Wifi - BT hub - dropping out. [Archive]

yellowtriumph

6th Apr 2017, 11:46

I'm hoping for some more help advice from the team. Our current Wifi situation is:
1. BT Infinity package.
2. I have no reason to think it is nothing but 'solid' coming into our house. We are on a new estate and the copper cables coming into the house are laid in pipes right up to the house.
3. In our front room is the BT Hub 5 which is our Wifi provision. Its converts the BT high speed signal on the copper wires incoming to the house directly to Wifi - there is no modem like when there used to be when they first introduced BT Infinity.

And here is the problem. All this works absolutely fine with our iMac. Being an iMac it is a reasonable physical size and I would think the wifi signal would have to drop a fair bit for the iMac not to connect reliably to the BT hub.

But, our Windows Acer laptop does, quite often, drop the connection to our BT hub. In which case it appears to 'look around' and connects to the next best thing which is the BT-fon service (for overseas members this is the wide area wi-fi signal broadcast by BT from the local telephone masts and you can connect to it if you are a customer of theirs). So the Acer connects to that.

When the in house wifi signal is re-established the Acer does not reconnect to it, it stays connected to the BT-fon signal. And there is the problem.

My wife is a member of the local gym, but it is small and getting into classes is difficult, you have to send the gym an email at 7am with your request if you are to stand any chance. So, we have set up Outlook on the laptop to send a 'pre made' message at 7am each morning when we are fast asleep! But, if the laptop is connected to BT-fon it does not send it which leads to disappointment for Mrs yt and earache for Mr yt! I imagine this is linked to a message we see on the laptop when we come down in the morning warning us that we are connected to an un-secure network (Bt-fon) - a soon as I reconnect to our in-house wifi the email message is sent but it is usually too late for Mrs yt to get in a gym class.

What I would like is for the laptop to reconnect back to our in-house wifi when it comes back. Windows 7 by the way.

(I don't know why the wifi signal keeps disappearing in the first place as far as the laptop is concerned - as mentioned above, the iMac never seems to lose the wifi connection, or if it does perhaps because of a problem with the Bt Hub, it automatically reconnects back to it when the wifi signal re-appears).

Sorry for the long post, I like to try and give as much info as possible.

andytug

6th Apr 2017, 11:53

Couple of things, one of which will be stating the obvious for which I apologise in advance.... but have you rebooted the Hub recently?

Some routers have issues over time with DHCP (the process of auto allocation of IP addresses to everything) but a reboot usually sorts it.

Also, worth checking the WiFi card to aerial connection on the laptop - no need to take it to pieces, should have at least a couple of removable panels underneath. WiFi card about an inch square and usually under the nearest panel to front and centre, the aerial connections are push on to fit and have seen them jolted off in the past, causing bad WiFi reception etc.
Have you tried the laptop in someone else's house to see if same happens?

configsafenot

6th Apr 2017, 11:55

I have Infinity 2 and the latest Hub 6

My Hub 5 dropped off both of my laptops (both Windies 10Pro, one Lenovo and one Fujitsu Siemens), I also have a Windows/Nokia 535 smartphone that also dropped off the Hub 5 and went to the BT-Fon

Since upgrading for free to the Hub 6, all three gimo's have stayed attached to the main Hub 6 and not wandered off...and when I travel with laptops and phone and return, all three latch on to the Hub 6 without issues

I got my Hub 6 from BT after complaining about the behaviour of the Hub 5 and they sent an engineer round to check everything and without identifying or confirming the issue they upgraded to the latest Hub

Which makes me think there could be an inherent fault with the Hub 5

I would suggest you complain loudly to BT and have them upgrade you FOC to the Hub 6....stamping foot and yelling if need be

PPRuNe Towers

6th Apr 2017, 12:05

Interesting comments,

I expect my Mac while on my travels to go to BT Fon as a default action. However, even when manually entering the wifi password in other people's houses, or even my own home, BT Fon totally dominates any cause for reconnection.

An unerring arrival at BT Fon before any other signals are detected and displayed as available.

