fault) and connects directly to the outside cable.
I don't really understand all the stuff about DC current and how having a phone connected, but off-the-hook, could help the problem. But maybe it could help here. I'm not overly familiar with my router's admin interface, other than the normal stuff for setting up wireless and ISP connections - so there should be something in there that tells me the SNR?
So anyway, yeah, I feel more and more that this is a problem between my house and the exchange. But it seems that BT are unwilling to look at this. At least everything has gone completely quiet again...
Connection speed is down to about 100K again now, by the way. I guess it took a while for the system to throttle it back after moving to the new circuit.
It is quite easy to see what needs to be done. I've been saying it till I'm blue in the face. Get an engineer out here, who can keep trying various things and keep testing whether they work, and eventually they will locate the problem. It seems pretty obvious really. Just changing 1 thing, and then shunting it on to someone else, then waiting 7 days, then passing it back through 2 more sets of people, before you try the next thing, is a completely inefficient and useless way to tackle this kind of technical problem. Just useless.

[#7]

What is your property - is it a stand alone house, is it on a fairly new development - built in say the last 10 to 20 years, does it have overhead line to pole or is it underground.
If like mine, it is failrly new, and has underground cable - the is less likelyhood to have bad connections.
If it is in a flat, a house that has been converted to flats, it will have more junction boxes,
if the phone line is significantly older - it may have wiring put in before the master socket, etc etc, more joints and every joint can be a potential problem.
Problem is - the phone line was never designed for data - and the design concept of ADSL - although very clever - does depend on a good quality line - much better than needed for simple telephony.

[#8]

Quote from: thesheep

Thanks for sharing this. I am also starting to feel that the physical line between my house and the exchange is probably where the fault lies.

Not much else left to try now, is there?

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I don't really understand all the stuff about DC current and how having a phone connected, but off-the-hook, could help the problem. But maybe it could help here.

I don't understand the physics behind *why* my line behaved as it did - it just let me get some usefulness out of the fixed-rate line.  It didn't work any more once the line had gone variable-rate though (the line quality still jumped, but because it retrained to a faster speed as a result of the better line, that didn't help!) - but it might at least help run down the fault.

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I'm not overly familiar with my router's admin interface, other than the normal stuff for setting up wireless and ISP connections - so there should be something in there that tells me the SNR?

Yeah - though precisely where depends on the make and model.  It's usually not listed as SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) - but SNR *Margin* - i.e. the amount of "headroom" for the signal.  Generally you'd expect to see about 8-10db there.  Some routers will drop the connection if it goes down below about 6db (like the BT Voyager I got with my Force9 package) - the Netgear DG834 I bought at the time would generally hold on to it right down to 1db, and even -1 on occasions!   Anyhow, I'm rambling!  If you can find the the SNR Margin readout, it might be worth watching it to see if it jumps up, or if the router resyncs to a different speed when you pick up the receiver...
Oh, and do you hear any crosstalk, as I did, while the router's trying to sync?
Good luck, anyway

[#9]

WOW
I have just spent the first 30 mins of work reading this whole forum. Its like a novel.
I dont know how you have put up with it for so long thesheep, i think after 2 weeks it would have been a case of the old 'contract cancelled' ,refund given, see ya plusnet.
Just for info, my house was built in the 1930's, the telephone cables are ancient and i still get a full 8Meg line.
Cant wait for the next installment

[#10]

and mine is over 40 years, no master socket, overhead wires, synched at 8128 profile 7150

[#11]

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What is your property - is it a stand alone house, is it on a fairly new development - built in say the last 10 to 20 years, does it have overhead line to pole or is it underground.

Old house, recently converted into flats. It's the only BT line in the house (everyone else went for Virgin cable... I'm feeling a bit stupid now!). Line comes straight into the wall of my flat, and straight into a single master socket. The line itself was not in use previously: I paid £130 in April to get it connected. Worked fine up until August. When it was connected up we did suggest that the line from the pole into the house looked a bit old, but the Openreach guy assured us it was totally fine. Who knows?
Had an update yesterday from PN. BT are going to try checking the green junction box in the street. If that doesn't work then it will get "sent to the complex fault team and escalation team". It's been to the complex fault team several times in the past 2 months, so not sure what this will do. Anyway, the bit I couldn't believe was, that the PN guy told me that BT then have up to 28 days to decide what their next course of action is going to be to try and locate the fault. Yes, that is correct. Not 28 days to fix the fault, but 28 days just to decide how they're going to try and fix it. He said it hopefully would be done much quicker than that, but it doesn't feel me with confidence...
The problem is that there is no incentive for them to fix the fault quickly. BT has a monopoly. Offcom is supposed to regulate that, but then it comes down to regulations and enforced time limits. These are very easy to play around and spin out, in practice, with these more complex kinds of problems. What is needed is a bit of focus and determination from an engineer. And it is no-where to be found. Because there is no penalty facing them. It seems that either PN are not being tough enough with them, or they are just taking no notice.

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i think after 2 weeks it would have been a case of the old 'contract cancelled' ,refund given, see ya plusnet.

The problem is that I've paid £130 to BT for the line, and I'm tied into a 12 month contract with them. The only real alternative is to go cable. That would mean cutting my losses on the BT contract and connection fee (or wasting 2 days energy trying to fight it, waiting in call queues, etc). I could perhaps move from PN to somewhere else like Zen, to see if they are more energetic about putting pressure on BT. It may be that because PN is part of BT, they are actually less effective at calling them to account. I might bear that in mind as a strategy. The difficulty it that I would be starting the fault from scratch again.

[#12]

I've just given this problem a 'nudge' via the PUG route to see if any more focus can be placed on getting this problem resolved.
Plusnet are normally extremely effective at getting such problems with BT resolved - this long running saga is not the norm

[#13]

Quote from: thesheep

BT has a monopoly. Offcom is supposed to regulate that, but then it comes down to regulations and enforced time limits.

Monopoly? There are alternatives and you did mention them in your post. Also the compensation that BT have to pay for none supply or services that do not meet requirements are quite high. Unfortunately PN will be paid the compensation for the broadband service and whether they will pass this on to you is up to them.

[#14]

Quote from: thesheep

When it was connected up we did suggest that the line from the pole into the house looked a bit old,

Is it a black round cable or a grey flat 2-core one?
(you might be able to check inside the master socket if it runs that far, or at a junction box if not)
If 2-core it's not acceptable and will be replaced FOC - as mine was recently.

[#15]

Quote

the compensation that BT have to pay for none supply or services that do not meet requirements are quite high. Unfortunately PN will be paid the compensation for the broadband service and whether they will pass this on to you is up to them.

Do you have any more information on this? How much is the compensation and when does it become payable? At the level of equipment costs BT has to pay at the exchange to change something or the amount they have to pay per Openreach engineer for a visit, my guess is that the compensation costs would need to be hundreds (or thousands) before it gave them any incentive.

Quote

Is it a black round cable or a grey flat 2-core one?

Black round one.
Yesterday BTO turned up for a visit while I wasn't at home. I was given no advanced notice of an engineer visit and nothing was scheduled. I was at work. They left a message saying they couldn't get access to my house. Then PN told me that BT had said that they could send another engineer out on another visit, but the fault would need to be started from scratch. The PN guy was just as annoyed by this as me, I think. BT seemed to be completely clueless as to the nature of the fault, and even though it's been 'escalated' twice, it is still a game of Chinese whispers through multiple levels of bureaucracy and 'support systems'. Totally hopeless.