BT Openreach Engineers that suck
March 6th, 2007 by Stephen
In the UK, no matter what ISP you use, you pretty much always end up dealing with BT engineers. This is really really bad, because BT Openreach engineers are so variable.
Today we had one of the bad ones. He calloed when I was out of the house, so he thought he would bamboozle my wife with his brilliance. After first refusing to do the actual line test he was sent to do, he told my wife that the reason we can only get a quarter of the ADSL line speed is because of our house wiring.
“But we had our wiring checked by a qualified BT engineer” my wife interjected, but he would have none of it. He told her that we were syncing with the exchange fine from the master test socket.
Well of course. As we had explained, we can always sync at 8Mbps or thereabouts. The problem is that when we use the BT speed test page, using the dedicated speed test account over the BT network to their test server, we get much lower speeds.
His answer to my wife: “People always blame BT openreach, but the problem is the ISPs”.
No Mr BT engineer (DJ), the problem is the BT network. Notice what we had already established:
1. The wiring is fine
2. I used the test socket to test the connection using the BT account. Our ISP network was not part of the equation, and nor was our wiring.
But, of course, the engineer refused to do this test. He merely tested the sync speed, and surprise surprise got the same results as us.
Why did we even have an engineer here when a previous engineer had already been out and tested everything successfully? Because we had the temerity to ask when BT would fix the Aberystwyth Exchange. This exchange has been underperforming for months, and every time BTs deadline to fix it comes up, they just extend the deadline. Thus our ISP wanted to know when the work was *really* going to be carried out. BTs answer was to send us an engineer that we did not need, did not want to come and tell us a load of rubbish.
Some more choice nonsense from this engineer. He said that we could not get faster speeds because we are using USB modems. “No we are not”, replied my wife. “We have a router – a BT router at that”.
Oh, thinks the engineer quickly. Okay, the problem is that you are using wireless. This slows everything right down. (although actually when I run tests I do not use wireless). He asked: “What speed wireless. Is this 100K or 54K”.
“It is IEEE 802.11g” my wife replied. (She hears me speak about it often enough that she knows the numbers).
“Yes, but is that 54K g or 100K g?” Replies the engineer, implying my wife is stupid for not knowing.
Now for anyone that does not know, IEEE 802.11g runs at 54Mbps (although allowing for protocol overhead, you probably only achieve 30Mbps, which is still much faster than the ADSL line). The 100Mbps standard (not 100K) is IEE 802.11n, and the slower standard that I think he must have alluded to is IEEE 802.11b.
802.11b is the 11Mbps standard, which with protocol overhead would likely achieve less than the ADSL’s 8Mbps (especially if signal reception is poor). But my wife had answered correctly. We were not using wireless that would slow down the network path (except perhaps for some initial latency which is more or less unnoticeable).
So having betrayed his enormous ignorance, he decides to do so once again.
“You probably do not have computers capable of running at 8Mbps. You need dual core for that”.
I am flabbergasted. How, for instance, do we explain the fact that we had 10Mbps ethernet connections which actually *achieved* that speed at least as far back as 1997 on consumer devices (before that, often network cards could not actually manage the full 10Mbps, even though the networks could).
How do we explain that we regularly achieve 100Mbps over the house ethernet? (perhaps he did not spot our ethernet!)
And worst of all, how dare he insult my computers. We have at least 10 computers in the house, and two of them have dual core technology.
This is the worst kind of buck passing ignorance that I have heard since… since…
Oh, since this debacle with BT.
Just to be fair – the previous BT engineer we had out was excellent. He seemed to know his stuff, and he actually carried out the tests he was sent to do. Not everyone at BT is as bad as DJ. But enough are that it is no wonder broadband takeup in the UK is now languishing.
We have had our own lengthy and frustrating experiences with BT broadband, but the two engineers that we have had contact with have been the most helpful and knowledgeable people we’ve come across.
I’m not a computer professional, but I’m studying for a Masters in Information Management (the fluffy end of IT?!) and I’ve come to the conclusion based on the evidence I’ve seen that BT do not have a Customer Relation Management system. Staff in different sections seem to have no way of passing information about customers between each other. Yesterday we had 3 calls and 1 email from 4 people all unaware that the others were dealing with our problem. It seems extraordinary that a company this size could consider working like this.
Olwen
Thanks for your comments Olwen,
I am sure that not all BT engineers are as bad as DJ, but to have one such engineer in the company is embarrassing enough!
I suspect that BT *do* have a CRM, but either they are not using it correctly, or it has some major deficiencies! Much of the problem is that support is outsourced rather than in-house. I suspect that the CRM (assuming it exists) does not integrate with the outsourced system.
All the best with your masters degree.
I decided to go with BT and phoned them up to book an appointment. I was allocated an appointment on saturday with their engineer from openreach between 8 – 6pm.
I waited in all day and no engineer came.
I phoned sunday and after being on hold for nearly 2 hours I was told I would have to wait for a call from openreach which could take 7 days this was over a week ago and once again – no call. I phoned again today and after 2 hours on hold I was told I just have to wait until open reach call me. I am now fed up and considering going on NTL (or virgin as it’s now called).
This is very frustraiting and I do not like getting fobbed off all the time. It is obvious that this new scheeme is not working and look how much it has cost BT to set this up – let alone how many customers they will loose as a result of their bad customer manner
trev
Sorry to hear about your woes Trev. I don’t know anything about Virgin’s service, but I would be tempted to go with that, as it does not involve BT at all!!
HI JUST A NOTE IM A telcoms Engineer and i find this hard to understand hes right by what he says a line test wont prove anything a line test would just prove you have connection to the exchange just another note ..openreach own the hole network up to your point of entry and it dont matter what service provider you are on it will all travel the same route !!!! (note have a look at the black and white before you take a new service provider it says UP TO 8MEG not you will get it .. it deopend on how far away you are from the exchange) one more thing why dont you call oprenreach ???? all jobs are alocated and logged say you was not happy with the service and trust me it will be looked into!
sorry cant put name
No, the line test would prove something: it would report figures of signal to noise ratio and line attenuation, which would show that the slow speeds are not to do with the wiring.
We dod not *ask* for the test. Indeed we pointed out that we had already has the line tested, that our line was extremely good (we are about 100 metres from the BT exchange) and, indeed, that we receive similarly good results from elsewhere in the house. But you cannot talk to BT. The ISP is the customer, and so openreach keep sending out engineers.
(Actually they have stopped now. They moved our circuit in the exchange eventually and fixed the problem).
Yes, of course the data travels the same route until it reaches the ISPs network. This is the problem. And this is why it is not acceptable that the ISPs are blamed by openreach engineers for poor performance. Sometimes it is (Pipex/Tiscali for instance are constantly terrible), but sometimes it is the BT network – particularly in underperforming exchanges (as the Aberystwyth exchange was underperfroming when I wrote this).
Yes, I know the bit about “up to 8MB”, but as we are – as I mentioned – 100 metres away from the exchange with an excellent connection, it is a bit disconcerting when you cannot manage more the 500Kb/s (with a good ISP) or about 30Kb/s with a bad one.
That’s what I would call sub optimal.
Why don’t I call openreach? I did. Many a time. They would not talk to me.
You see, the ISP is the customer, not me. I am not allowed to talk to openreach. We couldn’t even comment on the jobs – it all goes through the ISP.
BT communications? It is an oxymoron.
Thanks for taking the time to defend openreach – but I remain thoroghly unconvinced.
“…your call IS important to us…” yeah right!
I don’t profess to understand the above technical problems, all I want is a simple itsy bitsy teeny weeny BT landline so I can have Sky installed. Anyone would think it was rocket science the amount of time it has taken to actually get through to place the order (approx 4 hours waiting over 5 phone calls eventually to be sent into telephone orbit!). And then what? I eventually get through to the right department and can the person who has processed my order, taken my bank details for direct debit instruction, kept me on the phone for 45 minutes, make a simple appointment for the Openreach engineer to come out and do their job? Hell no! There is a ‘system error’.
I may or I may not get a call in the next five days (make that five working days so it’s going to be seven days) giving me an appointment. Supposing I do get a call with an appointment then I have another 14 days wait as that seems to be the earliest they quoted to get someone to do the work!
I have now lost the will to live! :/
Pressure to come bac to BT is almost irresistable.
What Happens between the nice rep. and the oopenreach engineers ?
The promise does just not happen.
Give me my old provider any day , you could actually talk to them.
Can you revert back—- No. BT discontinue their service quickly enough.
Noone says about the interim period.
Frustrated
SW – I feel your pain. Now 37 days since we placed an order to have a line installed, still nothing from BT.
We did manage to get a hold of a really good Openreach engineer who has been excellent in trying to track down our order and what’s happened to it. They have nothing so they can’t really do anything, BT say it’s Openreach problems. Someone is telling fibs. However, the nice openreach man keeps us up to date on all the other houses in the area who are getting their lines put in, but he’s still mystified as to why BT are not giving them our order.
Summary BT = BAD, Openreach = Good! Least that’s my experience.
The end is in sight (no I’m not going to top myself but the thought has passed through my mind while drifting into a coma waiting for someone to answer the BT phone – hey, maybe they just have one phone that’s why we all have to wait for so long).
Now I don’t want to jinx things so I’ll type this very very quietly… I’ll let you know on Monday whether I have a landline up and running. Yep, that’s right, BT are supposed to coming out between 8am-1pm so watch this space.
BT actually phoned you??!?!? Wow!
You know, I was begining to think that that department wasn’t staffed at all and (like you) there was just one phone there, next to the coffee machine. Whenever someone wanted a coffee they would wander over, start the machine up and answer the phone while they waited for it to pour.
I still remember quite vividly the feeling of utter dispair of sitting in an empty flat on hold for just over 5 hours. When the call was finally answered I got such a shock I could barely talk, thought the woman on the other end was going to hang up on me for being a heavy breather when it was only me suffering a mild heart attack in shock at being answered!