Rob

andytug

6th Apr 2017, 12:22

BT FON is piggybacked on the Hubs as standard, so it is effectively still connecting to the same box, but under a different ID. Not sure why as not with BT myself, assume it's some attempt by BT to provide a public WiFi network to their customers or something?
The wifi analysis app on my phone shows them up as on the same channel and signal strength as hubs.

configsafenot

6th Apr 2017, 12:22

The thing I definitely like with the Hub 6 is that it has its own online diagnostics page where you can check for any issues on it and do the frilly bits like turn off or dim the LED lights on the front

Hub 4 was stable, no issues....but Hub 5 was a right royal pain in the wotsit

Fujitsu lappy was constantly bouncing from Hub 5 to Fon, thought it was the lappy cos its quite old, bought the Lenovo and that bounced like a demented bunny too

Upgraded both lappy's from Windies 7 & 8 to 10Pro thinking that would cure it...no joy there

My smartphone is Windies 8 and that bounced all the time on 5 but is as stable as a rock on 6

So I just got onto BT and explained the issues and they seemed to know the problem was a well known about one as they upgraded the hub without a quibble or argument

Background Noise

6th Apr 2017, 13:02

for overseas members this is the wide area wi-fi signal broadcast by BT from the local telephone masts and you can connect to it if you are a customer of theirs

I think BT FON is actually from a small portion of the bandwidth on your own (and other peoples) BT Home Hub.

Can you not tell your laptop to forget the FON network, or prioritise the ones it has set up, to keep your Home Hub as the priority network.

Interesting comments,

I expect my Mac while on my travels to go to BT Fon as a default action. However, even when manually entering the wifi password in other people's houses, or even my own home, BT Fon totally dominates any cause for reconnection.

An unerring arrival at BT Fon before any other signals are detected and displayed as available.

Rob

You should definitely be able to do that on a mac. In advanced network preferences you should be able to put your home network, and other home networks, at the top of the list so it will default to those, and only connect to FON when none of those are available.

yellowtriumph

6th Apr 2017, 13:52

Thanks all - so far! I will try some of these suggestions later on and report back.

BN. I switched off my home-hub at the wall socket and rather obviously lost the wifi signal to my laptop and iMac. I was able to connect to the BT-fon signal by entering my BT username and password and thence surf the internet etc (bbc.co.uk for example).

Norton did warn me that I was connected to an insecure network.

Would tend to suggest the wifi signal is airborne outside my house if my hub is fully powered off, but more than willing to be educated further on this - maybe something powered by the incoming telephone line for example?

andytug

6th Apr 2017, 13:59

configsafenot

6th Apr 2017, 14:02

Yellowtriumph....this might help you get to grips with your hub setup...

User guides and manuals for BT Hubs (http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10477/~/user-guides-and-manuals-for-bt-hubs)

At the bottom it has a diagnostics gizmo too which could help settle things

But if all else fails, call them and give them what for

(The new Hub 6 is alot stronger wifi signal than Hub 5 and its increased its range too, my phone picks up my Hub 6 from around 500m away whereas on Hub 5 the phone went to Fon almost as soon as I went out the front door)

PPRuNe Towers

6th Apr 2017, 14:07

Used that drag and drop 'prioritise this connection' list for years Background Noise.

In this case BT Fon dominates the signal so much the other desired potential log ons arrive anything up to 30 seconds later

Rob

yellowtriumph

6th Apr 2017, 14:09

Sounds like one of your neighbours is also with BT so when you power your hub off the laptop connects to the BT FON part of theirs instead.
There are very few "public wifi" installs outside town centres or public buildings as the cost is very high and the range short , probably why BT went for the hub option.

According to a software wifi signal strength meter on the laptop, the fon signal is almost the same signal strength as my home hub's. I am surrounded by close neighbours and lots of BT home hubs which strongly supports your post. Thank you & BN.

