Authentication Failure - New Cabinet

[#1]

Hi all,

Contractors working on behalf of OpenReach have, the weekend before last, dug up the road to place a cabinet adjacent to the one I am connected to. In the process, my phone and broadband connections were broken 3 times within a week, with the third time being an issue yet unresolved.

I raised the issue on Monday last week and have had inconsistent help unfortunately. At last, an OpenReach engineer came to my property and stated that I am entirely disconnected from the cabinet I was previously on, and I was haphazardly connected to the new one.

He sorted this out, I have my phone working and broadband is working according to OpenReach using their test equipment. The engineer has said that PlusNet have an authentication issue, thus my routers aren't allowing a connection - but the routers are being seen by Plusnet.

I have been in contact with PlusNet but they can't figure out this authentication issue. Logging in with *account*@plusdsl.net and the appropriate password, but no dice. It says 'PPP Connecting' or something along those lines, before returning to the login screen.

Router swapped to a BT Business one, and same issue.

The 'session' was reset on Plusnet's end as well.

Anyone have any idea why a new cabinet may be throwing up authentication issues?

Would be extremely grateful, as looks like it will be a fairly long wait to get this sorted :(.

Thanks in advance,
Liam

[#2]

Hi Liam.

Thanks for contacting us via our community forums, I'm sorry to see you're experiencing connection problems.

Our tests aren't showing any connection attempts coming into the BT servers(Before they go to our own) but apart from that they're not finding a definitive cause for the problem. However based on what you've said I suspect there's a cross-jumpering problem on the Openreach network although that's an educated guess.

To move forward I'd recommend we arrange a broadband engineer to investigate further, as it looks like the engineers who have gone out were phone line engineers so I'm sorry to see that the last engineer wasn't a broadband engineer.

Could you reply to your fault ticket 192158981 or the text message I've sent with your availability for another appointment? If you can nudge us over here once you've responded we'll get it picked up and booked in as soon as we can.

Apologies for the inconvenience this causes.

[#3]

Hi there,

Thank you very much - you already have a much better grasp of the situation.

Disappointing to hear that the engineer was a phoneline specialist, as it was made very clear this was a broadband issue!

I have replied to the text message for availability this week (I will be available any day AM or PM essentially). Thanks again for pushing that forward so quickly - really appreciate it!

[#4]

Thanks for getting back to us Liam

No problem and sorry again that a broadband engineer wasn't arranged for today.

I've booked the appointment for the soonest based on availability, 25/07/2019 between 8am and 1pm.

Let us know how it goes on the day.

[#5]

Hello,

Just to provide an update - we had a very good OpenReach engineer this time and he was able to restore the connection.
The reason for the issue was a new cabinet with the same ID number was installed across the street due to a neighbour complaining of the original cabinet's location. OpenReach had no idea there was even a second one installed when the engineer called them, hence the authentication failure with the broadband.

Our speeds were restored, and had a good connection at 80mbps down, 20 up. However an engineer has been working on the cabinet today, and my speeds are down to between 25 and 35mbps down. He has been working on my neighbours line, and I am concerned he has damaged my connection - this is something that has happened before to me.

Are we able to reopen the case as now it is below my guaranteed speed?

Many thanks again,
Liam

[#6]

Hi @Ldog,

Thank you for getting back in touch and for providing an update. I'm sorry to hear that your speed has dropped again following work being carried out on your neighbour's line, despite the speed going back to where it should be after the engineer visit.

I've raised this back to our suppliers for further investigation and we should receive an update within 72 hours at the latest. Our faults team have ownership of this and will contact you once we've got this update.

[#7]

Hi Emily,

Just to give you an update, the speed is back at around 70. More than happy with this, not sure what they were doing to the cabinet yesterday but seems to have been resolved.

Many thanks,

Liam

[#8]

Hi Liam, thanks for the update.

I'm glad to see you're back up and running and at your usual speeds.

Feel free to let us know if you need any further assistance.