Course, there was the other night when I got in from work and decided that I was going to try calling them again. This time it was from a mobile phone so it was costing me an arm and a leg. 2 hours on hold only to hear the faint click on the other end followed by “we’re sorry, this help desk is now closed”.
Some choice words were said that night I can tell you!
You should have a “I’m finally connected!” party if everything goes well!
Good luck
I was searching for Openreach BT problems.
BT Openreach have just billed me £190 for two visits and they did not even find the problem. They are not supposed to charge unless they find a fault in the house.
Beware, be careful when dealing with Openreach.
Will I pay for bad service and threatening behaviour?
No
ooops sorry folks, didn’t let you know what happened on the 4th. HALLEBLOODYLUJAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I now have a BT line – nice Openreach man, very helpful, took a little while and a £125 bill (which Sky refund so that’s ok!) Just got to sort out Sky now – heyho, life is never simple is it? Good luck to all, I’ll send out good vibes along the phone lines to you all!
if theres nothing worse than computer freaks who think they know how the telecom network is maintained bcos they can hook up a wireless network. how can a whole exchange be broken and underperforming you retard? Its the old copper wiring (and in some cases ali) which is making all of hyour net connections suffer. Ali cables corrode and go faulty over time and only recently have they realised this as they tried to save money when they were initially used in the network. As for people being charged, openreaches policy is if we arrive on site and the phone is working fine we have to charge. If there is no fault from the master socket how do u expect us to fault find. yes the fault could be hr or intermitent but thts for u too sort out with ur SP. And internal wiring does cause faults on the majority of faults i am on. For instance ppl piggybacking extension backwards etc, voice will sometimes work ok on these circuits but not data. And at the end of the day its all about the money the reason we get made to charge more these days is because we are not BT any more and therefor dont hafve BT to pay for our wages/vans/tools etc. and you know why?because offcom said we monopolysd the market making us rent our lineplant to other smaller SP’s. So if you miss tht Bt eng who used to come out for free and do everything for free, hes long gone. You can blame the likes of talk talk car phone wafe house etc. All The new recruites are being forced to charge. So if ur lucky the older guys will b more inclined to let u off for charges but then again would they want to get sacked for you?
Jim Boyes
My problems with BT and Openreach were in August.
Today, I received an email for the, Y Safle, website and read the comments about BT and Openreach.
It is obvious that BT customers and Openreach Engineers are having problems. I would suggest the best way forward is not to make the matter worse as this will not solve any problems.
On this website a read comments from a BT engineer, who I assume is an Openreach Engineer. His comments will do nothing to improve customer relations, indeed if new recruits are being forced to charge customers then Openreach should change their policy on this matter.
My problem with BT was mainly created by bad customer relations with Openreach. Most of BT customers do not understand the technical talk, so it is important to establish good communications with a BT customer. An Openreach engineer should have the ability to explain that some faults are not found, particulary intermittent faults, which can be difficult to locate.
However, In my case I was charged twice for the same fault. (£240 approx.)
I felt that this was particulary unfair, as the visit the previous day, did not find a fault. The first Openreach engineer had recently started the job and was inexperienced and should not have been sent on such a difficult problem. As soon as he went through the door I lost my broadband connection and telephoned BT. So the second visit the next day was a repeat call. Openreach charge per call and always insist that the call is completed on the visit to the home.
Surely, if no fault was found then Openreach should not charge for the call in the first place.
The second visit did not resolve the problem and I am still in dispute with BT about this matter. If I was told that the fault could not be found by an engineer, this would have saved me and BT a lot of trouble.
In the future, I will have to think twice before calling out Openreach, as I could be charged per call again.
I assume Openreach realise that this will discourage BT customers contacting them for faults. I must ask, is this good customer relations, or just a way of avioding faults that Openreach cannot solve? I am sorry to say moving ISP will not solve the problem as Openreach are still responsible for the BT telephone lines.
There is something much worse – it is BT Openreach engineers who think by virtue of the fact that they have been given a position with the company, that this suddenly gives them more knowledge about data communication networks than the network professionals.
This comment of yours is not going to help the public profile of your company. I was careful to say in the original article that some engineers are excellent and others are not. You have just demonstrated this point. Having failed ti understand the issues at hand, you decide to annoy your customers by suggesting you must therefore know more about telecommunications than they do. Problem is – there is always someone who knows more than you do.
To BT train you to call their customers retards?
Now go back and re-read the article. Notice the *link* beside the point where I wrote that the exchange had been underperforming for months. This will indicate to you that some of the virtual paths are not operating within BTs guidelines. The reason for this is because the DSLAMs in the exchange are pretty much full. the purpose of the DSLAM is to multiplex traffic onto an internet backbone. In most cases these DSLAMs are not full, and so contension ratios are lower than the advertised limites, and network contention is reduced. If the DSLAMs are full the higher contension causes the virtual paths to underperform, and data rates fall below the specification for the circuit. Congestion could also occur on the backbone.
Now *think* about what is being said. My article does not say “every user of the Aberystwyth exchange has sub standard service” because there is more than one DSLAM there. What I said was that the exchange had been underperforming for months – which it has. In fact, over a year now – although BT did ease the problem with installation of a new DSLAM a while back.
You see, the article is about underperformance on *my* circuit. The fact that the underperformance lies with BT is *demonstrated* in the article, and the fact that network paths are underperfoming their specified operating criteria is clearly likely to be the culprit (as demonstrated by the improvement to the service following the last exchange upgrade. We have been achieving 7Mbps throughputs for months now).
So before you go on calling your customers retards, could I please suggest that (a) you learn to read the articles, and (b) try to comprehend them.
And again this is the problem with the bad engineers such as the one in the article and yourself. You are too ready to diagnose the problem before you have evaluated the available evidence.
Our wiring is copper, not aluminium. It is also modern – 9 years old. When it was laid I spoke with the engineers doing the work and explained to them that they needed to ensure that copper was used as I would be running data communications networks. The engineer seemed affronted that anyone would even suggest laying aluminium now, but he confirmed that the cables would be copper and took the data comms needs into account.
And no, its not the length of the run either. The exchange is approximately 100 metres from the house, with a new cable run the wole distance.
But of course, if you had even bothered read the article, you would see that it is *not* the cabling. The line tests to the exchange all came back good (as I wrote above), and sync speeds were always above 7Mbps.
But like I say…there is nothing worse than a BT Openreach engineer who thinks that by virtue of his employment, he knows more about data communications than the network professionals.
go Stephen, go Stephen, go Stephen gogogogogogo
hi folks,
my house has 5 pcs on a network.
we are using Tiscali and every night our internet literally cuts on and off and is little more than dial up speed – this is when ONE pc is on.
Downloads: 5-10kb/s (thats if they don’t randomly stop 10% in for no reason!
what actually is going on around here, is it tiscali being shite or bt exchange being too small for the volume of traffic??
Its most likely because your bt exchange is too small for the traffic. Exchange workers have to manually procress your web requests for instance when you type in an url you want to view they have to put it on the barpair in the frame. So the more ppl that want to browse the web the equal amount of men have to be in the exchange. this problem will get better as theyr employing more switch staff from poland and india to help with the conjestion. This is most likely why stephens internet isnt working as well.
How about changing the subject.
My mind was taken off BT for a short time when I tried to use an Asda Car Wash.
It broke a wing mirror clean off.
Now you would think Asda would pay up, well err no, they are dragging their feet. Or should I say that they are a real shower?
sorry about the pun.
Still its a change from complaining about Openreach and Bt.
Oh, bye the way I am about to leave BT and try TalkTalk Free Broadband for £16.39 a month. Another disaster waiting to happen – I wonder?
If you don’t hear from me, (it could be a connection problem with my new ISP?).
Noooo!! Talk talk are terrible! I’d bet money (not much, I’m not that flush) that there’ll be a problem getting the BBand up and running or that it’ll be consistently slow and/or drop out. When you call them, who will they blame? BT. They’ll then tell you to phone BT, who will quite rightly tell you that they can’t help you as you’re not a BT customer and refer you back to talk talk, who will tell you that BT are being obstructive and it’ll go on and on and on. I had mountains of trouble with them. When I eventually cancelled, with their prior consent, they charged me for the remainder of the 18 month contract. Sorting that out was almost as difficult as getting them to take responsibility for their BBand fault.
Have since returned to BT for phone and BBand and everything is working perfectly (well, nobody had really said anything nice about them yet)
That’s interesting Mohammed. I will eagerly watch to see if there is an improvement
I deal with customers like yourselves daily os should i say end users!!
I’m afraid bt need to wake up and smell the coffee because at some point in the future millions will have to be spent on old inadequate failing line plant which is quite frankly keeping me in a job.
I hear from seniour engineers daily that the passion for the job has gone as everything is driven towards making profit instead of the end users being in service.
The majority of 1st and 2nd line managers are YES monkeys,selected for their ability to jump if told to and to be placed under immense pressure to improve job productivity and other rediculous statistical work criteria.
Someting will eventually have to give and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that it’s going to get alot worse before there is any visibe improvement in telecommunications customer service.
I will continue to work for the end user and deliver a service that i would expect myself and can only apologise for the people who think they know it all.
Regards, Ronnie
Well said Ronnie, could’nt have put it better myself. I think I may well be the ‘good’ engineer you refer to Stephen as there are only 3 of us in the Aber area who deal with broadband, DJ (and I know exactly who you mean) myself and another who has a very similar attitude towards customers as DJ. Glad to hear you got it all sorted out in the end, sorry it could’nt have been done sooner.