I will report back later after a bit of tinkering.

yellowtriumph

6th Apr 2017, 17:30

Just a little bit more info I've just noticed. I have an Apple Airport Express. This is a small Apple device that connects to my BT home hub and it outputs an analogue audio signal that I can then directly plug into my analogue sound system (it's a way of getting iTunes etc onto an old analogue speaker).

I notice that the light on the front of it is flashing yellow on/off. It should be steady green. I think this is telling me that it has experienced a wifi connection problem at some stage. It does work however, and I can stream to it even though the light is flashing.

Is this this telling me I have a problem with the Home hub? Are the laptop and Airport signalling to me to investigate the Home hub?

pax britanica

6th Apr 2017, 20:44

yellowtriumph

6th Apr 2017, 21:06

I live near a town centre and often get Wifi with \FOn or BT wifi popping upm ahea dof my own router. Howver main issue is that the Hub 5 is acknowledged by BTa s abit of lemon in some circumstances. One of these is its susceptibility to not recognsing external hubs /hotspots and trying to get you to log in to them. As has been pointed out tis other flaw is channel swapping/hopping and constantly changing th radio channel it uses for Wifi signals.
Solution is geta HH 6 . Much betetr and much less susceptible to these irritating problems. You have to push the customer service people a bit but if you say you have read about the hub 6 and it looks like it will clear my problems you should be lucky with getting it replaced foc

PB
I've switched the hub off and on again to see if it makes any difference. I was wondering if it might be a question of some sort of random co-channel wifi interference, so I have gone into the settings of the hub and changed the channel selection away from 'auto' and to be on Channel 8 permanently as the wifi discovery software suggested that most of the hubs around my property are on all the same two channels (1 & 6). I'll report back as to how it goes.

configsafenot

6th Apr 2017, 21:10

Saab Dastard

6th Apr 2017, 21:52

to be on Channel 8 permanently as the wifi discovery software suggested that most of the hubs around my property are on all the same two channels (1 & 6)
In that case you should set it to 11, as 1, 6 & 11 are non-overlapping. You will still get interference from channel 6 if you select 8.

SD

yellowtriumph

7th Apr 2017, 07:34

Yellowtriumph

Get in touch with BT and demand the new hub...Home Hub 6.....its vastly improved on the faulty Home Hub 5 and they know they are faulty so they should give you the latest variant free of charge

Give them a bit of grief cos they will argue with you but they KNOW the 5 is a bad router/modem...so they will give you the new model

I will ring them and report back.

In that case you should set it to 11, as 1, 6 & 11 are non-overlapping. You will still get interference from channel 6 if you select 8.

SD

I looked this morning and there were a few more hubs 'being seen' by the software this morning - they were on Channel 11. So, in the last 24 hours I have now seen various hubs in my vicinity on channels 1,6 and now 11. The signal strengths of these new channel 11's seems quite low (-84 and - 92 dbm) compared to my HH's signal strength (-66dbm) so I have changed my HH's channel to be 11 as you have suggested. I will report back - but would feed back that the laptop had not connected to the Bt-fon signal overnight and all appeared ok, but it has been ok for a few days in the past and then the problem returns so it is not time to celebrate yet.

As per the previous post I will try and get BT to send me a HH6.

Thanks to all the contributors for your help so far.

I spoke to a number of BT people, but despite my efforts an updated Home Hub was not forthcoming. I really tried I can tell you, they are sending a replacement HH 5 which should be forthcoming next Tuedsday.

Background Noise

7th Apr 2017, 09:09

I notice that the light on the front of it is flashing yellow on/off. It should be steady green. I think this is telling me that it has experienced a wifi connection problem at some stage. It does work however, and I can stream to it even though the light is flashing.

We have the same, several in fact. It may just need resetting, or the firmware updating. Use Airport Utility to do either - should be available on any iOS device or your mac, and presumably there is a windows version.

pax britanica

7th Apr 2017, 09:12

Were they UK or India based the people you spoke to. I would try them again and then write to BT executive complaints -just send an ordinary letter addressed to the Chairman at BTs head office, address is on the internet under BT Plc . They know the HH5 is not all that good and say you have tried and tried and tried and that the regular customer service people wont help you.

