Tag: BT Openreach

Waiting for (BT) Infinity – an update

I mentioned in my last post about my partner’s Mother moving home this week, and how it looks like BT have missed an opportunity to give a seamless transition of her VDSL service.

The new house was only around the corner from the old one, so should be on the same exchange, and maybe even on the same DSLAM and cabinet. It had previously had VDSL service, judging from the master socket faceplate.

20140624_103830

Was the jumpering in the cab over to the DSLAM still set up? Well, we dug out the old BT VDSL modem and HomeHub 3, and set those up.

Guess what…

20140626_144809The VDSL modem successfully trained up. The line is still connected to the VDSL DSLAM.

However, it’s failing authentication – a steady red “b“. Therefore it looks like the old gear won’t work on the new line.

But then the new HomeHub 5 they’ve needlessly shipped out won’t work either: we set that up too, and get an orange “b” symbol.

Evidently, something isn’t provisioned somewhere on the backend. Maybe the account credentials have been changed, or the port on the DSLAM isn’t provisioned correctly yet.

Does this look like a missed opportunity to provide a seamless transition, without the need for an engineer visit, or what?

 

When parents-in-law move homes – a tale of being “default” tech support

Sheesh BT.

The MiL has moved. Around the corner from her old house. She had BT Infinity (BT’s Retail FTTC product) at the old house. She ordered the service to be moved. The voice service was activated on the day she moved, but not the Internet access.

The new house has previously had FTTC with the last occupant, it has the FTTC faceplate. One can only assume that the “double jumpering” to the FTTC MSAN is still in place too.

I wouldn’t mind betting that it’s even coming off the same bloody street cab/MSAN.

Can we just take the old Homehub 3 and VDSL modem over and plug those in? Oh no.

BT have sent a new Homehub 5 and scheduled an engineer visit for Friday, 5 days after she’s moved in.

It just feels a bit wrong, and maybe even on the crazy side. In theory this could have been done as a simultaneous provide – i.e. both the voice and the internet service brought up at the same time, and in this case potentially without an engineer visit!

Who knows why it’s not happened. Certainly the MiL wouldn’t have known to ask for a “sim-provide”, but should she have to?

…and you’re not gonna reach my telephone.

Or, when an FTTC install goes bad.

Finally got around to getting FTTC installed to replace my ADSL service which seldom did more than about 3Mb/sec has had it’s fair share of ups and downs in the past. Didn’t want to commit to the 12 month contract term until I knew the owner was willing to extend our lease, but now that’s happened, I ordered the upgrade, sticking with my existing provider, Zen Internet, who I’m actually really happy with (privately held, decent support when you need it, don’t assume you’re a newbie, well run network, etc…).

For the uninitiated, going FTTC requires an engineer to visit your home, and to the cabinet in the street that your line runs through and get busy in a big rats nest of wires. The day of the appointment rolled around, and mid-morning, a van rolls up outside – “Working on behalf of BT Openreach”. “At least they kept the appointment…”, I think to myself

BT doesn’t always send an Openreach employee on these turnups, but they send a third-party contractor, and this was the case for this FTTC turn-up…

Continue reading “…and you’re not gonna reach my telephone.”