The whole industry today has changed drastically in my 30 odd years working for the company. It used to be a telephone SERVICE. In my early years I would do the odd bit of shopping for housebound customers who were ill, perhaps the small odd job around the house for an elderly customer. talk to people ho otherwise may not speak to someone else for days. Then Maggie came along, determined to make BT fail. Promoting competition and changing the law (several times) to help BT’s competitors do better. After the first tranche of competition came liberalisation (where you could fit your own extensions and choose your own phones), then more recently LLU (local loop unbundling so other companies could use BT’s line plant from the exchange to your home/office). This has taken the industry further and further away from the customer, you, but now you are no longer a customer, just an end user. Ofcom/Oftel or what ever they will be called next, regulate the industry. They are the people who dictate to BT/Openreach how the industry will be run. BT is not the old ‘one point’ contact, it is now several lines of business, each self sufficient and hands tied by regulation. This means that the different departments of BT can only talk to each other via certain channels and the things they can talk about to each other are limited. Openreach is a stand alone company under the BT umbrella and has to treat all it’s customers as equal. BT, Sky, Talk Talk, Orange, Joe Bloggs telecom etc etc are all treated the same by the terms of our licence, they are our customers not the end user. Openreach does not ake any money from you making phone calls etc, it receives it’s revenue purely from renting and maintaining it’s fibre, copper,and aluminium network for Service providers to get their products to where you need them. As a result when you have problems Openreach come out to repair the network they maintain. If you report a telephone fault, they will prove the line ok from the exchange to the main socket. If the fault is elsewhere then someone will end up paying for the visit and time taken. Openreach bill the service provider who then decide whether to charge the end user (the service provider’s charge to the end user need not bear any resemblance to the charge they pay to Openreach). If the fault that you report is not apparent then Openreach will charge, If the fault that you report is caused by the internal wiring or equipment, Openreach will charge, If the fault that you report is in the service provider’s exchange equipment Openreach will charge. The circumstance of charging is laid down by the regulator and must be shown to be consistent and equal among all service providers and the regulator can and will bring penalties against Openreach when it is proved that the engineers have not acted as they should have.
Openreach engineers know just how bad it has become, BUT, it is not their fault If your Broadband is faulty, report it to your ISP, they will eventually pay for an Openreach engineer to check the line, if you are lucky they will pay Openreach extra to test beyond the first socket. I hope that you are beginning to get the picture, the Openreach engineer only does what he is told to do on the laptop, to vary from that can end up with a discipline case because in doing so he is causing Openreach to be in breach of the terms of it’s regulators.
Been on 35yrs.Arr The good old days when we had the time to be KIND to real human beings and just help in any way we could.Now as OPENREACH we are treated like robots.Saw an old lady fall half in the road in busy traffic, 10 cars in front of me just steered round her.I got so angry i blocked the road with my robot van.As i ran to help cars all tooting. my manager aged 19yrs rang why only 2 faults cleared 11am.I told him at the moment there,s not many humans left.
Not the greatest service re. your broadband problem stephen and you sound like you know more about broadband speeds and internet connection than most including myself. The one thing i would like to say is that openreach act on whatever the s..p say so if they report a problem to openreach and allocate an appointment they will send an engineer they have to request a broadband eng visit which they must have done it, seams to me that the line test the first engineer did proved the line was good quality and should support the speeds that you were expecting so there should never have been a request for second visit. The lines and exchange equiptment including tie pairs in the exchange to the dslam are owned and maintained by openreach however the dslam themselves are still owned and maintained by the different service providers and these cannot be changed unless given new equiptment by your service provider which after the first engineer tested your line and returned his tests and findings then the next step would/should in my opinion have been an equiptment change and your problem may have been sorted a bit quicker then you would never have had to meet the next engineer. i feel that the problem was more one of comunication which i can promise can be a cause of frustration whichever side of the fence you are from. service provider end user or openreach engineer
Hi Stephan glad to hear the problem seems to be sorted, just out of interest I had a chat with a openreach precision test engineer once who told me (in depth over diagrams which I cannot remember much from as it went in 1 ear and out the other) that you can suffer slower broadband speeds and other problems from being to close to an exchange.
Now I know that might sound odd but the guy knows more about exchange equiptment and the BT network than Amy Winehouse knows how to party so it might be worth a look into.
Regards
Hey all,
I work for a Telecomms co whom use Openreach on a regular basis ** We buy lines etc off them and use them to maintain faults etc**
And I dare say i agree that some of the BTO engineers are good however a magority are nothing but ignorant because they get paid even if a job is incomplete. And in my area of field it is REDICULOUS that the BTO engineers slack so much and also the fact that the SMC hire nothing but kids to run the ops is even more stupid.
However, although i can rant and rave all the time about it, the truth is it ius a matter of luck to whether you get a good engineer or otherwise.
sorry if you think im being negative, but im speaking from experience.
Hi all,
I have to say I am sorry to customers who have a bad experience. It boils down a lot to the fact some of the older guys simply don’t care or don’t understand the techonolgy running over the copper network because their hayday was when PSTN was the only service. I try my hardest to help customers in a way I would be happy with. Most engineers will simply check for sync when it comes down to ADSL. I know that that is nearly not enough. I was an I.T tech and am studying cisco at present. We specialise in copper cable and fault finding on it. We are not trained in IP addressing etc which is why i’m taking the course. You may well have sync at your house but, if you don’t get a default gateway or an IP address you will not get past the RAS at the exchange which equals no internet pages for you. Anyway my point is some engineers are know it all’s and had no respect for me cause I was a newbie and got looked down on. I feel some customers experience that and they shouldn’t have to. Also CISCO engineers should be treated with respect becuase it’s a dam hard course to study and thoughs guys have a hell of a lot of knowledge. ADSL is more than a PAIR of wires its a complex data network and is made up of many layers and systems which could affect your ADSL service…..
I hope you all start to recieve a better service and I’m sure you will if you get a younger engineer. (This is in no way neggative to the older guys who do care about your job and the customers it’s mearly to the few unhappy depressed enigneers who need to be greatful they have a job!)
Thanks for your comment, and I am pretty sure that what you say is true.
Its not just about individual engineers, my feeling is that this is really a corporate problem about process and ownership…. I’ll explain.
I’m sure many people using BT will be aware that the main SMTP servers are down at the moment, and I first noticed this yesterday morning (Friday 21st) at about 8.55am. I had been using email for work to communicate with Moscow and Dubai happily since 7.00am and suddenly my outlook wasn’t sending although it was receiving emails.
Knowing that ‘these things happen’ I rebooted the router and my laptop, problem still apparent, so reported it to BT, saying it looks like their SMTP server. They (call centre in India) accepted this and said they are working on it. So I got on with other stuff and kept trying throughout the day and evening.
Tried again this morning. Problem still apparent, so I asked to speak with escalation manager. Fatima said “this is a big problem affecting many subscribers since 5th March”.
Trying to be polite and yet assertive, I explained that this only happened yesterday, prior to which everything was fine. Also, that she was implying its a ‘hole in the road’ or something like that, but in fact thats not the case. If its hardware – get the standby kit unpackaged out of the storeroom (or the hot stand-by online?) if its software then reload it (yes, of course I’m being too simplistic, I know). But 24hours SMTP server down (no outgoing emails) is simply unacceptable.
In short, I’m not at all sure that there is any effective escalation procedure in place for central server problems in BT Broadband, and I am pretty sure I was fobbed off by another call centre person who was pretending to have some authority.
BT is probably the most expensive Broadband service, and I’ve been wondering whether its going to be better elsewhere? I will use the downtime to look at other options. ‘Which’ gives ‘Zen’ as a best buy, and also ‘Waitrose’. I had all but ruled out ‘Talk Talk’ because which said that their system is based on reselling the BT network. Last night however I found out that CPW (owners of Talk Talk) continue to invest a lot in their own infrastructure including optical fibre.
So, in summary despite having some good guys around in BT, such as the smart guy who wrote the note above, I have a feel that BTs ailments may well be terminal and I’m looking to go elsewhere. Feel free to suggest alternatives folks.
Stop whinging and change your service providers. there are many out there. Makes you live longer. hi to terry and all the boys, cough..cough..cough..cough..
Hey Guys, certainly learned a lot from this thread. Just wondered if anyone could offer some advice please?!
Had a fault on the line, called BT, did line test etc Unable to discern fault, so the only option was to get an engineer out. I was warned that if the fault was due to my equipment, I could be charged. Fair enough.
The guy came out… ok, not much notice when he did actually turn up – I was advised he’d call to agree a convenient time, not just press the buzzer one day, but hey, only took about a week.
On inspection of the main socket he found that there was an extension socket plugged in, leading to the bedroom. Now this extension was wired under the floor etc.. The extension was causing the noise on the line.
Yeah you guessed it… that’s MY equipment. However, I know nothing about telecoms engineering, I work in healthcare. As far as I knew, BT installed 2 sockets in the house, end of story. So because I didn’t know (and couldn’t have had any way of knowing) that it was “my” fault and Openreach are not responsible for said extension – I’ve been charged a call out £99 + VAT and a repair cost £85 + VAT.
Hmmm.
It took him approximately 2 minutes to remove the socket cover, pull the extension wires out and close it again and check the phone line was now clean. That’s £85+VAT ??? When I asked BT they told me that was a flat charge. How is that fair? I don’t charge my patients like that! If treatment lasts 30 mins, I bill them for 30 mins etc.
Please though – can anyone suggest a solution. I spoke to BT (in India) who told me they could reduce the charge and charge me a setup fee instead???!!! HUH???
I just don’t see how you can levy those kinds of charges on customers who are genuinely not abusing the system, have no idea as to the source of their fault – and charge a flat rate which in this instance makes a plumber look cheap by comparison.
Bottom line is I don’t feel I should pay the charges out of principle and to be honest, I can’t afford to, so… not sure what happens next… ??!!
Seems like people still don’t understand the mess that Thatcher left behind.
BT is a customer of Openreach just as much as Talk Talk, Orange, Sky etc.
If you, and end user, are having problems, you report it to your service provider, be it Broadband of telephone.