I know writign to the Chairmant seems an over reaction but he has got teams of people working on executive level complaints and its BTs own fault fr havign such poor customer service anyway.
PB

yellowtriumph

7th Apr 2017, 10:56

We have the same, several in fact. It may just need resetting, or the firmware updating. Use Airport Utility to do either - should be available on any iOS device or your mac, and presumably there is a windows version.

Will give it a try and report back next week - away for the weekend.

Were they UK or India based the people you spoke to. I would try them again and then write to BT executive complaints -just send an ordinary letter addressed to the Chairman at BTs head office, address is on the internet under BT Plc . They know the HH5 is not all that good and say you have tried and tried and tried and that the regular customer service people wont help you.

I know writign to the Chairmant seems an over reaction but he has got teams of people working on executive level complaints and its BTs own fault fr havign such poor customer service anyway.
PB

I have had occasion to write to the BT chairman's office in the past about more mundane problems at our last house (changing back to BT from a truly awful experience with TalkTalk) and I have to say I found their responses absolutely excellent - very personal, and very very on the ball.

Believe it or not, despite surfing all over the BT website i could not actually find a contact telephone number. In the end I got involved with live chat session with a young lady in India. She was obviously trying her very best bearing in mind I imagine she was following a preset script and made a couple of useful suggestions that I knew would not work. However, I effectively steered her down the route I wanted to go and whilst she could send out an HH5 she did not have the authority to send out a HH6. She offered to ring me at home and put me in touch with 'Customer Options', this she did immediately and put me through - to 'Customer Options' in the UK who had no idea why I was put through to them. They listened patiently and decided I needed to speak to another department the name of which I forget now - but I was put through to a very nice Welsh lady.

She tried explaining a few technical matters me, but I managed to persuade her that all her suggestions, whilst perfectly reasonable would not work for me. She offered me a free replacement HH5 but could not authorise a new HH6 and I would have to pay for that (special offer £50 + delivery). I baulked at that and insisted I wanted a HH6. She went away and spoke to her manager but replied I would have to pay for a HH6. We chatted away again for quite a while and I poured my heart out to her so she went away and consulted again. But the response was still in the negative. I do think she was trying to help.

So, a replacement HH5 should arrive next Tuesday and I have to give it a go don't I?

Whilst it is tempting to contact Chairman's office I think they would likely initially respond that it is reasonable for me to try the replacement HH5 first.

configsafenot

7th Apr 2017, 11:15

Threaten to take your business elsewhere....for the sake of 50 quid, they should bend with you and send the HH6 FOC

pax britanica

7th Apr 2017, 12:15

PEI_3721

7th Apr 2017, 14:50

Technical and commercial problems as above. Several BT users in the area.
Daily reset helps maintain a reasonable service.
Initial installation problems of low rate were finally traced to the local exchange, which was eventually fixed by an excellent BT engineer - he ignored the multiple texts warning him that he was spending too much time on this job.

Zero joy from India. Every call responded with the same computerised checklist without resolution, which then resulted in a continuing, repeating, 48 hr response time, including a followup 'how was the service' enquiry.

Commercial / technical issues finally resolved with U.K. contact - 'Blodwyn' from Wales, who had both the intellect and tenacity to understand and correct the issue, including reimbursement.
Hub 6 info noted, may try this option,... if only I had 'Blodwyn's' number

Background Noise

7th Apr 2017, 16:06

yellowtriumph

7th Apr 2017, 17:59

Don't completely diss what 'they' can do over the phone - I had a long chat with India about the MiL's flaky cable modem router (once we'd got over me not being the account holder) and he reset it and 'upgraded' it remotely. Not sure how or what but it resulted in a faster, and considerably more steady, connection.

Wouldn't dream of 'dissing' any tech help desk, before I retired I was very often dealing with technical problems over the phone myself. She offered upgrade/reset etc etc but the intent of my call was to try and get a HH6 rather than hang on to what I already had.

I will give some more feedback after the replacement HH5 arrives next Tuesday, but it is a heavy week for me and it may be a while before I can take this further.

