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

[#1]

Is there any equipment bonded to this copper pipe near the WC. If this is a poor joint, it could be acting as a "rusty bolt", and acts as a non-linear connection, and causing intermodulation of some  powerful RF signals from nearby transmitters - and the resultant signal at 790kHz.
As the sparky to check it when he visist to replace the consumer unit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_bolt_effect

[#2]

I guess that's possible, but I'll leave this for sparky to check on Wednesday, as you said - interesting "rusty bolt" link, as well. There is an earth cable that's bonded to the mains water pipe near the WC but that's apparently not connected to anything (as this was disconnected by EDF when they removed the Economy7 meter). At least we'll be able to eliminate the mains wiring from the list of potential culprits after Wednesday.
Still waiting for PN support to advise of next steps - hopefully BT will be doing the lift and shift, but it's gone awfully quiet on the support front...

[#3]

Quote from: Catweazle

but it's gone awfully quiet on the support front...

They've had all morning, I'd chase them pretty soon. 

[#4]

Just phoned PN support and they've requested a "clear rejected" and passed this back to the relevant team.

Quote from: HPsauce

Unless advised otherwise by PN/BT if you see a situation where the speed is stupidly low (below 1 meg say) but the SNRM is high (over 15 say) and has been that way for a while (5 mins maybe) I'd resync to get a better speed.

Well, PN have (many weeks ago) asked me to keep the router connected 24x7, but I have rebooted the router very occasionally when the sync rate seems to have stuck in the doldrums. Not getting much guidance from PN recently, so I'll give your advice a go and see what happens.

[#5]

Quote from: Catweazle

they've requested a "clear rejected"

Whatever that means.
Do they know what BT will do next? They do have a list to work through now......

[#6]

Who knows? I guess it will mean something to whoever receives this request, but it looks very much like the fault had been rejected by BT and no-one was doing anything about it.
Perhaps @orbrey can find out what's going on?
And then maybe BT can get back to the list...

[#7]

That's pretty normal.
A "clear reject" merely means that we've passed the case back to BT and the fault hasn't been fixed.
I've asked CSC to chase with BT.

[#8]

Thanks, James - just seen the support ticket update.

[#9]

Sync rate was still dismal when I returned home yesterday evening (only 224kbps), so I tried rebooting the router at 17:19 - unfortunately, the router couldn't reconnect until 22:19 i.e. it was off-line for 5 hours. I tried various ways to encourage a reconnection, as shown below :-
17:19 checked line speed - still 224kbps and SNRM=14.6Db
17:26 rebooted router (Netgear DG834) due to abysmal sync rate - router tried to reconnect for several minutes
17:40 switched router off at mains as could not connect to ADSL
17:44 switched router on again
18:16 swapped Netgear router with Draytek 2600G as still could not connect to ADSL
18:27 rebooted pc as still no connection
18:35 replaced Draytek router with Netgear as still no connection
18:51 rebooted Netgear router again as still no connection
19:00 reported problem to Plusnet by telephone. Left router to continue trying to reconnect
22:19 router finally managed to connect to ADSL - sync rate is now 160Db and SNRM is 15.9Db
23:02 SNRM increased to 31.1Db
Graphs attached for info - hopefully these, and the connection issues described above , will give PN and BT some more clues as to what's going on.

[#10]

A BT engineer turned up at my house this afternoon expecting to gain access to the master socket; unfortunately, there seemed to have been a mix-up somewhere and the instruction to "do a lift&shift at the exchange" had somehow been translated into "go and check the wiring in the customer's house". As I had not been informed of the visit (BT's fault, not PN's) I was at work - luckily, the engineer had my mobile number and we were able to agree a compromise i.e. he'd check the phone line where it enters my house (through a 6x6cm white junction box). This time, the engineer found that the ADSL line speed was less than 2000kbps, so he decided to test the speed at the pillar (or SCP) at the end of the road - the line speed here was around 6000kbps. He then traced the line back up the road and found that the speed dropped to 2000kbps about half-way down the road, so it now looks very much like we have a faulty underground cable or connection (all houses are served by overhead cables, but the cables to the SCP run underground).
So, good old-fashioned detective work identified the likely cause of the problem - like I said in a previous post, I really do think BT engineers place too much reliance on their laptop test gear, when just looking beyond the end of their noses (or the master sockets!) might yield a faster result.
The next problem, I guess, will be persuading BT to dig up someone else's garden in order to gain access to the underground cable. I suspect that this saga may have some way to run before we find a resolution, but I'm hoping PN can put significant pressure on BT to resolve this quickly as I really have been messed about big time. To take almost 8 months to find that the fault is likely to be in an underground cable about 50m from my front door just beggars belief...

[#11]

Well that is progress - great.
I don't think they need to dig up - as cables are pulled through ducts. If you walk up the road you should see covers with either BT or the old PO ones ?.
Still doesn't quite explain that noise though - but hopefully that isn't relevant.
good luck
Mal

[#12]

Thanks, Mal - the engineer suggested that the garden excavations would be necessary but I thought that sounded a bit drastic! I'll look for the duct access covers when it gets light tomorrow.

[#13]

Quote from: mal0z

Well that is progress - great. I don't think they need to dig up - as cables are pulled through ducts. If you walk up the road you should see covers with either BT or the old PO ones ?. Still doesn't quite explain that noise though - but hopefully that isn't relevant.

I had had a speed problem, so on my walk into town (which takes me past the Telephone exchange) I had a look at all the covers
I got (AFAIK) GPO, Post Office Telephones, BT (several varieties) and an NTL (but that one must be cable).
I also noticed that underneath every Telegraph pole is a miniature man-hole cover...

[#14]

@Catweazle  - well the BT guy will know the local best I suppose. It depends on the age of your property, whether the line was put in when it was built or added later etc etc. So no point me speculating. And this thread is so long now  ;), that I can't remember every detail. 
@Axis -
or Mercury, Cable & Wireless etc - & Racal took over the British Rail telecomm network and they got involved too - they've all had a go at competing with BT.
For Cable you'll find ever more names - as iitially the government issued licenses on a regional bases and over the years they merged, and all we seem to have now is Virgin Media ( ex NTL, ex Telewest , and a few others ) Not sure about Hull - as they have always been independant of BT - with Kingston Telecom. Company I worked for installed a lot of their systems, although I wasn't involve personally - but heard about them in sales and marketing comferences.
.

[#15]

I just know that your next report will be that BT started excavating, but accidentally chopped through the cables, and now you have a perfectly steady sync of 0kbps.  
But otherwise it's pretty good news that it was faulty at the time they turned up, and helped them to track it down. I think it's taken 8 months simply because the fault has changed from occasional to almost-guaranteed over that time.
I also know what you mean about the engineers. Back when ADSL was being trialled, the engineers were perfectly willing to talk about what was going on on their end, and listen to you about what was going on at your end - and believe that maybe, just maybe, you knew a bit of what you were talking about. Nowadays, it seems much less so.
I guess its all a symptom of going mass-market. The average understanding of the customer base has gone down, so they've learnt to listen to the people less, and rely on the test tools more. But if they can't stay on-site for more than 2 hours, then maybe what they need is their own version of a router that can do data-logging on the line, and they leave that with you for a while.
Mike