They will avoid spending money so will ask you have you tried this, that, etc.
If they can see a fault on the line, they will arrange an Openreach to go out and repair the network that Openreach own. Your network provider should get you to check that the fault is not on your equipment/wiring etc before asking Openreach to come out.
If the line tests ok and an engineer is called out and cannot find a fault the service provider pays Openreach.
If the line test shows a fault and the fault is beyond our network the service provider pays Openreach
If the fault is on Openreach’s network there is no charge as Openreach is maintaining it’s own network.
The service provider when it calls out Openreach decides on the level of service that Openreach will provide (how much work they will carry out if it is not Openreach’s network at fault)
Openreach must treat and be seen to treat all it’s customers (Service providers) equally, to not do so would jeopardise their licence to operate
The amount that Openreach is paid when it is not their network at fault, bears little resemblance to charges that your service provider may choose to pass on to you.
There are many things that can cause you problems, a lot of the time it could be rectified by RTFM, when you don’t and Openreach put it right for you or disconnect your faulty equipment from their network, a charge will be raised for the service provider to pay Openreach.
As for the service providers shifting the blame on to Openreach, they would wouldn’t they. Anything to spread the blame and keep their own name.
When I was with another service provider my service was rubbish, but cheap rubbish, I moved to BT and looked out for the exchange job to change service providers, there wasn’t one as my first service provider bought bandwith from BT. All that was required for me to change service providers was a keyboard exercise (probably automated). My connection since moving to BT has been excellent. My kit at home is still the same, the network back to the exchange is still the same, the jumpering in the exchange is still the same, the equipment in the exchange is still the same. The only difference is the service provider and their equipment, their profit margins and contention ratios (a bit like having a bus and how many passengers they choose to let on, a budget outfit and loads of people will be crammed in, pay a bit more and you can ride in comfort)
Broadband is a cut throat business, some service providers surviving by ordering more equipment space in BT’s exchanges than they need just because they know it is sometimes impossible for BT to physically provide it within the timescales that Ofcom (or what ever the choose to call themselves) lay down, this means that BT has to pay them compensation.
The end user is nearly always going to be the one to suffer, we see that almost every day, end users on profiles that will never work, just because they want their “upto 8 meg” or service providers want “not to spend money” or end users trying to short circuit the system by reporting the phone line faulty instead of the broadband, just to get an engineer out sooner. If they do that they probably won’t even get a broadband trained engineer anyway, just a charge.
We hate the system but that is the way Ofcom deem it should be run, and like anything in this world it has it’s price, so if you or your service provider don’t do your bits properly you will end up sadly paying
No matter how modern or old your house is there will always be aluminium cables in the network between your house and the exchange, unless you live next door to it and even then its not a guarantee.
When a new building site is built there will be new copper cables from every individual home, then into the street where eventually they will join existing cables that have been in the ground for years and years, which will then continue to the exchange.
These existing cables (in most cases) are very very old, BT will not provide brand new cables to the exchange if there’s an existing route already there. In some occasions I’ve known them to share another customers line, halfing the bandwidth to prevent providing new cables.
“No matter how modern or old your house is there will always be aluminium cables in the network between your house and the exchange, unless you live next door to it and even then its not a guarantee.”
Luckily that is not so, most of the network is copper, aluminium was used for a while during the 70′swhen the price of copper went through the roof.
Older parts of the network could even be using a thicker copper conductor so would give less loss to the broadband over a given distance.
Ray,
Please could you explain to me how you can share a customers line? Unless it’s a DAC’s or runs through a gurfella cab or they do something stupid like share the A leg…. Would they? Anything else would cause battery or earth contact. This is not being nasty just wondering how else you could?
Thanks.
The old party line disappeared with system X & Y exchanges,
WB900 was introduced as a “pair gain” device 20 – 30 years ago, ok if you were the audio rubbish if you were the carrier any real distance from the exchange.
DACs and Gaffellers were digital systems brought in to supercede WB900s. They work by converting the voice into data to send conversations down the line. Not so good for dial up internet as speeds were limited to 28 or 32 kb/sec. Incompatible with Broadband.
Then came the Broadband revolution, BT worked hard to improve speeds and continues to do so. your pair of wires from the exchange to your home will travel along many lengths of separate cables jointed together. The method of jointing was fine with POTS (plain old telephone system) but some of the connectors used can cause drops in attenuation of the line (slightly slower speeds) with Broadband. BT is in the middle of a massive push to get rid of these “blue beanie” connectors
The frequency used to transmit the Broadband signal is prone to electrical interference, which can come from many sources. we have had street lights causing problems, (my broadband works fine during the day but every evening it slows or drops out) and one case where someone’s satellite receiver (not a sky box) had a fault that back fed the interference out on to the electricity supply knocking out all broadband on the whole estate. It took weeks to track down to the offending address and then just as long to get access and prove the fault with the customer at first refusing to stop using the receiver.
In the home there are many sources of interference, fridges, freezers mobile phones microwaves, fluorescent lights, the list goes on and on and these are things not connected to your line. Miswired extentions and faulty phones skyboxes etc all add to the nightmare of fast Broadband.
Hope that makes things a bit clearer
Hi all,
I’m an Openreach Apprentice, though i’m being trained with a FD degree in telecommunications, which includes data comm’s, such as LAN’s and WAN’s. Those of us that do this style of apprenticeship, also study for an NVQ level three in Telecomm’s. We, when out working in the network, will be able to help so much more with faults and issues reguarding complex BB and network issues, though the engineers aren’t supposed to in most cases, i believe that the customer service and satisfaction this would provide will be considerably improved. This is why i believe that arrangement should be made for us to be able to provide such a service, and not for a stupidly high cost. Alas, we are not really able to do this due to the service providers who claim they have engineers to do such things, though by the sounds of it, they are few and far between.
I’m sorry to hear about the CS problems alot of you have had, but we’re not all bad, most of us will do everything in our power to get you up, running to a level you are happy with.
The Openreach network is vastly improving due to the introduction the the 21st century network (21CN). In the area i work in, this is beginning to take shape quite quickly and the quality of the network has improved greatly as of late, hence the falling number of faults occuring.
Any way, sorry to go on…….
I’m in Monmouthshire. We had immense problems. BT blamed it on us, we blamed it on them. I spent hours on the phone to BT complaining about an internet service that went on and off and slow speeds when it did work.
In the end I went with an independent engineer who just calls himself “the BT man” (www.thebtman.com) and he attended and tested the line, found the fault, fixed it that same day and now we have roughly double the speed and a router light that isnt constantly bloody flashing!
David, Penault.
One thing to note is that the adsl speedtest websites that people use to determine the ‘true’ linespeed are inaccurate. Factors such as the distance between the customers ISP and the location of the ISP that hosts the testing website. Also contention ratios are set by the communications providers not by BT. BT has to allow CPs to install their own equipment into the exchanges. Although there are 400+ comms providers only a handful install their own equipment, the majority ‘rent’ adsl from BT & brand it as their own. A bit like the way gas & electricity suppliers work, the products come from the energy supplier which is in turn resold to the customer via a third party.
-Openreach Frames Engineer-
David, just out of interest, who did “the bt man” blame it on.
Chris: The fault was in the cable that ran up the outside of the house. Thebtman replaced this and our master socket.
David, that’s interesting. “the BT man” should not have touched that wiring (providing it was network wiring before the master socket) and certainly not the master socket as it is the property of Openreach. And no doubt he charged you a tidy sum for the work that Openreach would have done for free.
Chris:
BT stated the fault was inside our property and quoted us £133 callout and £99 per hour if the fault was inside.
Had the BT line test revealed the fault was outside our property we would certainly have had BT do the job but unfortunately the BT line test is unreliable and didnt show up the fault and the price quoted by Thebtman over the phone was fixed and much less than the cost to have Openreach do the job had the fault been inside [as the bt fault test suggested].
Also the wiring is NOT the property of Openreach as this property was a new build and sockets were preinstalled along with a junction box on the soffet, after which point the BT cabling starts.
A junction box on the soffet doesn’t sound like a demarcation point to me but hey ho.
Ever had a problem with a car, phoned up the garage and asked them what the cause of the problem was over the phone?
“Could be this, could be that won’t know for sure until we look at it.”
Get it in the garage & put it on the computer but the computer won’t say exactly what the problem is, could be this, could be that, have to try this, and then something else until it works.
This is known as the real world, do you think that any line test system can pinpoint a fault over perhaps 5 or 7 Kilometres and decide that it is not in your house, but 2 or 3 metres before it actually enters your property.
Some things are not quite straight forwards, but if you do the checks properly to prove the fault in or outside of your property you stand a good chance of not getting charged.
Remember BT & Openreach work to a licence given to them, it means that all customers and End Users should be treated the same, and get charged in certain circumstances, don’t blame us, blame “Ofwhoever” or yourself (if you did something stupid) or did not do something you were asked to.
BT/Openreach are not a charity, and almost certainly you will not be a special case according to “Ofwhoever’s” rules
No-one ever said life would be easy!
Chris:
The wiring and junction box was installed by the builder and the “drop wire” as far the junction box was supplied / installed by BT.
The fact is that no wiring/sockets that were the property of BT were touched.
So you are saying BT/Openreach didn’t provide a network termination point?
Chris:
Exactly. The NTE5a was preinstalled by local builder (or someone he employed) and is identical to a BT NTE aside from lack of logos (made by same company who make BTs NTEs too) so there was no requirement for BT to provide anything.
You see that’s where the problem lies, there is every requirement for BT to provide an NTE as THAT is the demarcation point, not some junction box on your soffet or an NTE that your builder preinstalled. Builders are not licensed to install NTE’s
Chris: You dont need to be licenced to install an NTE and also I didnt say it was the builder who installed the NTE.
Also, demarcation is not always at the NTE. New builds with pre-installed wiring are different.