As an aside, at our last house, BT's well intentioned efforts to resolve our broadband issues resulted in the local BT area technical manager in our front room on the phone to some chap in the north east trying to get the HH reset and upgraded. Yes I have, no you haven't, yes I have, no you haven't, yes I have, no you haven't.... He gave up in the end and said he would monitor the broadband performance of our line from his own house. He even gave us his personal BT mobile number to keep in touch.

Love or hate them, it's service like that that has kept me as a BT customer for many years, although I wouldn't suggest for a millisecond that service like that is typical! I find breaking down in tears helps matters, but not in this case sadly so I will have to change my modus operandi!!

configsafenot

7th Apr 2017, 18:16

Wouldn't dream of 'dissing' any tech help desk, before I retired I was very often dealing with technical problems over the phone myself. She offered upgrade/reset etc etc but the intent of my call was to try and get a HH6 rather than hang on to what I already had.

I will give some more feedback after the replacement HH5 arrives next Tuesday, but it is a heavy week for me and it may be a while before I can take this further.

As an aside, at our last house, BT's well intentioned efforts to resolve our broadband issues resulted in the local BT area technical manager in our front room on the phone to some chap in the north east trying to get the HH reset and upgraded. Yes I have, no you haven't, yes I have, no you haven't, yes I have, no you haven't.... He gave up in the end and said he would monitor the broadband performance of our line from his own house. He even gave us his personal BT mobile number to keep in touch.

Love or hate them, it's service like that that has kept me as a BT customer for many years, although I wouldn't suggest for a millisecond that service like that is typical! I find breaking down in tears helps matters, but not in this case sadly so I will have to change my modus operandi!!

If all else fails and they refuse to let you have an HH6....threaten to take your custom elsewhere

Being a long standing customer, they will realise that losing you is worth the expense of a FOC HH6

yellowtriumph

7th Apr 2017, 18:34

yes they are very helpful as are some-but only some of the BT staff and as you saw there is no way to contact anyone above first line customer service.

Give the HH5 a try but as i say it is known to have deficiences in the very areas you are having problems with, ie muddling up 'public' BT networks with your own router and not handling the channel hopping. When is your BT contract up for renewal

Our contract is until November 2017.

If all else fails and they refuse to let you have an HH6....threaten to take your custom elsewhere

Being a long standing customer, they will realise that losing you is worth the expense of a FOC HH6

I sort of hinted at that, that's why she was able to tell me we are signed up until this coming November. I think the lady I was speaking to would have sent it, she spoke to her manager twice during our conversation, but clearly they weren't having it.

I like BT's service and would be reluctant to leave them, I think it is true that perhaps unwittingly Openreach do give a better response to BT customers. Once Openreach is separated from BT from a managerial perspective then I guess it will be a more level playing field from a customer viewpoint and so a change of provider would not be so 'dramatic' as it were.

As an aside we are currently fttc, but the below ground cable infrastructure is all pipe work and someone on the estate in liaising with BT to see what the cost of fttp might be on the assumption, from BT themselves, that a fibre can be easily drawn into the existing ducting. So, new fibre, new modem - could this be the answer!!

jimjim1

10th Apr 2017, 14:08

The ONLY way to stop the thing connecting to your FON... SSID from time to time is to delete the relevant profile.

To get windows to forget for example the BT...FON Wifi SSID

In a run as "Administrator" Command Window type

netsh wlan show profiles

C: \Users\T>netsh wlan show profiles

Profiles on interface Wireless Network Connection 2:

Group policy profiles (read only)
---------------------------------
<None>

User profiles
-------------
All User Profile : BTWifi-with-FON
All User Profile : AndroidAP99

C: \Users\T>

Make a note of the exact name and capitalisation of the one you want to delete. Then type eg.

netsh wlan delete profile name="BTWifi-with-FON"

This will stop the device from connecting to that WiFi name automatically unless it is once again manually selected from the list of WiFis AND the "Connect Automatically" box is checked.

