O2 Home Premium/Be, Over Subscribed in Exeter,Terrible Speeds, 21CN Problems

I am posting this up partly because I would urge anyone in Exeter thinking about signing up of O2 or Be Broadband to think very carefully about signing up to it, as they have told me that their equipment in the Exeter exchange is over subscribed and you are unlikely to get anything like the service they advertise at the moment.

I have been using O2 Home Premium Broadband, it seemed like a good deal, I have an O2 mobile, so I'll give them that, it is very cheap.

When I signed up for the deal, they were promising 1:50 contention ratios for Home Premium customers, and 1:20 for Pro Customers. Now all mention of this has disappeared from their website.

When we first got the broadband connected, we were quite happy with the speed, we were getting 14MB. After a few months it started getting quite slow, but put this down to using the Internet at peak times, and the websites themselves being over loaded.

About a month ago, the Internet dropped out altogether. The router stays in sync, in fact the outer says it is synced at 19MB, but there is no throughput at all. Everything times out or could not be found.

I rang O2, by the time I got through, the Internet had come back up, but was extremely slow. They asked me all the usual things, had I tried turning my router off and on again, could I do a speed test, swap filters they even got me to unscrew the face plates from the phone sockets to look for the test socket etc. None of this made any difference.

They did some tests at their end, and said that the connection had an unusually large number of errors, but they seemed to be being compensated for. They did a line test and one test reported back that our line was 1200m away from the exchange and one reported that we were 2.5km from the exchange, so they decided to send it off to second line support and get them to look into it. I have looked it up on Google maps, we are actually less than 700m from the exchange, even with the weird wiggly route Google map takes, so we can't be anything like 2.5km from the exchange, unless there is some seriously weird cabling going on there.

When I spoke to second line support, they asked me to take speed test results from:

http://www.speedtest.net
http://download.bethere.co.uk/downloadMeter.html

and download a Fedora ISO from a mirror and tell them what speed it downloaded at. They said they would call back when they had looked into what was going on with the line test.

So I did all this, and took results dutifully every couple of hours for the next 24 hours and e-mailed them to O2.

Second line support did not call back, but thankfully they had told me that if you call them after 11pm, they only have Second line support on the phones. So I called back after 11.

The guy I spoke to said that he had not got my speed test results, and could not find any information about the line test. He suggested that I tried a new router, as mine could be faulty, and they sent a new one out.

The new one arrived promptly, but did not arrive in good condition. It had a dirty great black mark on the front of it. I connected it up anyway, and reinstalled all the O2 software to see if that made any difference, and it didn't, we still had terrible speeds.

So I called up again and spoke to second line support. They said they still had not received my speed test results. I asked if I should re-send them, and was then told that he would not use those speed test websites, and asked me to do some more. So I took a range of speed test results from

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/

They did receive these results, and were happy enough to send them problem off to their Networking team. They said they would call back when the Network Team had investigated.

They didn't call back, so I called, again. I explained what was going on, and I was told to "Calm down and have a cup of Ovaltine, and some Green and Blacks Chocolate" whilest mocking me because his Internet connection had only gone down once for 30 minutes in 3 years. After what felt like forever, honestly minutes of being talked at about what brand of Green and Blacks Chocolate would calm me down the most, he started to look at my broadband account. The Network team had left some notes for the Second line support.

They said that there was a problem at the main Exeter exchange. There was local looped unbundled hardware belonging to O2, and it had been completely over subscribed. It was maxing out at 100Mbit. They said it was their fault (and I have this recorded) and that they planned to upgrade the hardware, but had no date when. I breathed a sigh of relief if there was O2 hardware in the exchange, then there was no reason to pass this off to BT.

I asked them if they could find out when it would be upgraded, and they said they couldn't. I asked them if they could let me know when they had a date for this to be upgraded., and they said they couldn't. He then proceeded to start telling me the benefits of Ovaltine again.

When I could get a word in edgeways again, I asked if they could not fix it, could I speak to someone about getting some money back if I was going to have to wait indefinitely for the service to be fixed. He said that his manager was in a meeting, but he would be out in the next few hours, and would get him to give me a call when he got out.

Guess what? He didn't call back.

So I rang back the next day, and asked to speak to a manager. I was told that I couldn't speak to a manager but they would get someone from customer services to call me back.

A woman called me back. She said because of the fact that the problems were because of BT and the 21CN network upgrade there was nothing they could do.

I tried to explain that the support guys had already told me it was a problem with O2 owned hardware being over subscribed, she denied this and said that she had been in contact with the network team, since my last call (there was about 2 minutes in-between the two calls) and they had changed their minds.

She said she would give me a months free broadband, but that O2 could not provide the service, because of BT and that they wanted to end my contract, so I could go to another service provider and tried to give me my MAC code on the spot. However she said she did not know if any one else's service would be any better, because of the network upgrades. I had never heard anything like this before in my life!

So I asked her, if this is the case, why would I want to move from O2 if all companies are having the same problem? Can't you just tell me when you will be replacing your over subscribed hardware, then I don't have to move anywhere and she said no.

So I rang BT to find out what the state of play was with the 21st Century Network (21CN). They informed me that Exeter is 87% 21CN enabled, and that my line is one of the lines that has been enabled. They also said they knew other people on other providers that were having speed trouble too.

So I called O2 again. It seemed even more pointless to move if everyone else was having the same trouble. I explained what BT had just told me and that I felt that there was nothing anyone can do to make BT speed up their repairs, and that I just wanted a date when O2 were going to to their upgrades. They again said they could not find out. I asked if they could call or leave a message for their network support team, and they said they have no way of communicating with them (support can't but customer services can?! How can this be true? If that is the case they could never have got the networking team to have had a look at my problem to begin with.).

So now I have crap internet, a provider who doesn't want me as a customer, and no idea who to go with next.


If they are doing network upgrades that's fair enough, it's progress, everyone's in the same boat, but even if they upgrades weren't happening, O2 have already told me that the service wouldn't work.


How can they tell me their equipment isn't working, but they have no intention of fixing it in future? But they are still subscribing new customers in the area. I assume I can't complain to anyone about that because they don't want to provide me a service any more anyway? Can they end their contract with me because they just don't want to be my provider any more? I'm sure if I just didn't want to be their customer any more, that wouldn't get me out of the contract, why does it get them out of it? Can I charge them a cancellation fee or something, for ending their contract with me early?


They also seemed to have charge the terms of the contract, while I was still in it, because they don't promise any certain contention ratio any more. Companies seem to do this a lot, are they allowed to change their terms on you mid-contract?

I was wondering if there was any one else on this forum from Exeter, I would be really interested to see other people speed test results in Exeter are like and which Internet provider they are with. Might be able to get a feel for how the 21CN is working out down here.