OK licenced is probably not the right word but you do have to be employed by or contracted to Openreach to install an NTE. NTE stands for network terminating equipment ie. the point at which Openreach’s network terminates. An NTE is property of Openreach and therefore can only be installed by Openreach or a third party contracted to Openreach.
“I didnt say it was the builder who installed the NTE.”
Maybe I misunderstood your statement in your previous post.
Quote “The NTE5a was preinstalled by local builder (or someone he employed)”
The demarcation point IS always at the NTE. If it wasn’t how can Openreach define where their network ends and an end users start?
New builds with pre-installed wiring are no different to established houses. There still has to be an NTE installed by Openreach. The only difference that might occur is that Openreach could use one of their new external NTE’s which are installed on the outside of a property no more than 1.5M above ground level ie. not on your soffet.
If you still do not agree with what I am saying, have a look at the Openreach website and check out page 24 of the builders guide where it clearly states The main socket or external NTE must be supplied by Openreach.
Hope this clears up any confusion.
Chris:
No confusion on our part sorry; Supplied….not necessarily fitted by.
In our experience (we have bought/sold a few houses) of dealing with newsites and local engineers, the nte may be checked to be wired correctly but never have we had any problems with NTEs that are not badged as Openreach and regardless of what the article says our nte is our property as we paid for it…end of.
I’m not doubting you bought and therefore own the NTE’s but the fact still remains that Openreach are supposed to supply the NTE. Now if a local engineer decides he’s too lazy to remove your NTE and fit an Openreach one (as he should) then that’s a different story.
Disregarding the rules and regulations that Openreach lay down could result in a hefty bill further down the line, not necessarily to you but maybe to the unlucky punter who buys one of your houses.
NB in the regulations (not an article) it states NTE’s MUST be supplied by Openreach……end of.
Those regulations were brought in AFTER our NTE was fitted…..end of!!
Now you are just making it up. Those regulations came into being at the same time the NTE5a was first used. So by my reckoning that must be +20 years.
Chris:
Nonsense. You quoted a document that cannot be older than 2006, our socket was installed in 2004.
Also, our NTE is identical to an Openreach one as they are made by the same company!!
That’s right I quoted an Openreach document and as Openreach was created in 2006 then as you correctly pointed out that document could not be older than 2006. However before Openreach opened for business there was this company called BT that supplied NTE’s with BT branding on them and guess what? the same regulations applied to BT NTE’s as the regulations that apply today for Openreach ones. Nonsense? No. Fact? Yes!
To be honest I wouldn’t have a clue who made your NTE or who makes Openreach’s. If you say yours is identical to Openreach’s that’s great but that is not the issue. The issue is if an Openreach engineer came across an illicit attachment, for example an NTE that has not been supplied by Openreach then he/she would be obliged by OfCom regulations to bring the installation up to Openreach standards and no doubt they would bill you for the pleasure.
“regardless of what the article says our nte is our property as we paid for it…end of.”
You may have paid for the installation of the NTE5a or b but that does not mean you own it.
It is still the property of Openreach. You have a responsibility to ensure it is looked after e.g. does not get damp or damaged.
If you allow it to get damp or damaged Openreach are obliged to charge you for rectifying the problem
Chris:
Running a business isnt like that. Whats written in small print often doesnt come into play on normal daily business.
They are made by Austin Taylor.
@ Worn out engineer.
Read all my messages. We paid an independent to install the internal wiring including a NTE.
What is going on lads? Why are you arguing over NTE’s? I’ll tell you what I’v had the weekend off and the LAST thing I’ve been thinking about are NTE5′s. Nothing with openreach is ever textbook it cant be with all of the different locations/situations we provide service. The way things are at the minute our superiors force us to bill when we dont think neccesary. We can’t even put in our notes fault, it has to be damage as the customer may have a leg to stand on. I think its shocking but then again, if we didnt charge I wouldn’t be in a job and all these competitors who have undercut us on our own network wouldnt be thriving.
Now lads lets forget about NTE5′s and go and spent time with ur wives/mistresses…..
BEEN following this thread for days….guys you gotta chill out!!!!
In the end the customer is the most important person no matter what.
@David
David if I remember rightly your socket was an early pre openreach socket which although wasnt the cause of the fault I replaced and moved for a current Openreach socket as the old one was corroding because of being mounted in a window sill.
the main thing for customers to remember is that if you take the front plate off your main socket that the dropwire or ug feed go’s directly too and you plug your phone into the main backplate and you do not have a dial tone or it has a crackle then you will not be charged……but if there is dial tone and it does not have a crackle and then you put back the front plate plug in and then you loose dial or it has a crackle then you know the fault is inside caused by the exstentions….hence chargable…………………simple………….
wow.just found this…..im a bt eng.. now an openreach one…we have a pair of wires to get to cust property now.cust care out the window.we dont care anymore because open reach want money…no such thing as free dinners.youd charge me….(bad attitude eh?) i agree.we install the lines for isp”s.who are our custs whether we like it or not.we cannot advise the end user..as our jobs are on the line.i do try my best to be the”old” engineer.but our hands are tied.im very good at undoing the tight strap but it is still a struggle to help mr n mrs jones as much as i used to be able to. blame the fatcats from isp”s.they should invest in the network.virgin has built their own.they should invest in their own curcuits. we want customer care. right first time, and fast bband oh yeah.
by the way comment 64….your “simple” attitude is bad.do you benefit from this charge?i.e. Did you give the cust what they wanted.as you should know.they do pay line rental,after all.bt engineers of old could star wire etc.which causes probs with bband..they should not be charged for.but because its an”internal” clear,you charge.or you will be questioned.hows your o/t? by the way.cust care is my belief…go to your union meeting.and we will become telephone engineers again.
P.S.im gonna charge your mum by the hour next time…
P.P.S COZ I GET FA “simple”
ppps.soon to be in the local paper.as a tele/b/band engineer.1st time comms…google it in 2009.
pppps.gone the pub
ppps i get 1.5 meg.hopefully fix it soon….!”should be up to 8….keep you informed.my hobby is tiling..on an italian mosaic course at mo. called bisazza.google it and get back if you require it.its expensive but beautiful.
Task efficiency rules! who cares about the end user as long as we get free broadband and get to drive round in the van all day listening to killer tunes on radio2…. make a note of them golden joints, their sure to give you the afternoon off
Come back when you are sober.
ps I’d love to know how you are planning on getting your 1.5 meg up to 8
Nice to see end users who havent got a clue casting negative comments yet again, Openreach work for your communications provider or isp and not for you! fact! And as for Nte’s etc if i find any illicit attachments i.e non openreach or bt nte’s then i will remove them and raise a charge! your not allowed to touch the nte other than remove the face plate if you do so its tresspass on the openreach network, you may pay for an install but thats all you pay for you dont own the line your rent it from your communications provider who in turn rent it from us!
its funny how everyone wanted bt to be broken up and now that it has your paying for it I can spend days sorting out end-users brodaband problems just so they can watch porn all day so dont say we don’t care
You cant charge for NTE 5 openreach logo’s ot BT logo’s on them. The only way you can charge if it has damage caused by customer…
Engineers should change socket to Openreach logo on a visit but half of them are to lazy to do so.
Chuck a TRC(charge) and straight down the cafe, guys just do your job earn your [] 22k a year and stop moaning..
All you got too do is run abit of cable-not that hard really, and most of the faults are put on by you lot anyway,because your too lazy to shut a joint or redo one..
Wonder where you will all be soon as landline is dying trade!! on the dole i imagine..
Landline is not a dying trade. Voice over landline may be – but this is a thread about data communications – and in a small and densely populated country like the UK, landline is going to remain the best solution for a very long time. With current technologies, there is simply not enough spectrum for wireless solutions to provide the same level of service as landlines. Wireless networks also have problems with protocol overhead and non congestion related traffic loss that can affect throughput unless TCP algorithms are adjusted. Satellite based solutions suffer from high cost of equipment, large installations, reasonably high power outputs and unavoidably high network latencies (unless LEO is used, but that has other problems).
Also, please can people commenting here remember that whilst this thread was about a particular bad piece of customer service, it is not fair to paint all openreach engineers with the same brush. Some clearly try to do the best for the customer within the constraints openreach give them. So let’s keep the comments measured (or else I will have to close this thread).
Thanks
HSDPA 3G Max Data card = 7.2 Meg
Feb 09 14.7 Meg Monthly cost £14
Expalin the high cost there??
As for congestion, hey look at your own contention rates, oh and yes your network, thats a well looked after piece of history!!!!
Mate there are a few good engineers left i am sure, just shame 90% left are crap…
In fairness Openreach have been given the bad end of a really shit deal…
just pisses me off engineers on here ripping into the people they supposedly will go that extra mile for..
Right first time my arse!!!!!!
why was my message taken out ?
I deleted several comments containing swear words – some milder than others, but the heat of the discussion was escalating rapidly.
Sorry.
fair enough Stephen , i take your point
Can anyone offer advice on this: I had problems with my cordless phone ( phone dropping after one ring and eventually incessant noise – even BT could not get through to me in the end, even on an old-fashioned phone plugged in on my side). The BT lady informed me that if an engineeer came out and found a fault on my side it would probably cost me about £200 in all. When I groaned she then urged me to try and get hold of a local man, as she suspected the fault might be with my wiring or the junction box inside.
But why can I not just remove face plate on junction box, plug into the test socket and leave it at that, I asked her, (which I am doing now) since both my phone and wireless router seem to be working perfectly with this – perhaps even faster broadband than before. (The socket is out of sight and not an eyesore.) I could just tape over the front, I suggested. She did not see why not.