By the way - If you delete a profile that has a WiFi Key associated with it the WiFi Key will need to be re-entered if you wish to connect again.

You can otherwise safely delete any and all of the profiles.

I would delete any that you do not anticipate using again.

I suspect that -

netsh wlan delete profile name="*" will work.

This will though forever forget all your saved WiFi Keys.

Good luck.

ExGrunt

10th Apr 2017, 16:07

Hi,

As a hardware alternative, you can use a non BT modem/router with a BT service.

In difficult situations I recommend:

Billion BiPAC 7800DXL

Which you can get from the South American river place. At just under 100 notes it is not cheap, but in this case you get what you pay for.
It will do both ADSL and direct Ethernet connection to a fibre modem and as a backup you can plug in a 3g dongle.

In terms of wifi it has both 2.5Ghz and 5Ghz and you can run several virtual SSIDs to separate out users.

I have successfully used one in place of a BT HH5.

HTH

EG

rans6andrew

12th Apr 2017, 21:38

Our wifi issues may be unrelated to the OP's but this is what I found.

My partner kept finding her desktop PC would lose the wifi link and then fail to reconnect without rebooting the machine. Doing wifi network diagnosis and repair would not get her back on line. I have a utility on my netbook which monitors wifi and bluetooth signals. It showed the signal from our router being intermittently swamped by BT_fon, there were multiple incidences of BT_fon and all were jumping all over the channels on 2.4GHz wifi. I tried bumping our router to several different channels but the BT_fon always stepped all over it. The affected PC is at the front of our property and the wireless router is at the rear. This arrangement is called for because I use the signal from the wireless router for connection to my computer in my workshop in the rear garden. I also see internet dropping out occasionaly but I have an on screen display of wifi signal strength and quality which never drops, the loss is clearly on the incoming phone connection.

In our case the solution has been to use a bunch of powerline adaptor network links to get the signal from the router to our Freeview hard disk recorder, to her PC and also to a network enabled printer in another room. We still have internet dropping out at a low incidence level but all machines pick up where they left off when the router gets the live internet link restored.

Rans6

yellowtriumph

13th Apr 2017, 10:02

OK, time for an update, sorry for the delay.

The last position was:
I had powered off/on the home hub.
BT (In India) said they had reset my connection - although I'm not clear what this means.
I had changed the wifi channel manually to be channel 11.
I have gone into the BTWifi-with-FON connection properties (under properties>connection) and unticked the box marked 'Connect automatically when this network is in range).

Since then the laptop, which is always physically in the same place, has not connected to the Fon signal, and, the Apple Airport express now sits with a nice green light on which is indicating it is happy with its wifi (and hence internet?)connection.

I suppose this is good news of some sort and I am tempted not to do anything further for a suitable test period. I have had a replacement HH5 delivered. Any further thoughts from the team?

yellowtriumph

13th Apr 2017, 10:06

The ONLY way to stop the thing connecting to your FON... SSID from time to time is to delete the relevant profile.

To get windows to forget for example the BT...FON Wifi SSID

In a run as "Administrator" Command Window type

netsh wlan show profiles

Make a note of the exact name and capitalisation of the one you want to delete. Then type eg.

netsh wlan delete profile name="BTWifi-with-FON"

This will stop the device from connecting to that WiFi name automatically unless it is once again manually selected from the list of WiFis AND the "Connect Automatically" box is checked.

By the way - If you delete a profile that has a WiFi Key associated with it the WiFi Key will need to be re-entered if you wish to connect again.

You can otherwise safely delete any and all of the profiles.

I would delete any that you do not anticipate using again.

I suspect that -

netsh wlan delete profile name="*" will work.

This will though forever forget all your saved WiFi Keys.

Good luck.

A bit too complicated for me at the moment! Please see my latest post as it appears to be working ok at the moment.

pax britanica

13th Apr 2017, 11:43

Much of this thread shows up the poor general state of Internet access in the UK . Most of it comes down to poor regulation allowing providers to get away with low service performance levels and leaving the customers with contracts that are hard to escape from. Basically any demonstrated poor service that lasts more than a month should allow the customer to move supplier but as always in UK business comes first.

