Unlimited Fibre Extra Guarenteed 39.8Mb but only getting 5.2Mb

[#1]

Is it possible for PN or myself to submit a formal complaint to your suppliers at this point? Would that even help getting some sort of answer?

We can't raise a complaint as such, but we can raise an escalation to BTW. With that said, I don't believe it'll help as it'll basically be seen by the level of support advisers we've already been through.

At the moment, this case is being dealt with by a Team Manager and whilst it's not via the official process of an escalation they are updating us regularly by email.

Yesterday I sent a proforma to the Openreach Fibre Availability Team to try to get this looked at on two fronts. The standard lead time for a response is 7 working days so I'll let you know when we get a response.

With regards to yourself, I don't think you can raise a complaint with BTW, but digging into the Openreach website you can raise a query here: https://www.formwize.com/run/survey3.cfm?idx=505d040e0b080d

That link is basically a similar form to what I've filled out above but from an ISP perspective.

I really don't want more hassle but this is based mostly on the fact they can't even provide a very rough estimate as to when the fault will be investigated / fixed. If they just told us everything will be as it should in 1, 2 or 3 weeks then at least we would know how long we're pretty much offline.

Fingers crossed we get more of an idea when Openreach comes back to us.

If you can include the following points to them;

•  I'm guaranteed 39.8Mb on FTTC but only now getting just over 4Mb (was 5.2Mb, and never been more than around 8 or 9Mb). This has been an issue since we had the FTTC installed 7 months ago.
• BT (BTW? or Openreach?) tell us they are "unable" to provide even an estimated date when this fault will be fixed, as it's a "third party" involved with work at the cabinet / exchange / overhead lines.
• They have told us they have "decomissioned" FTTC in the cabinet and put me on ADSL and have done this without  ***ANY*** prior notice to myself.
• The first engineer who visited us told me the fault was "definitely" down to us being physically wired to a cabinet 2 miles away and we "simply" needed wired to Cabinet 15 which is next to us. He seemed certain this was the issue after he checked himself, yet BTW came back to say their "records" show we are actually connected to Cabinet 15. I strongly suspect their "records" might be wrong and would ask them if they have actually ever checked.....

I'll happily pass this over to BTW. I'll let you know when we get a response.

[#2]

Thanks Gandalf, I really appreciate your fast and thorough responses.

I'm not annoyed with PN at all, as I can see this whole issue lies in the BTW side of things. I've done a lot of Googling and it's clear this lack of help from BTW applies to every other ISP who relies on their network.

Just look forward to the day I can click the 'This fixed my problem' button 

[#3]

No problems, let us know if you go ahead with filling out the form above and keep us posted.

Just look forward to the day I can click the 'This fixed my problem' button 

That'll be a glorious day. I'll order the champagne in anticipation.

[#4]

 

I'm slower than 92% of GB now 

Also says my ISP is now BT, although it does often say that.

It seems to be fluctuating a lot so I'm guessing it's the capacity of ADSL if all the houses around here are on it now. 

[#5]

It looks like it’s gotten worse I’ll see if I can chase this up and find out some answers when I’m next back in on Friday.

[#6]

It's back up nearer 5Mb now after I rebooted the Hub One (full power off for a few seconds, rather than just pressing the reset button). Also checked the router stats after rebooting and it still reports the following;

6. Data rate:	1189 / 6923
7. Maximum data rate:	1189 / 6491
8. Noise margin:	5.9 / 4.8
9. Line attenuation:	17.2 / 35.7
10. Signal attenuation:	17.2 / 25.1

23. Modulation:

G.993.2 Annex B

[#7]

Just to update the thread for those who are following.. still nothing back from BTW or Openreach, even the relatively simple questions we have asked.

Gandalf says we will hopefully hear back within the next few days, so fingers crossed.

If there was an alternative to BT / Plusnet I would have jumped ship a long time ago. Unfortunately BT is the only network where I live and 4G is out of the question.

[#8]

Since my last update on the ticket, we've got a bit more info back but before I relay it over here I'd like a bit of time to digest and ask a few more questions. I'll post back here by the start of next week.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

[#9]

You have my almost sympathy

Sorry for gate crashing your thred

[#10]

Hi Gandalf

I really appreciate that you're following this through all the way. You will be glad when you see the back of it all!