What do you think? I’d appreciate your comments.
dont get bt round they will charge you
hi
just to let you good persons know how the system works
you order your service from a service provider be it BT or jo bloges down the road ..they then apply to bt openreach to provide the cable from the exchange to you the end user
( that’s right you are NOT bt openreach’s customer ..you are just the person at the end of the line that uses the service )
the bt openreach engineer provides a pr of wires from the exchange main frame
to you main socket and then tests it from end to end with some sensitive test equipment if this pass’s the tests then your a service provider provides the line
( or what ever the service is that you ordered from them was )
if the line passes the high standards of the tests from end to end and you are still having a problem the fault must be
1.your wires or equipment
2 your service provider’s wire or equipment in the exchange
or 3 the link from your service provider’s equipment to the openreach exchange main frame
also even though bt openreach is part of BT it is a separate company and BT is one of its many customers
as for bt openreach charging for call outs when there is NO fault found on the bt openreach cables from the exchange to you main socket and / or the fault is PROVED to your inside cables / equipment or to the service providers equipment /wire in the exchange ( and yes we do charge BT and the other provider when its down to them )
cables from the exchange to you main socket .. you can blame OFTELL / OFCOM for that as they are the ones that tell bt openreach ( and all other communication co’s )
what to charge for and how much
so is you have a complaint about adsl speeds and getting charged when bt openreach
don’t find any faults on its line/ cables take it up with the ones that govern us (OFTELL / OFCOM ) don’t just bicker over it .. do some thing …..!!!!!!!!!!!
then bt openreach can do something .because as it is now bt openreach can not change anything with out OFTELL / OFCOM say so
( NB OFTELL / OFCOM is run by the uk government … so blame them )
the network has been made so good these days with our water tight joints and bully boy tactics to punish any one who slips up, and of course we now need to be super efficiant with a threat of losing your job unless you are super productive which really means we eat our lunch on the road as we are moving to the next job with laptop on the passenger seat we read the job details of the next one we are going to while driving at 60mph on carrigeway. why ? because we are frightened and the union have no teeth anymore, just make sure you dont tailgate me because i may hit the brakes really hard to avoid a collision at any moment because im busy easting my lunch if im lucky. im not moaning im just telling you how it is.
must dash im not allowed to be under 90% efficiant and i will do what ever it takes to keep my job.
I can second that !!!!
And to answer Clive’s question, by removing the frontplate and plugging in the test socket you have proved the fault to be on your own network and therfore would be liable to charges from your service provider. Providing you are happy with your equipment plugged into the test socket and everything works fine then there is no need to take this any further.
To be fair if he reports it as a broadband fault we would put it right for free within 2 hours, we charge the service provider not the enduser ….
geeks
DSL Up Time 1:25:50
Data Path Interleaved
Standard G.dmt
Bandwidth Down/Up(kbps) 192/416
SNR Margin Down/Up(dB) 13.5/7.0
Attenuation Down/Up(dB) 39.5/27.0
CRC Down/Up 12/5790
FEC Down/Up 41/3235
HEC Down/Up 0/3255
I used to get just over 2M but talktalk upgraded the line and the crackle problem returned but sometimes I get between 3000-4500.
I have an intermittent fault that has been going on for years. It gets sorted out, the voice line crystal clear for a while then back it comes, the dreadful crackle bang hiss. The above is copied from my router log and these figures are becoming more and more regular.
I have spoken to talktalk on many occasions and have done the regular checks. If I plug just the phone into the main socket backplate I still get crackle. Sometimes I have to engage the phone in order to get an internet connection. I can hear the router on the phone. Sometimes the noise is so bad that you have to wait for a break in the noise to speak or listen. Sometimes it is so bad that I just give up, unable to take phone calls and no internet and go to bed. Maybe I should get a life. Sometimes the noise gets louder and louder then a big bang and clears. I wish it would do it again now.
Their line test says no fault even though they can hear the noise. They want to send an engineer out but if he comes when the line is clear I will get charged. I have been charged twice before because of this and eventually did get my money back. I can’t afford the charge nor the wait 6 months+ to get my money back so I am stuck with my problem. Eventually it will get sorted out temporarily, I just have to be patient. At least there’s a good footie match on the box tonight.
I have tried different phones, filters, RJ lead, routers etc. that makes no difference.
It was so much simpler years ago when the engineer rang from the exchange. If only they could look back on how they fixed it all the other times.
You have what we call a HR diss its the worst fault you can have as they allways clear when we arrive.
The chances are it will be on the underground d side network you should persist on having an engineer out and when they arrive point out you have to lift the handset to allow broadband to work if they know their stuff they should change the d side for you, its not garaunteed to be this but 99% it will be.
Hope you get a “good one” Craig.
have been reading these posts with some humour but also sadness that eu s are still getting let down .ive been on 10 years and have seen every tricky fault in the book …been ug for 10 years broadband for 3 and safe to say the decent among you are giving good honest advice ….its all changing now with the sps asking for more ie openreach will now be doing mandatory pair qaulity tests so for your adsl faults or sfi faults we plug our voyager in and do the health check but then have to plug a bit of kit in called the HAWK this then looks at the test head in the exchange and will run a course of tests and believe me lines that test ok on a system we have called RATS will throw up insertion loss or unbalanced cables …normally an e side ..ie its picking up low insulation of a spare next to it …but have been at many many many eus house and done test required as have synch and noticed certain errors which point to sp issues rather than openreach network ie ppp sessions or fluctuations in upstream and they are still holding back on changing tie prs ( their equiptment ) but again they are demanding more so have recently been asked to fault at the hdf (handover ) in the exchange so as to determin even more so where the issue is …as for bog standard noisy faults im the worst performer for charging in my patch .. your telling me a cust 6 k from the exchange fed of 3 k of pcd to the cab then 2 k of ali ug then 20 spans of aerial cable who gets an intermittent noise should be charged no way ….difference is some new guys are more interested in trc stats because they cant meet a productivity stat and the manager will beat them with one stick if not another …i leave my phone number with near enough every cust or eu and very rarely get a call back..simples ….golden rule is listen to the cust …9 times out of ten they will tell you what the fault is ie its crackly when its windy (ohead ) noisy when it rains …line went off when your mate was in that green thing down the road …there is a clear code that we can say line tested outside and fault not found and no charge can be raised and believe me i use it but this will differ from area to area ( ??????) im not saying im the best engineer in the world but i have a consience and with adsl faults im always honest and explain that whilst i can fix one fault there may be another ie went to a guy the other day his voyager was red hot and had been for two weeks with no web pages he had synch light on but no web …quite common to unplug these from the filter and lights will stay on so we clear these off and ask sp to send new router but i bet him a tenner i would be back in a week as the voyager would have played havoc with the bras profile in the exhange ie equiptment …had to go back and get new equiptment in exchange aswell …so these things are not just pr of wires faults and can blow your mind sometimes ……to sum up dont lose heart as there are still plenty of engineers who are trying their best and feel let down by changes forced upon them aswell ….good luck all ………honest openreach engineer ….south …working for no more money ….more saturdays and later in the day !!!!!!!!
From post 92:- “there is a clear code that we can say line tested outside and fault not found and no charge can be raised and believe me i use it but this will differ from area to area ( ??????) ”
You’re not charging the end user, you’re (or should be) charging the service provider; should they wish to pass this charge onto their customer then that’s between the SP and THEIR customer.
What you are doing there you may feel is morally right but should the company that pay’s your wages find out that you are breeching equivelance you could find yourself in very hot water.
hopefully ‘worn out engineer’ will see this, as he seems cool, or just any BT:OR.
can you tell me all types of LL engineers? and what there job role is please?
i work for an ISP and i love to learn about OR, sadly… it consumes my time at work as its boring…
northern ….this is in a rare case …ie noisy intermittent and can be miles of aerial …charge ? for what ? intermittent faults can be narrowed down ….but to charge …behave !!!!! soft clear code agreed by manager and then line monitored or common faults on that dside range or dp will be picked up by node walkers …now if i walk in somewhere and it s a rwt for a tok then yes i will put in a charge obviously …….
I am a openreach engineer! i mainly repair broadband, and if you have the opportunity to go elsewhere for comms services, you should. all comms companys maily bt are fleecing the general public with, crap service, crap equipment, management, training, the list is endless. i am fed up being abused by bt management in a job that has no morals or principles, just accountants targets and bosses bonuses, and as for customers, bt has the wording wrong here, they are treated like the “enemy” for time related charges trc,s the whole industry is riddled with corruption and back handers, and anyone thinks your going to get a fair deal is delusional. the best you can hope for is good engineer if it goes wrong! what a load of boll….s.
its about time these companies lived up to the preaching of “customer service” the government should also get off its bottom and dicipline the thieving scum for all the fiddles they have created to date, like the bankers and politicians all got their dirty mucky fingers in the pies, ripping everyone off, where will it end??..
i feel better now after a good rant……oh well back to work tommorrow!
@83, 85 i agree with you.
The new company policy is 30% more for 30 % less cash with more flex , longer hours ,no pay rise but the bosses get fat bonus.
says it all really !
“The new company policy is 30% more for 30 % less cash with more flex , longer hours ,no pay rise but the bosses get fat bonus.
says it all really !”
My tier 2 just picked up his top of the range BMW and the Tier 3 has a Porche on order.
Steve Robertson & John Small etc have really got things wrong this time. I think that they will all be in for a big surprise if comes to a ballot on what they want to introduce at the moment.
They say it is fairer for everyone in Openreach to work over Monday to Saturday 7:00 am to 9:00 pm with up to 2 hours flex a day (with them not you controlling flex).
PARDON ME BUT engineers who worked Saturdays fall into 2 categories, the job offer they accepted included Saturday working or they were paid £1,000 to work Saturdays. I never wanted to work Saturdays so I chose not to take the £1,000 but now it looks like they will get me doing it for free, you can bet for sure that they ain’t gonna give me a grand when they bring the new rosta patterns in.
