Unresolved support ticket open for more than six months - is this a record?

[#1]

Hi Catweazle,
Glad to hear that things are moving on, please give one of us a nudge if things seem to get bogged down again and we'll give the fault a kick for you.

[#2]

Thanks for that - PN support have just advised me that BT have decided to try a tie-pair modification, and this is expected to be completed within three working days. Will report back when I have more info.

[#3]

So is the 'lift & shift' still happening as well?

[#4]

Quote from: Catweazle

Thanks for that - PN support have just advised me that BT have decided to try a tie-pair modification, and this is expected to be completed within three working days. Will report back when I have more info.

Have you been asked to pay money for any of this BT time?
(e.g. £144 + VAT)

[#5]

Quote from: Anotherone

So is the 'lift & shift' still happening as well?

No, not yet - PN support said on Friday that the fault had been passed to BT's Element Management Team for further analysis i.e. they would decide whether a tie-pair modification or a lift and shift would be necessary. I had a further update yesterday to confirm that the tie-pair modification was the chosen course of action, so I guess the lift and shift is still an option if the TPM doesn't work.

Quote from: The

[Have you been asked to pay money for any of this BT time? (e.g. £144 + VAT)

No, there's never been any suggestion that I should pay for any of this work, apart from the standard warning from PN (when I raised the support ticket) that I may be charged should no fault be apparent within the BT infrastructure. One of the BT engineers suggested that the actual cost to the ISP was closer to £200 per visit.

[#6]

PN shouldn't end up paying anything once it's proven to be BT's crappy stuff causing the problem!

[#7]

Quote from: Catweazle

The latest BT engineer was much better-informed than the last few, but that's probably because he's a trainer from one of the regional centres. He even knew about Routerstats and DMT Tools, so we were at least able to have a proper discussion about the performance issues and he seemed genuinely interested in solving the problem.

Did this guy have much opinion about why there's such a difference between your two DMT graphs - and why your intereference covers such a broad band?
Mike

[#8]

No, he just commented that it was unusual but offered no explanation.
PN support confirmed that BT have done the tie-pair mod, and my router stats suggest this was done about 11am today. Sync rate has improved to 4128kbps, but actual throughput is still low (around 1200kbps) - I'll monitor this over the next couple of days to see if it improves. I checked the speed using the BT speed tester and Mybroadbandspeed.co.uk. In the meantime, I've attached some DMT snapshots from before (05:45 am) and after (18:15) the tie-pair mod was done. I've also attached a screenshot of the Routerstats tone graph (as at 18:15 this evening).

[#9]

Quote from: Catweazle

Sync rate has improved to 4128kbps

That's still low, even with 9dB......

[#10]

Yes, but I'm still hoping it will get better...
It probably won't help much, but I've attached a couple more pics - one of the Primary Connection Point cabinet (which is in the next road, about 200m from my house) plus a curious little pillar (50-60cm tall) that I've called a "mini PCP" - this is located at the end of my road (about mid-way between here and the PCP). I've mentioned this in passing in a previous post (or possibly in the support ticket), so I thought I'd include this as well as I've photographed just about everything else on the telephone line route.
The "mini PCP" (or perhaps it's a Secondary Connection Point? Just guessing...) did have a fault just after I moved in to this house (July 2007) i.e. a BT engineer traced a voice fault to a poor connection - this was resolved and the broadband performance remained at around 3000kbps download speed until June last year. I've always been a bit suspicious that this might be causing the more recent problems but the BT engineers have always been dismissive of this idea.
I've also just noticed that Routerstats recorded an interesting "blip" at 18:29 this evening and the sync rate dropped to 2304kbps - two Routerstats graphs are also attached.

[#11]

That's very bad.
What do the DMT graphs look like?

[#12]

Not so good...

[#13]

This is beyond a joke!

[#14]

Too right! How about this Routerstats noise margin graph - never seen this before...

[#15]

Looks like a job for a serious REIN specialist!