Intermittent disconnects

[#1]

OK I've booked engineer #7 for 12/06/2019 between 1pm and 6pm. I've also emailed the Openreach escalation team requesting that they ensure that the engineer carries out all quality gates and noting that engineer (#5 I think) identified errors when the phone rings.

Based on when the engineer closed the job and when the drop in connection we're seeing just before 11am, I'd imagine this was the engineer testing the line from the cabinet.

I'd say (again) fingers crossed this goes well!

[#2]

Engineer groundhog day continues! Engineer #7 arrived this afternoon but, despite the supposed escalation of our case, he had not been briefed on the history of our problems and did not appear to have any greater expertise than that of his predecessors. He ran all the same tests (multiple times) and, of course, detected no faults.

We told him about the intermittent interaction with the phone which occurred again this morning when I phoned home around 10.30am. The line was extremely crackly when my husband picked up and the router went orange, indicating a drop in the line. But, alas, despite multiple attempts at phoning in, we could not get it to reproduce the fault this afternoon.

So, two hours later, engineer #7 left defeated and we’re no further on than before. It would appear that the escalation process is not working. There’s no point in engineers coming and repeating the tests that have already failed to detect the source of our problem. Where on earth do we go from here?

[#3]

Oh, forgot to ask in my previous post whether you have run any more GEA tests at your end. It seems odd that you have been able to detect a potential HR fault but the engineers have not.

[#4]

This is really disappointing to see. 

I've rang the Openreach support team and discussed this with an adviser, unfortunately it looks like we simply need to arrange another engineer as there is very little they can do remotely for a fibre circuit.

However I've emailed the Openreach management escalation team and I'll let you know when I've got a response. I do sadly suspect we'll need to arrange engineer #8. 

[#5]

I don't think there is any point in another engineer visit unless there is a guarantee that the next engineer will come with additional testing capabilities and expertise in the diagnosis of intermittent broadband faults. If Openreach can't guarantee that level of service, I fear we may have to wait until our problems get sufficiently worse that there's a greater chance of detection. I'll continue keeping a log of the disconnects and will note any re-occurrences of phone interference.

BTW although we notionally have a fibre circuit, the 800m between the cabinet where the internet arrives in the village and our house is still copper and we strongly suspect that the fault lies somewhere in that 800m. Testing done by engineer #5 at the cabinet led him to this conclusion also but he ran out of time/expertise to pursue it further.

[#6]

Thanks for getting back to us.

I've escalated this further within Openreach by emailing the operations manager.

I'm out of the office tomorrow so I'll follow up Friday however feel free to keep me posted

[#7]

Engineer #7 who was here on Wednesday appears to have disconnected our telephone extension lines when he was rooting about in our master socket. We did not ask him to do this and he did not tell us he was doing it so I suspect it was a mistake on his part. Please can you arrange for someone to come and fix it.

[#8]

Sorry to see the engineer disconnected your extension wiring, I've raised a complaint with Openreach regarding this and I'd expect a response within the next 5 working days. 

In the meantime I've chased your fault up with the operations manager of the escalations team and I'll let you know when I've got a response back.

[#9]

Yesterday, I responded to your message in ticket #189394230 with some further details and, as requested, plugged a corded phone and router into the test socket.

This morning, on checking the router logs, I found that we had an internet dropout at 02:58 in the morning.

So it would seem that neither the corded phone nor the extensions are the root cause of our intermittent disconnects.

What next?

 

[#10]

Hi @aeneareid,

We have receive information from the Openreach complaint handler and I have retested the line then updated the ticket with both updates. The drops you have seen match what our radius logs show and I'm afraid no external fault is being detected. I can see that @Gandalf is personally monitoring and progressing the issue for you, so I have sent him an email with my findings awaiting his return to office tomorrow.

Thank you.

[#11]

I would have added the following info to open ticket #189394230 but, not only is the ticket not showing the text of the message I received by email this afternoon from Lewis, it is not giving me the option to add any information to the ticket. Is there a problem with the ticketing system or just my ticket?

So here's what I was going to say there . . .

This afternoon, an OpenReach engineer (engineer #8 who happened to be the same person as engineer #3) came to fix the phone extensions. While he was here he took the opportunity to check the broadband again and this time he did find an HR fault (hurrah!). He traced fault to a junction box at the foot of our lane. He opened up the box and repaired what appeared to be a corroded connection. Now we wait to see whether that has fixed our dropouts.

But interestingly, when he opened up the box he discovered that the last section of wire from the box up to our house is not copper but is aluminium which, apparently, is known to suffer from corrosion. If we do continue to have drop outs, then my guess is that the problem(s) lie within this section of wiring

Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): CSA name(s) removed (to an area staff can see) as per Forum rules.

[#12]

I just wanted to post back ahead of my return to the office tomorrow to say that I'm really glad to see the engineer who went out to fix your extensions managed to locate a high resistance fault on the line 

Hopefully the repair they've done in the junction box resolves the issues as from experience it may be difficult to get the aluminium line replaced with copper although it may depend on how long the aluminium part is etc.

Out of interest do you have an overhead drop wire from your property or is it all underground?

I'll also look into the troubles you're having with the ticket tomorrow.

[#13]

Thanks, Gandalf. Fingers crossed that today's repair cures our problems.

I think the length of cable from the junction box to our house is about 40m. It goes through another junction half way up the lane, where a spur goes off to another neighbour. Unfortunately this junction is underground so not so easily inspected as the one at the end of the lane. [Thanks to today's engineer for this information.]

All the cable is underground, nothing overhead.

[#14]

I would have added the following info to open ticket #189394230 but, not only is the ticket not showing the text of the message I received by email this afternoon from Lewis, it is not giving me the option to add any information to the ticket. Is there a problem with the ticketing system or just my ticket?

It looks like Lewis' reply contained some bad HTML and it kind of broke the ticket. We can't take any action on it from this side either. I've raised a task with our database analyst(DBA) team to see if they can do anything from the back end.

It may be quicker to try this though. After you've logged in to your account could you click on this link: https://www.plus.net/wizard/?p=close_question&id=189394230 which will close the ticket. While this will close the complaint we've marked on the ticket, I'll then open a new complaint/ticket for you referencing the old one.

I think the length of cable from the junction box to our house is about 40m. It goes through another junction half way up the lane, where a spur goes off to another neighbour. Unfortunately this junction is underground so not so easily inspected as the one at the end of the lane. [Thanks to today's engineer for this information.]

Thanks for the information, I've also asked Openreach for any engineer notes.

All the cable is underground, nothing overhead.

Ah. That makes a little difficult if they're unable to access the underground cables without dig work.

[#15]

OK, I have closed the ticket as you suggest. Please open a new one for me now.

Regarding tickets, I find it really annoying that one can only view closed tickets for a week after they have been closed. It used to be possible to access all old tickets which can be helpful for reference. Is there any way for older tickets to be viewed?

There have been no line dropouts since the engineer left yesterday but it's too soon to know if that is significant. It has been a recurring pattern that we get a couple of days uninterrupted service after an engineer has visited and tested, before the dropouts start happening again.