For those working Saturdays now, you know how hard it is to book a Saturday off. Have you thought how much more difficult it is going to be to book a normal day off when that day is a late finish at 9:00 pm and there are only you and 1 more guy working in the area. No chance would be my guess. Thank goodness I only have 6 years to go.
xbt took the payoff to leave had been on 12 years 10 as bt were great cared about the customer over anything 2 as openreach no one cares thats why i left.
working in between the customer and bt openreach i have to agree with all points raised in this site as i see it on a daily basis. Now more than ever with every company cutting cost in everyway possible it is the end user that suffers isnt this who pays us in the end?
most delays & unresolves are down to human error,
end user who doesnt mention the extra socket or old wiring hanging out.
the eng doesnt show up, tut tut or test for the wrong type of fault or just says well externaly all is okay no fault found must be isp.
the isp who dont ask correct questions or report the correct fault.
the tools that dont work correctly.
so many things that cause more issues instead of resolve.
To me its a simple case of elimination and always willbe.
test socket god sent yes it can eliminate where the issue is. but less connections less wires, less lenght will always help broadband. Most connection’s in the uk/irl dont have this option. Most run on star wire daisy chain phone systems within the house. Over a phone we relie on what is advised to us. with the tools we relie on what it finds and the info it gathers. We can only send on what we find and advised by tools.
yes isp is charged for all invalid engineers. most of these charges are more than the end user payes for a year of broadband so any company would want to cut down on this part.
Yes we see engineers invalidly charging for equipment replaced that is there own. faceplates wiring to master socket from outside. never enough info passed back to eu provider.
so much is wrong and can be put right with a little bit more communication between companies, end users. better tools and better communication. How hard would it be this day for a pda to update info while eng is on site and for the supplier of that circuit to view this info aswell. Instead its all confused we say something to end user on what it may be, the engineer says somethign else and alas nothing is correctly fixed.
my question is for the openreach eng in general.
ye have in some cases external nte point. Are ye not supposed to test from internal nte equipment to determin the line conditions. Has it changed since 07 or is the signal supposed to be good to the internal master point within the household.
If a person has old wiring no nte socket, would this not be a free visit to fit a required openreach nte and make sure from outside to in that it is testing ok and sealed from any leakage moisture. How on cases like old wiring do you find if its internal or external issue with out a eng visit to the house.
I see in many post if in sync must be okay, like mentioned line attenuation noise and other such issues in most cases are overlooked resulting in more visits. Example can have no sync on main socket connect to nte test if available now in sync maybe at 64.5db and margin just above 6db to me this is a line on the limits for a signal and will drop. Info like this is supplied but some where between isp on phone with eu (end user) to fault raised to networks to openreach engineer going out this seems to be lost especialy with automated test on a line when reported.
I have used many test tools from many isp in the past 10 years pretty much since broadband became the norm and todate no tool or person is perfect by any means.
nice to see resolve in the end but this day and age why are ye all fighting.
regards
jimbo
jimbo …..re the external nte ….waste of time in respect of bband as you state you need an internal first point …in my opinion its still way to confusing for eus as they still argue about who actually owns the piece of wire from the x nte to the first point in house on a fault …for any bband fault i will always bypass the x nte and crimp in the casing leave a tag on it to explain why and then make the first point in side an nte ..and then do health check from there ..as stated on here above you will always get cowboy openreach engineers …but in the main i hope most are ok ..some bband jobs have been doing the rounds before you actually resolve and this could be a number of things not just an engineer problem ..take my last fault today ….cust can only get bband when phone engaged ..phone line noisy anyway ..she s reported this to her sp 9 MONTHS AGO and they just got openreach to send an engineer round who promptly charged her the minute she explained nsy and no bband …now this bloke i would love to meet and kick his ass because the minute i plugged my test phone in i could hear noise and when i put the hawk on it i could see a hr dis just waving at me ..i changed dropwire and cable in to new socket and works first time !!!!! 45 mins for 9 months grief …now i dont expect any medals for doing this but this is what we are supposed to do ..she could hear the noise on his test phone as he was testing …trouble is cp charges sp …sp tries to charge eu …eu argues with sp and so it goes on ..and now we are going be working later with these trackers etc and no more money for it …expect more disheartened engineers just shrugging shoulders ..i hope not …i really hope not … h o e
I had a similar problem with BT, one engineer came around and looked at the line with his laptop and said its fine, then he did a whole load of other tests when i kept insisting that there was something wrong with the line because i knew there was and still he found nothing and left us stuck with the phone line randomly cutting off just because it was working the hour or so that he was here and a week later we got a nice bill for £100+ for that service.
I called the local BT service and they sent around 2 engineers this time, warning me again that if there was nothing wrong they would charge me again. Though luckily these guys were alot nicer and more useful and didn’t patronise me like the last guy did. At first they found nothing but in the end they found where the problem was as there was a break in the line up the road a bit. After a few calls i managed to get them ro refund the original £100 they had charged me too.
Contention Rate is the problem and its 8 meg line speed but not actual download rate. This is the sync speed not actual speed. This is to do with the equipment in the exchange which is provided by your service provider. The problem does not lye with openreach and therefore the engineer did nothing wrong.
I know this thread is long and old – and I am seriously considering closing it to comments. But please try to read the issue correctly before repeating the same tired mantras. The original article is quote clear:
“The problem is that when we use the BT speed test page, using the dedicated speed test account over the BT network to their test server, we get much lower speed”
That is to say, the service provider’s equipment (which is not in the exchange as there is no LLU here) was never in question. That the issue was contention was always quite clear. My problem was that in bringing this to the attention of BT, we were consistently brushed off with excuses such as “it is your wiring”, which it demonstrably never was.
Note what the article says:
“Why did we even have an engineer here when a previous engineer had already been out and tested everything successfully? Because we had the temerity to ask when BT would fix the Aberystwyth Exchange. This exchange has been underperforming for months, and every time BTs deadline to fix it comes up, they just extend the deadline. Thus our ISP wanted to know when the work was really going to be carried out. BTs answer was to send us an engineer that we did not need, did not want to come and tell us a load of rubbish.”
Over the years we have gathered a good crop of speed tests. Owing to contention, we regularly see throughput drop to well below 512Kb/s, and have a number of tests that did not even manage what we would see through a modem. Now at least we have managed to find an ISP who, for an additional 10 pounds per month has arranged special handling of our data at the exchange and thus far we are seeing marked improvements.
As to what the engineer did wrong – the article is quite clear. What he did wrong was to try to brush off a clear and present issue – one that has returned frequently over the past 2.5 years, and is down to under resourcing at the Aberystwyth exchange, and high usages through the high student population. He brushed off the issue by talking nonsense, and as someone wiser than me once said” “Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought ignorant than to open it and remove all doubt”.
Once the engineer has done a Pair quality test which is a in depth line test done from the nte using his hawk test equipment and laptop and remote test equipment in the exchange and a SFI adsl health check if all comes back ok it will then be down to the exchange equipment and your isp choking the through put.Living as close to the exchange as you do and your obvious knowledge it WILL be the exchange and isp.The openreach engineer does not work for your isp.
Scenario:
Fault reported to BT, noisey PSTN line, sonds like breakfast cooking. Have visit from Openreach guy, by which time noise is no longer apparent, does all the test including ‘comprehensive test with laptop to exchange’. Unable to detect anything untoward with the line.
On reconnection of line and ADSL modem, our line stable rate appears to have gone from 4.0Mb/s to 0.13Mb/s despite the upload speed remaining at 0.36Mb/s.
ISP claims problem is with BT/Openreach and send second guy out.
Guy No2, sound bloke, runs test and pronounces that we should expect 4.2Mb/s. Problem is with ISP.
Why I’m posting here, does any one have insight into the posibility of the tests for the PSTN side of the line causing the throttle speed of the ADSL to be set at the minimum download rate of 0.13Mb/s, despite the upload speed remaining unchanged at 0.36Mb/s.
When the engineer does his sfi bb test from your nte master socket,the upload on HIS test screen will be either 448 or 228,448 if its rate adapative and 228 if its a fixed speed line,the upload very rarely changes,dslam will try to keep your line stable and the best way to do this is reduce the download speed,if you have had noise on your line there is a intermittent line fault,this is what will be leading to low download speeds as the equipment in the exchange will be trying to keep your line stable and in sync.Are you fed by over head cable or u.g cable ? if overhead have a look at the cable coming to the house,is it grey or black,if its the old grey 0ne pair dropwire this is very often the source of noise faults.THERE IS A DIFFERENCE FROM THE SPEED THAT THE ENGINEER CAN SYNC AT WITH HIS TEST EQUIPMENT AND THE ACTUAL THROUGHPUT.
I’m an Openreach Engineer and I have one overiding thought about all the above – close your laptops, put them in the drawer, lock the door to your study/office and GET OUT A BIT MORE. If Tarquin and Tabitha can’t access facebook or MSN then so what ! Get out more and do something a bit more constructive and healthy. Jesus ! I wish I could say this when I go to your houses – God made a beautiful world and you lot spend it glued to a 17″ monitor 24/7. I satisfy my disdane at the triviality of your problems by rolling my eyes and pulling faces as I kneel at your socket as you moan and whinge about the crisis of your broadband speed and try and show your uber intelligence with your techno jargon. I DON’T CARE ! GET A BLOODY LIFE !
Hey Rob
Sounds like you’ve not had a good day.
The world’d be a better place without customers eh.
Trouble is, we land up with out customers too, on account of the fact that BT can never comission a job without creating another problem. The problem is not the poor sods who are in the employment of BT, its a systemic problem with BT.
Case in point. I have a land line + Call Divert & Bypass number. I apply to DirectSave Tellecom to take over the account and I hit the expected problem. Although BT have been billing me silly money for the Bypass number + call divert for years, they claim I dont have it. BT further claim that my bypass number (that currently works) is allocated an is not available for transfer.Work that one out.
UNGLAUBLICH!