We've had to reconnect to broadband a few times recently as the speeds have dropped really low. Thankfully they go back up to around 5Mb when it reconnects. I'm hoping against hope that this is due to them working on the fault.

 

[#11]

Hopefully hear back from your suppliers today.

Internet almost unusable in the last few days, unable to reliably stream anything. Kids all "bored" with the fact there's nothing else do do when the weather is so bad.

Wish I could do something more than just refreshing email and forum for any news back..... 

[#12]

To answer your questions above. (The bits in italics are a copy and paste)

I'm guaranteed 39.8Mb on FTTC but only now getting just over 4Mb (was 5.2Mb, and never been more than around 8 or 9Mb). This has been an issue since we had the FTTC installed 7 months ago.

Our suppliers have checked the estimated speed range in the Openreach systems which is showing as between 3.27mbps and 4.03mbps, so it looks like the DSL Checker may have not been up-to-date.

BT (BTW? or Openreach?) tell us they are "unable" to provide even an estimated date when this fault will be fixed, as it's a "third party" involved with work at the cabinet / exchange / overhead lines.

As of the 7th November:

The issue is with Open reach and this has been passed to third party contractors as per their latest update the fibre can be given at this exchange now , However when I did the test I can see that speed is showing as 6.6/ 1.2

They have told us they have "decommissioned" FTTC in the cabinet and put me on ADSL and have done this without  ***ANY*** prior notice to myself.

When the maintenance work commenced this was done as precaution to not to completely loose the services.

The first engineer who visited us told me the fault was "definitely" down to us being physically wired to a cabinet 2 miles away and we "simply" needed wired to Cabinet 15 which is next to us. He seemed certain this was the issue after he checked himself, yet BTW came back to say their "records" show we are actually connected to Cabinet 15. I strongly suspect their "records" might be wrong and would ask them if they have actually ever checked.....

When engineer was out for this task he has found that there is issue with the exchange and he has updated the records that is the reason when we checked later we got the cabinet as 15 instead of 4.

Circuit line length for cabinet 15 is showing as 5170 meters which will again give low speed ,

When I check the DN in open reach portal I can see that it is showing that, FTTC (VDSL) Availability: N.

Speed limits are showing as Top Downstream Bandwidth: 49Mbit/s

Top Upstream Bandwidth: 14.22Mbit/s 

The above responses we received on the 7th. Since then, on the 9th and 10th, we've been advised that the maintenance work is a Live to Live migration to cabinet 15 which *should* complete by the end of November.

When that's done, Openreach have advised BTW that the speed problem will be resolved.

With regards to the circuit line length for cabinet 15 at 5170m, we'd expect that to be updated when the L2L migration is complete and records updated at www.dslchecker.bt.com

Fingers crossed December brings some good news.

[#13]

Hi Gandalf

I just wrote a huge big reply, adding more questions (roughly regarding how I've never been on ADSL according to the router, and the fact that the line measurement is nearer that to Cabinet 4, which is what the first engineer told us)...... but...... I'll bite my tongue and just leave it at rest for the start of December 

If we end up with the speeds they've suggested, which are better than the first estimates we were given on the Plusnet website, I'd be really happy 

Thanks again for following this through and for all your efforts towards it being concluded.

[#14]

No problems at all.
Fingers crossed this resolved in time for Christmas.

[#15]

Sigh....... as it's (almost) the end of November I thought we were about to see an end to all months of problems...

We came home tonight (roughly 8pm) to find the router was flashing orange. I hoped against all hope that this might have been because they finally switched our line back onto FTTC (or back onto the correct cabinet, I get confused what's actually been done now!!).

Rebooted the router and it appeared to work okay, however only for a few minutes though, then back to flashing orange. Decided to power it off until the kids finally settled, possibly to choose a new gateway (?)... now it's blue again but the speed it soooooo slow, and router still only syncing at 1181 / 6050.

Here's the BT line test result, this is with connection by Ethernet to my works laptop which is fairly clean of apps and definitely no other devices using any data at all as I temporarily turned off wi-fi whilst I was looking at the router stats page;

I'm going to do the further tests using the speedtest@speedtest_domain and will report back if I get reconnected!

Can you please run tests at your end and possibly check if something has happened with the transfer back to FTTC?