Faulty telephone line effecting Broadband - who is responsible?

[#1]

Openreach were carrying out work on a telephone pole outside my house recently which resulted in my landline being disconnected for voice. Broadband continued to work but the speed dropped from an average 12Mb/s to under 2Mb/s. I am BT subscriber for phone and Plusnet Subcriber for Broadband. I reported the fault to BT who confirmed there was a line fault and raised this. Openreach engineers returned a couple of days later and fixed the phone connection but Broadband has remained slow.  

I have raised this with Plusnet who have tested my connection and said there is still a fault on the line and that I should report it / raise it with BT. 

"Thank you for contacting us regarding a fault with your services. As Broadband is provided using your phone line, sometimes faults on the phone line can have an impact on your Broadband service. I have completed a line test today and found a potential fault with your phone line. Unfortunately we are not your phone provider and as such if the fault is with your phone service you will need to discuss this with your current home phone provider."

My question is that my contract is with BT for voice and that is working fine (now) and with Plusnet to supply broadband (which is not) surely it is not right that I should chase BT to sort out a line fault effecting my Broadband; but rather for Plusnet who have the contract with BT Wholesale?

Frankly it was sorting out problems like this that attracted me to move to Plusnet in the first place. We'll do you proud.... mmmm.

Grateful for any advice on taking this forward. Thanks.

[#2]

Go through fault process procedure as on link below.

[#3]

Thanks

That's basically what I have done (except the last stage). What I was querying was Plusnet essentially saying that its a phone line fault and I have to go to BT. You can probably just imagine the conversation - something along these lines (no pun intended 🙂 😞

Me: Hi. I'd like to report a fault with my phone line.

BT:  OK. Are you getting a dialling tone?

Me: Yes.

BT: Are you able to make calls OK?

Me: Yes fine. It's my broadband - its now going sooooo slow.

BT:  Are you a BT Broadband customer sir?

Me: No. I'm with Plusnet.

BT: I am very sorry sir but you will need to contact your Internet Service Provider to resolve broadband issues.

Me: But Plusnet said it was all to do with a faulty phone line...

BT: Click!

 Welcome to the magic roundabout!

[#4]

Advice from OFCOM on the issue is pretty clear:

Who is responsible for fixing the fault?
Your contract is with your provider, and they are responsible for ensuring faults are fixed, and for keeping you informed of progress.

What if my provider doesn’t own the network?
Even if someone else (such as Openreach) manages the network through which your service is provided, you only need to deal with your provider.

Your provider may need to arrange for an engineer to come to your property to carry out checks. This person could be from your own provider or Openreach. In most cases, your provider should be able to establish reasonably quickly what has gone wrong and, if it is a network service issue, tell you how and when it will be fixed. If they are not the owner of the network, they will need to liaise with that company on your behalf...

I just have to convince Plusnet to honour their contract with me... or switch to BT!

[#5]

You actually pay line rental to BT, so they are responsible for ensuring "the line" does not have a fault.

The usual method of reporting such a fault is to tell BT there is intermittent noise and make no reference to broadband problems.

However, what is your Plusnet Current line speed (you will need to login) as it is possible it has not reset after the fault was corrected? The line sync rate and SNRM figures from your modem-router would be useful.

Phil

[#6]

If the line test shows a fault, it should be fairly straightforward to report the fault on the BT website.

[#7]

The good news is that my connection has now returned to download / upload speeds of - 

13.28 Mb/s

5.72 Mb/s

around what I had been getting prior to the Openreach work  / 'intervention'. So I am very happy with this. Was this just a matter of waiting for a level of stability on the line after a period of time from the initial fault?

Anyway many thanks to people who took the trouble to read the thread and to those that replied.

Richard

PS now to catch up on all that streaming