As to the OPs problems which seem to have diminished to a degree , perhaps some HH settinngs have been altered which ahve improved things and even if they will only send you an HH5 these are not all the same - they bought a lot of them over a period of team and as with all such equipment various software/firmware fixes are incorporated in later generations.

Perhaps the formal seperation of OpenReach (chat toa BT tech if you know one about what this means for cohabiting BT employees , human rights violations all the way there) will make it easier to change but in itself thats not simple.
Where I live -in a small raod which is private but which is not a private road as we do not join onto a public highway but drive over the pavement to get to it this means we cannot get Virgin who are allowed to skip roads that dont suit them. Sky are next best as the others are too small really but I object to giving the scum who own that enterprise any money. So when it comes down to it it is BT or nothing and soem of their products are best in class. Not BT email though stay away from that unless already committed.
What you could try is write to a suitable BT exec with a brief synopsis and say you feel you have been let down by the company who put contractual detail ahead of customer service and that this will make it unlikely that you will continue with BT when your contract runs out. Make the comment that the HH5 is known to be less than perfect (a lot of the UK based BT tech support people are quite open about this if you 'chat them up' and that one way of keeping you would be to give you the HH6 ahead of your new contract because thats ikely to persuade you to stay. However a new HH5 could help so give that a try first. Good luck

Gonzo

15th Apr 2017, 21:17

I have had terrible trouble over the past few years with BT Broadband.

Internet dropping out constantly, very lucky to see speeds above 1Meg (more usually around 300k), weekly 'live chats' with tech support who have to 'reset the connection' every time (and have to spend about 30 mins of back and forth before getting to this step).:ugh:

And then the wonder that is Openreach tell us our cabinet is enabled for fibre, despite Hampshire County Council's superfast initiative telling me that we are too far away from the cabinet to benefit. Cue a week of more back and forth, where Openreach say we can get up to 40Meg and BT Broadband (and any other third party ISP) telling us that we are too far from the cabinet and do not want the risk of us not getting the promised speeds (and they estimate 1.5Meg):ugh:

Openreach then deign to arrange an engineer visit, and they make it quite clear they need access to the property so someone must be in at the time. I arrange a day off work for the 0800-1300 window. At 1245 I get a text from them saying that the visit has been cancelled as they have 'just discovered' that they need access to the property and will reschedule to allow me to ensure someone is present!!!!:ugh:

Openreach finally come clean the next day and say that I will not be able to get fibre, and to regularly check the website in case the situation changes. I go to the website, and guess what, it says I can get fibre! :ugh:

Oh well; I'm now cancelling my BT contract as I have a Vodafone data sim card in my Huawei 315 4G router and I'm getting 20Megs now.:cool:

Well done BT.

configsafenot

15th Apr 2017, 21:28

Mine is Infinity 2 from BT with a speed of upto 76 meg....I live about 20ft away from the cable cabinet and that is about 200ft away from the exchange

I get average 35-45 meg

Contacted BT to complain, they looked into it agreed that the speed was well down on what is advertised and cut my monthly bill

I have the mobile/broadband/landline package from them and FreeSat for the TV

I shifted from Sky to BT and even with the occasional hassle from BT, I am still saving well over £120 a month, so the occasional dropout is acceptable, not happy but acceptable

yellowtriumph

16th Apr 2017, 08:39

Latest update. Things continue to go well insofar that the laptop has not randomly connected to Bt-fon and the Airport express continues to display a 'happy' green light for it's wifi connection. So, has the previous work sorted it out?

But ... by means I cannot discuss here, BT have sent me not one but two of their latest Home Hub 6's!! (plus the replacement HH5).

I am sorely tempted to change over to it, but on-line reviews are mixed and not universally great. Any team thoughts?

Edited to add, spoke to my neighbour opposite yesterday, he said he suffered from the same random connections to BT-fon, he has a HH5 too. He gets around it by using ethernet via the mains wiring around his house, that was going to be my very last resort.