SOP for BT is raise a complaint, get a complaint number and set asside a few days to progress the task, using the complaint number as a reference.
hello i havent read the whole of this thread but i read the first few entries and i can only apologise if you had an openreach engineer that disapointed you. i am an openreach engineer. first thing that people have to realise is the relationship between openreach, service providers and end users (customers). when we attend an adsl fault obviously we should conduct some tests and look for anything obvious in the house also we check that the adsl is working in the exch and remedy it if its not . we are not there to fix the fault specifically , we are there to conduct tests on the line that the service provider rents on behalf of their client (end user) what the sp does with their test results or how they interpret them is up to them. we are given 2 hours to do all this or we are in trouble with our statistic crazed management.
on the question of speed i am endlessly told that peoples adsl is very slow, sometimes it is. very often when i say to people “how quick is it then?” they say they have no idea?
the test we conduct on our laptop gives maximum potential throughput. this almost certainly will not be the speed an end user gets . on the subect of internal wiring its always worth checking with and without it connected because quite often you are going to be losing 3 to 5hundred kbps per additional socket that you connect, on other occaisions this does not happen….. if you have attended as many adsl fault investigations as me you will have realised what a tricky/contrary subject adsl repair is. quite often for no reason at all it refuses to work??
so just remember the o,reach bloke that comes round should try his hardest but it isnt always that simple and he may well be on a trumped up disiplinary procedure for low performance, and it wont be for spending too long trying to sort a long winded problem out it will be for not banging out 5 clears a day regardless of whether he has cured the endusers problems…
I am an Openreach engineer. I’ve heard of tales like the above, time and time again. I’d consider myself one of the good guys.
However I am currently on a performance management discipline. As I do a quality job, and make sure that anyone I go out to see is happy before I clear off.
The delightful engineer you encountered will be at the top of his team, he will receive no shit from his manager, and be receiving top performer bonuses monthly.
Can you see the fallacy of BT’s logic?
That be no means condones the piss poor standards of workmanship, and I can only hope that you get one of the good guys in future.
Openreach / BT is still the shittiest company I ever knew of !
One WHOLE week my ISP was telling them to send an engineer !
Every day – it was ‘ tomorrow ‘ , ‘ to morrow ‘ !
The SHITTIEST damn company ever !
Openreach COHABIT with BT at 81 Newgate St London .
BT;s own customers are SOONER CONNECTED – a week sooner ! after upgrading at exchange .
Instead of the BT slogan ” BETTER CONNECTED ” ought ot be ” SOONER CONNECTED ”
BT , you are SHITS ! SHITS ! SHITS !
Rip off multimillionaire damned executives !
Arseholes !
Have you ever considered publishing an e-book or guest authoring on other websites? I have a blog based upon on the same information you discuss and would really like to have you share some stories/information. I know my viewers would appreciate your work. If you are even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an e mail.
I work for a telecommunications company who have to deal with BT open-reach day in and day day out and my opinion of them only ever gets worse and I started off with a low opinion to begin with.
Stephen (OP), I understand exactly what you are saying and this kind of behavior from a so-called professional engineer is atrocious. they act like children trying to guess answer to any question you ask them and ultimately with most customer who don’t fully understand that BT open-reach aren’t anything to do with the provider get a bad impression of the ISP. We are at the mercy of BT open-reach just like the EU and the whole point of BT open-reach coming about was to make it easier for telecoms company’s to access, use, and resolve faults at BT exchanges. This simply doesn’t work and Offcom need to pull their finger out on this one and give open-reach a serious bollocking and lay down some official guidelines and procedures so that useless people can get jobs as engineers for open-reach. At the moment it seems its pre-requisite for getting the job.
ABOVE
I notice you dont name the communication company you work for,no one ever mentions the millons of end users using the openreach network whe have never had a problem and are perfectly happy with the service they are getting.
My experience with Openreach started way back in August last year.
Packet loss line dropping, speeds very slow etc etc.
After 5 visits and no no theres no fault blaming Reins issues finally this week it was sorted by a actually helpfull Open Reach engineer.
The line was more than capable of more than 11 mbps but it had dropped to 3.3 at best.
First engineer was taking the micheal saying you would no way get that up here and blamed interference, then the next 2 visits were from a different engineer but the same guy, again interference.
the kicking off email to Ian Livingstone (This had been done before and made no difference, they trusted their engineers!)
finally I got 2 engineers here Friday this week again the same one but also another one from a different area.
He took the time to trace the line back to the cabinet and found the fault within an hour of being here, hes stayed and didnt leave till 22.30 at night to rectify this and was proven to be a peice of 1960 cable which was causing the issues.
I am now sitting on a perfect 13 mbps connection with no dropots thanks to this man, and as i appreciate you get bad in all occupations this has finally come to a head and is sorted by myself not my ISP after 9 months
Spent 2 months arguing with BT over a broadband connection of less than 1mb on a line that can do 8mb.
Finally we called Landline Man who is an independent Telephone Engineer in Gloucestershire but covers our area of Herefordshire too and he came, tested the line, indentified the issue and i dont know what he did but must have pulled some strings at BT because 1 week after he came we have now got a 7.7mb connection and we can finally watch a whole episode of doctor who on bbc iplayer without it freezing up!
Ray
I am in 2 minds about deleting the last comment. I am almost certain the writer of the comment IS landlineman, as the email he gives matches the whois registration contact email for his website. Anyone reading this comment please therefore take into account that the above claim is unverifiable, and contacting this contractor may not resolve your problem, and may cost you money.
Nevertheless I am leaving the comment there. Had landlineman written “I was able to resolve a problem like this” I would have left the comment up, so I will leave this one in that spirit. I am, however, deleting the URL in the message body. Click the name Ray to get a link to this contractor’s website. I leave that one in as the no follow keyword will prevent the link being used for Google’s page rank algorithm.
It was a cut and paste from a review left for me on another site.
I didnt think it would be a problem. Bearing in mind I charge £40 inc first hour, I dont think that is too much money to pay for peace of mind of fault diagnosis / repair.
Delete the comments if you wish.
Regards
Steve.
BY the way, I dont see that in your source
i have just read this whole thread, and i am also an openreach engineer who agrees with a lot of the reply’s but must say the main point has’nt been mentioned, the broadband training ive had was appallingly bad i have been doing broadband repairs for over 2 years and upto about 2 weeks ago broadband boost but they have removed this skilling from 41% of the guys in my patch because of repeat reports , i do what i can and most of the knowledge ive picked up from other engineers and experience but still have no idea if ive fixed a broadband fault when ive left, it is hard to cure a fault you have no real understanding of, if all your tests and equipment tell you the line is above agreed standard how do you fix a fault, i start with changing the nte and testing from the master socket and take it from there, i also usually check seam and move the e/u over to best E side cable i can with the lowest db loss and if there are spare do a comfort switch on the d side and still my repeat reports for bb boost were above 17% so hardly rocket science to see why so many poeple are not happy with the cs they receive
bit by bit they [OM] are taken us off pressure faults on the e-side cables and now when we find a wet cable they make us dry it out and not replace the damaged section,also the time they give us to do this has halfed, if the end users dont like us now wait till where sold off. its only going to get worse
Hi. I just had a visit from an OpenReach engineer to connect my phone up. He did that successfully on the ground floor and as I went upstairs to check the other connections, he enthusiastically bounded ahead of me and went, in succession into each of the rooms to check the connection. I did not ask him to do this but thought nothing of it – I had nothing to hide. However, as he was packing his stuff up he appeared to take a long hard glance at our security system. Perhaps I’m paranoid but was his enthusiasm to check all the sockets in the house just a ruse to check out the security system and identify entry points???
I wondered if anyone else had similar experiences?
I asked for his name afterwards
Checking out your security system ? dont be a plonker mate all BT staff are CRB checked – we work in banks, building societies, jewellers etc, etc why on earth would he want to rob you ?. He was just obviously doing a good job for you.
……In addition to my comment 124 – many intruder alarm systems have diallers to call a monitoring centres etc these are connected to the phone line and are very often unfiltered which can cause huge issues with digital service such as ADSL, the chap was more than likely checking for this.
Agreed, it is much more likely the engineer was trying to be helpful in this case. An example of one of the many good openreach engineers.
More than likely he was testing/commissioning the pre connected extensions you have and your service provider will being paying for this on a pre agreed arrangement.
Hi there,
I am keen to join as an Openreach engineer into the Sussex area, can any of your engineers advise of the best path?
I have 4yrs experience in IT Networking, supporting small companies with HP/DELL Servers, switches, routers, wireless technologies etc.
David – see the replies you have already got on the openpeeps engineer site
There is clearly an issue with the training/development of alot of ADSL trained engineers throughout the company.Most other engineers i speak to are clearly Sync chasers.many do not check for DCN,SNR values within correct parameters,CRC or HEC errors.but if you do not have a full understanding of the infrastructure then you just simply cannot pass comment or judgement.granted you people who have full knowledge of the networking side of telecoms are well within your rights to try and act like you know but quite simply you do not.Steven you say you had the newest copper installed well congratulations but like alot of the ”new copper” that is installed in most of the residential or business premises that i work in in the City Of London,it is either star wired or just generally absolutely disgraceful i.e cheap thin ‘o.36′ copper/poor LJU’s.But the big fact of the matter is B.T’s network still consists of alot of Aliminium cable and due to the electrical imbalance over Ali (ADSL works by wrapping itself around the copper(simplified it for simple people) therefore with the testers that are given i.e JDSU or EXFO testers it is a physical impossibity to have a ”perfect” ADSL circuit.Thanks and Goodnight
Thanks for the comment. I understand that there is a lot of reading here (I should probably just close comments on this page as it is rather old now). However do try and keep up. In the case above, the circuit WAS pretty exceptional. The problem was upstream.
“Fully Trained Openreach ADSL technical Expert/HHT Gold User”
“alot of Aliminium cable and due
to the electrical imbalance over Ali (ADSL
works by wrapping itself around the copper”
Ha ha “expert” are you having a laugh ?