Help - Broadband problems - Ultra slow!

macman

MrWill wrote: »

Yes Sky are also my line rental provider - phone calls are of very poor quality and often find it hard to hear the person on the other end - I'm guessing this is related! About to phone Sky so will update afterwards,

Thanks for the help.

Might have helped if you'd mentioned that at the outset-did you not think the two could be related?
Report it as a line fault, not a broadband fault, otherwise it will take longer for Openreach to get on the case.

MrWill

macman wrote: »

Might have helped if you'd mentioned that at the outset-did you not think the two could be related?
Report it as a line fault, not a broadband fault, otherwise it will take longer for Openreach to get on the case.

I did mention at the outset that I took the whole package, and that the line was not active - so maybe it would be better to read more carfully.

Plus when I ring locally the line is fine but when I ring further away it seems to distort, and I usually ring locally so I assumed it was a problem at the other end when ringing further away.

penrhyn

Hens teeth!

MrWill

Just got off the phone to Sky - they told me that a line test came back fine - so they said a further investigation is needed regarding distorted phone calls. They said this was unrelated to my broadband problem (not so obvious macman) and that it had a cap of 512mb on it - he has now increased it to 3mb that's enough for me.

To be fair I know I've heard bad things about Sky customer service but they were brilliant and so was the service they gave me. Obviously I shouldn't had had to go through it in the first place but they rectified it well.

Thanks for the help everyone.

macman

MrWill wrote: »

I did mention at the outset that I took the whole package, and that the line was not active - so maybe it would be better to read more carfully.

Plus when I ring locally the line is fine but when I ring further away it seems to distort, and I usually ring locally so I assumed it was a problem at the other end when ringing further away.

I'm well aware that you took the whole Sky package. That and whether the line was active is not really relevant. My point was that if you'd mentioned noise/crackling on the line at the outset, then the cause of your high noise margin would have been clear. Anyway, the real issue is, why did they cap the line at 512Mbps? Clearly, because the line is noisy! Removing that cap won't solve the noise problem. So i would suggest that the issues certainly are related, and that until the line is sorted it won't sustain the higher speed.
The fact that a remote line test comes back as 'OK' doesn't mean that the line is actually OK. It's simply that ISP's never want to get an OR engineeer out in case it comes back as a customer -chargeable issue, in which case they have to pay OR and try to recover that money from you.

MrWill

Ok I see what you mean now, apologies.

Yeah that's right - I said to him are they related and he said no (which I thought was weird considering the advice I got from here), then he said that an investigation can be opened for the phone line but it will most likely mean that an engineer will need to be called out, meaning that if the problem found is not a fault of Sky, they'll charge me £99 for the callout plus anything used to repair the line. Now considering the line was inactive for some time, and before we arrived here, I don't see this as fair at all as it most definitely isn't our fault. Plus there is no point speaking to the landlord as he is highly unlikely to agree to pay a callout (being a landlord), so not sure what to do. Is there a different way I can get it sorted?

Sky have put my line into a 10 day test period again, and he said it is not likely to drop below 2.5mb if at all....I'm not convinced so I guess I'll have to see what happens?

macman

No problem. The line's status before you moved in is not relevant. They always give you the standard spiel about paying the call-out charge if you report a line fault. Everything up to the master socket is Sky/OR's responsibility, eveything else is yours. If you've retested using a working corded handset plugged into the BT test socket behind the master socket faceplate, and the fault is still there, then you can be confident that the fault is upstream of the master socket and therefore not chargeable. The only exception is user-inflicted damage, such as smashing the NTE5 with a hoover, damaging the outside cabling when decorating, or a tree on your property rubbing against the cable. In the latter examples you would have to take it up with the landlord.
You might be lucky, I very much doubt if your problem will be solved without an OR engineer investigation.

MrWill

Ok, I will get hold of some corded phones to test first. Just to make sure I haven't knocked anything, what's an NTE5 and where is it usually located? If we haven't knocked this, I don't see how else we could have damaged something by accident so I'd then be confident to get an engineer out.

spud17

what's an NTE5 and where is it usually located?

It's the name for the horizontally split main (first) socket, the test socket is concealed behind the removable faceplate.

See,

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm