Anyone else been affected by the BT Outage?

cepheus

I'm with one of the smaller providers who rely on the BT network. Last nights 'BT wholesale' outage lasted from around 5.20pm and still wasn't fixed when I went to bed at 12 midnight. I had to switch my router on and off this morning to get a connection.

I understand this problem was widespread. How many other people have been affected on here? My friend on O2 in the same area (South East) were unaffected. Perhaps BT owe us some sort of rebate.

Over night BT Wholesale restored service to most customers, with some intermittent results and at this time most services appear to be back online, with the exception of some Bristol / London areas.

http://status.fast.co.uk/

Tech101

Yes, still down now. No updated information to suggest when it will return. I'm in West London with Plusnet.

cepheus

Have you tried switching you modem/router off for a while to reset it? What alternative are you using to post this?

Tech101

Using a 3 Mobile Wireless modem (which works great I might add). Have tried switching off router but still down. Plusnet now say BT believe problem fixed. I will give it another try in 20 mins.

chippy2u

Here in the South West it went down at about 5.30 last night but is back on now (9.30am). Had to ring my ISP as router would not reset, but about two minutes on the phone with the nice 'techy man' it's all back now. Thank goodness for a local ISP with an 01 phone number!!!

cepheus

I'm no wiser on the mechanics of the connections and how to avoid this. Is it the smaller providers which are reliant on BT wholesale which are most suceptible? Do BT use the older hardware? My friend with O2 wasn't affected.

Mark_In_Hampshire

Broadband providers either install their own equipment in the exchange ("LLU") or use BT equipment (BT Wholesale)

There aren't that many LLU providers. O2 use one called BE where it's available. So in those instances, the customer takes a different path to the net; where it is not available , O2 use BT Wholesale and sell the product called "O2 Access"

What was impacted here was BT Wholesale which seems to have affected many different people/ISPs.

You can avoid BT Wholesale by using an ISP who uses an LLU service. To determine what LLU services you can get go to www.samknows.com then availability checker, put your phone number in, and look at the list of providers down the right hand side

Once you have a list of those, you can then approach different ISPs who have the kit at your exchange to get moved to them instead.

Small (Market 1) exchanges tend to only have BT Wholesale as the provider of services, which Samknows states in as many words on the page.

cepheus

There are quite a few services available for my telephone number but I am so far from the BT exchange I only get a measly 1.6Mb

However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection.


The following services are available in your location:

• BT Wholesale ADSL
• BT Wholesale ADSL Max
• BT Wholesale WBC (21CN)
• BT Wholesale SDSL
• BT FTTC
• AOL LLU
• O2 / Be LLU
• Bulldog LLU
• TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
• Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU
• Tiscali LLU
• Tiscali TV (via Tiscali LLU)
• Orange LLU (Formerly Wanadoo)

macman

So discounting TT and it's partners in crime AOL and Tiscali, plus 'Oribble Orange, you've got 2 clearly superior LLU suppliers available, being 02/Be and Sky.
You also appear to have BT Infinity (FTTC) service as well, should you want to splash out for more speed.
What are you waiting for?

cepheus

Well a few questions. I still don't understand the physical mechanics; are these lines entirely seperate from BT? In other words, would 02/Be and Sky not be limited by the distance to the BT exchange, and could I be any more certain these won't suffer from the same problems as my present provider

Do 02/Be and Sky throttle (Fast don't, so they claim)

What does this mean

However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection.

macman

All that quote means is that you already have broadband on the line (your existing BT ADSL service).
No you can't be certain of that, any provider can have outages. If they're on the local loop, then it's BT OR who have to fix them anyway.
You may or may not see a speed improvement with BT/Sky. But you'll certainly pay less and receive better CS than from BT.