Broadband dilemma

[Non-Driver]

We have an old land line connection over telegraph pole which is contracted through TalkTalk although hardware is obviously provided by BT. Over the last 5 years we've had occasional total failure, the latest resulting in a rewire from the pole to the house. Recently the broadband has been awful, particularly at weekends & school holidays, buffering & crashing endlessly.

I'm considering moving to BT Infinity but don't know if this is really going to solve the problem.

Can I be confident paying more or swapping contracted suppliers is going to solve the problem ?

We're not in the wilds btw, just inside the M25 in Surrey.

[mixture]

Non-Driver,

The line will always be provided by BT, that's the nature of the UK market... Openreach provide the cables for metal based broadband.

The difference is in what happens when the physical line reaches the exchange. 98% of broadband providers just resell BT's broadband product, which is, well, pretty rubbish.

What you want is a LLU service. TalkTalk do provide LLU, but not on all exchanges, is your TalkTalk service LLU or BT based ? (might need to ask them to be sure, because if you've been with them 5 years, you may have never switched from BT to LLU on their network).

If you are on TalkTalk BT, ask them to switch you to LLU and see how that goes. Otherwise you might try a short term contract with another LLU provider to see how that goes.

I wouldn't waste your time with BT infinity..... being on the end of a telegraph pole you're obviously at an "in the sticks" part of their network where they've got a healthy monopoly and won't be in a rush to provide a decent service.

[M.Mouse]

I had 8+ years of great service from my original BB supplier. After several takeovers of the original company I ended up with Opal (part of TalkTalk I think) as my supplier. After a month or two my up to 8Mbps service dropped to an inconsistent 0.5Mbps. After several weeks of Opal blaming BT and vice versa and finding it almost impossible to get through on the telephone to Opal I changed to BT and signed for Infinity.

My reasoning was two fold. Firstly, if I had problems then in theory I only had one company to deal with albeit possibly separate departments! Secondly, BT Infinity entails an engineer visiting to change the master socket and install the new vModem before then checking a satisfactory speed.

With that in mind if you do go for Infinity the engineer will immediately spot if you have a line problem. In my mind your choice is clear.

[BOAC]

Be very wary of signing for Infinity UNLESS you are assured that your line will be 'improved'. As mixture says, it is all about the length of your line, regardless of where you live. A long 'ropey' pole supported line will not deliver Infinity speeds.

The EU have now 'approved' the UK's state aid application for broadband so you will need to watch the Surrey 'plan' and its roll-out. A fair bit of info on Surrey's plans on the Ewhurst and Surrey Hills website.

[MacBoero]

The SamKnows website is very useful for getting a feel for how things are laid out...
SamKnows - UK Broadband Availability Information

It will tell you what providers are available at your exchange, where your exchange is, is FTTC and or FTTP available etc.

[green granite]

Be very wary of signing for Infinity UNLESS you are assured that your line will be 'improved'. As mixture says, it is all about the length of your line, regardless of where you live. A long 'ropey' pole supported line will not deliver Infinity speeds.

Nor will the same long ropey length underground, it's the distance from the cabinet that is the deciding factor with infinity, the final cable can be replaced with new and it wont matter which it is.

[BOAC]

Nor will the same long ropey length underground, it's the distance from the cabinet that is the deciding factor with infinity

- not quite, and since the OP is on an o/head line the point is relevant. If you explore the Ewhurst website you will see some stunning examples of BT's 'up the pole' (gimcrack/bodged etc) work, so it is probably far worse for o/head lines. Underground lines tend to be fairly 'static, ie no falling branches, dodgy junctions, rotten poles etc, so it IS important to get this line 'improved'. Bear in mind BT will (should) NOT supply Infinity if the line length is too great anyway.

Non driver what is your line length? ::. Kitz - ADSL line and exchange checker .::

I assume everyone now knows the EU have now approved the BDUK state aid package?

[Non-Driver]

Not sure about the actual LLU status (was originally a Tiscali account taken out about 6 years ago), Samknows says it is available on the relevant exchange:

SamKnows - Broadband Availability - Burgh Heath (LSBURH) Exchange

We're about 1.3 miles as the crow flies from the exchange so do I need to moderate my expectations or is there a solution to be had here.

[BOAC]

It is line length you need to consider. Kitz will have a go at line length from the exchange for you bu it will all depend on the line-length from the appropriate Infinity capable cabinet (with line capacity). Ballpark speed I reckon 12-15Mb if you are lucky based on exchange distance - following wind and all that.

[Ancient Observer]

If the OP service is so bad, try a letter to the BT Chairman. He had his fixed by BT and he was miles from both a cabinet and an exchange. Seriously, letters to BT CEO have worked for me. I have no idea why some connections by BT are telephone poles, and others are underground. Ours is underground, but near neighbours is telephone pole. Since ADSL2+ went in at our exchange, speed has improved. I'm not sure that I'll go for infinity,altho Mr Mouse's number is impressive, and Mr/s Mouse mustn't be far away from me.

[oldbeefer]

My local exchange, Baschurch, was due to have infinity available from March this year. So far, no one can be connected. One of the reasons given is that BT have elected to go FTTP for the whole village, even for those fed by overhead lines. Not sure how they're going to do it, but there are coils of new cables (don't know if they are fibre optics or not) hanging from numerous poles.

[BOAC]

That's odd, ob, as Sam has your exchange already Infinity enabled 'in some areas' and BT show you as up and running for Infinity and 'accepting orders', although they do also mention FTTP as well.

[mixture]

. He had his fixed by BT and he was miles from both a cabinet and an exchange.

Erm... yes, of course he has had his fixed. He is the chairman. The staff are not exactly going to say no their boss are they ?

[BOAC]

...and - you would not believe it, would you...........the rest of the village did not get it. Strange, that?

Villagers revolt over BT chairman's broadband ? The Register

[mixture]

hehe...nice find BOAC..... as awlays, the elReg commentards always throw up one or two nice quotes......

There's millions of customers but there's only one chairman and you can afford to piss off one or two customers but not that one Chairman; he's the f******g boss, do you really think a single person in the company is going to say no if he asks "so can you guys sort out some broadband for me?"

Pretty much what I said earlier.

[Milo Minderbinder]

sending letters to the Chairman can work

A few years back BT contracted out a lot of broadband home installation work to an agency called Anovo, who in turn subbed it out further......
Anyway, I was working as contractor to one of the subcontractors.....it gets confusing
But the point was....most of the jobs which came my way were escalated cases which had been passed through by the team responsible for dealing with the Chairman's letters. Its quite probable he never saw them, but he had a full time team dealing with them. And they got the complaints sorted.
The jobs that came my way were the ones where the regular BT staff had fupped up in a big way. Examples were......enabling broadband on the neighbours phone line, not the customers.........engineers not turning up on three occasions because the job despatchers were relying on the postcoding software - and handing out the wrong address.......incorrect fitting of ADSL filters by BT staff...
As far as I'm aware BT eventually took the work back in-house after they abandoned their home computer support business attempt. It had been good money for me while it lasted. But the point is....complaining to the Chariman DID work for those customers

[mixture]

can work

Can being the operative word.

I can name you multiple instances where it didn't work for me.

I keep my C level escalations for extreme scenarios, i.e. situations where BT have evidently f'd up really, really, badly.... for example.... taking a customer offline through sheer incompetence because someone who doesn't deserve to be called an engineer working at the local exchange decided they wouldn't bother checking whether an existing circuit was in use before re-using the capacity for someone else.

Trying to escalate through normal "customer service" channels proved tedious and frustrating as always..... a C-level missive yielded nothing..... the customer had to invoke their DR plan and their main office was offline for ten days before I managed to eventually track down some middle-management type at BT who felt like being remotely helpful in escalating the fix.

And you wonder why I always advise that people avoid contracting BT for services if they can possibly help it.

As far as I'm aware BT eventually took the work back in-house

Nope, they're still subbing... infact they're subbing increasingly more these days ! Hence the QoS keeps going further down the pan. I regularly see subbed engineers turn up who don't know what they're there for .... they ask me to brief them because all they've been given is an address and a contact name.

BT are increasingly subbing out because they contract their subs on an "on-completion" basis... this means that if a sub goes to a job but is unable to mark it as complete due to whatever reason (such as BT not sending out the correctly skilled contractor), then they have to return the job to the pool and the subcontractor does not get paid. This means that on some days the subcontractor can drive around town going to X jobs but only gets paid for 1 or 2 because they've been unable to complete the others..... which means they'v basically spent the day at a loss, hardly even paying for petrol. From the subcontractors I've spoken to, they obviously, desperately, want to complete all the jobs.... they don't like leaving jobs incomplete.... but if BT don't give them the details they need, then they're stuffed.

[green granite]

but if BT don't give them the details they need, then they're stuffed.

What makes you think that only happens with BT Mixture? I've found, as a service engineer, that unless the original call was taken by an engineer, the issued fault rarely bore any resemblance of the real fault. First law of a good service engineer, find out from the customer exactly what he is complaining of.

[mixture]

What makes you think that only happens with BT Mixture?

Not saying only BT. Just saying BT are pretty nonchalant in when it comes to post-sales support and that there are many other telecomms companies I would rather deal with before signing a contract with BT.... particularly a contract for a business customer.

I've a lot of experience dealing with BT and other telecomms companies, I've almost always found BT's post-sales support to be amongst the lowest of the low.

Anyway, PPRuNe isn't the place for this kind of debate so I'm not going to say any more.

[oldbeefer]

BOAC

Yes, I know what samsays. In this case, he's wrong. None of the main players are accepting orders for the main village. The only ones to be connected so far, are those in a nearby village which has had one cabinet installed. The rest of us are stuffed and BT are not great at keeping us updated on progress!