Anybody else with broadband connection problems after exchange upgrade

Mick_G_2

Hi all ...

Our exchange was upgraded by BT in February to improve speeds, and shortly afterwards we started having broadband connection problems.

Generally the connection is OK, but a couple of times an hour a page will just appear to stop loading. If you watch, it is still loading ... just extremely slowly. And as soon as you refresh the page it loads fine.

Then there will be bad periods when this problem is happening so much that the connection is pretty much unusable. As this is my business connection it is having a real impact on my working day

Now since the 16th of February 2012 I have had ...

• 23 conversations with BT
• 3 different routers (the latest is a BT Business Hub)
• 3 engineer visits
• 3 SNR resets
• My connection is also now interleaved (apparently this is supposed to help with reliability)

... and I have also emailed an escalation officer whose name I have at BT twice about the issue (and have been ignored both times)

I have logged all of the conversations I have had with BT, and much of the info I have been given is conflicting. Guess nobody that has had the pleasure of chasing a fault with BT will be surprised at that one! But the overriding theme is that this is very much a problem on my line, and that they never see it elsewhere.

I was talking to a customer of mine yesterday ... they have just been through an exchange upgrade too. And (shock horror) they are having the same kind of issues we are. *Their* engineer told them that this is because of the sensitivity of the upgraded equipment being installed.

After seeing this, I spent a few minutes on Google and found numerous people complaining about the same kind of problems. So how common is this exactly? If you have had this kind of problem with BT after an exchange upgrade, maybe you could post your experiences here along with any solutions that were found?

I'll send a link to the results to BT's helpdesk ... maybe it will help them to get their stories straight!!

HappyMJ

Yes I do get a yellow triangle over the network icon in windows for about 10-20 seconds a few times a day. Not sure why and BT aren't helpful..

Mick_G_2

Yes, I get something similar.

Have just shared this on Facebook and Twitter ... it would be good to understand exactly how big a problem this really is.

Maybe Watchdog will take notice if enough people are being fobbed off!

fatchief

As a small internet reliant business we cannot afford to be without a reliable internet connection.

We also had our exchange upgraded in March 2012 and since then have had no end of trouble with dropped connections every few minutes and ultra slow speeds. We were even advised at one stage that it was our internal wiring and equipment that was at fault.

After getting in computer techs in to overhaul our computer network (that came back with a clean bill of health) BT reluctantly agreed to do something about it.

Eventually after many hours (I exaggerate not) of speaking to various polite people at the other end of a phone line and 3 engineers visits (after waiting between 3 & 5 days for each appointment) we now appear to have a stable connection.

This period has seen sales opportunities lost (some for considerable value e.g. in excess of 2K) and we have been powerless to do anything about it. BT really don't seem to care as they appear to be swamped with more complaints than they can handle at the moment (told to me by one of their engineers).

My advice is to keep a log of each person you speak to / date & time/ duration of call as well as visits and what the engineer said. Eventually (maybe) you'll get to a resolution but only after many many hours of being on the telephone being fed contradictory information and instructions and hoping that your small business can survive.

You can use this log to question what you are being told and to stop getting 'fobbed off'. If worst comes to worst, even as evidence in a compensation claim!

It's tough enough as it is without inefficiency issues of this kind to have to deal with!

BT really does mean Blinking Terrible!

Mick_G_2

Couldn't agree more on the "keeping a log" front fatchief ... something I always do personally, and am building my tale of woe on this one!

The sad thing is that BT is trying to fix this, but they just don't seem capable. I'd move to another ISP, but I know it will still be down to BT Openreach engineers to fix any problems whoever I use ...

Mick_G_2

Engineer visit number 4 booked for Tuesday!

Got some info today from the member of the network faults team that is handling my case. After telling her about the chat with my customer, she did admit that yes ... the new equipment being fitted at exchanges is more sensitive than the old equipment. And that some customers (not many, she says) have such bad issues that the connection is completely unusable.

A while back, customers like this would be rolled back to the old equipment to restore their connection. But now this equipment is being dumped in the march towards faster speeds (as the older kit only supports speeds of up to 8Mbps, which would be heaven to some of us!).

What happens to these customers? They are treated to a "technical cease" which just means BT say sorry ... we can't supply you with broadband any more. Try satellite or 3G :eek:

So what about the rest of us that "just" have unreliable broadband after the change? The standard answer seems to be multiple engineer visits with 10 days between them for settling time. Most cases are apparently resolved eventually.

If the next engineer visit doesn't do the trick, time to start looking around at companies that keep their own equipment at BT exchanges I think. Some of these guys might just have the sense to keep some of the older, less sensitive equipment for customers that really need it ...

JohalaReewi

Funny you should mention this but yes. After the BT exchange upgrade and my ISP moving everyone to ADSL2+ (for free), the connection went from rock solid to works mostly, but went through a period of "doesn't work at all".

Over the last couple of months my ISP and I have tried various settings and equipment and have now got a fairly stable connection. The problem seems to be that everything works well for a few days, then for some reason, either the BT exchange, or my ADSL modem, decides to try and go a little bit faster and although there is line sync with the exchange, it is not possible to log in to the ISP (so no internet). The BT exchange / modem don't realise this (the line sync is rock solid) so they do not drop the line speed back down.

It is not clear why the line sync is reporting as OK but the modem is unable to login to the ISP and connect to the internet. The working solution at the moment is for the ISP to place a limit on the line to try and prevent the connection from going too fast to work.

There is a handy free utility called routerstats lite which you can run on your PC. This will monitor and log the line speed and noise margin (as reported by the router). It works with a large number of modem routers.

http://www.vwlowen.co.uk/internet/files.htm#routerstatslite

You can also pair this with an internet connection monitor so you can track both your line connection and internet connection over a long period of time (like days). Makes for useful data to send to the ISP who can match it up with their logging software.

Mick_G_2

Thanks for the link JohalaReewi, I'll bookmark that.

I went through a period like the one you are suggesting and the engineers didn't cap the line speed as such, but they did manually force the SNR (signal to noise ratio I think?) to 9. Previously we were at an SNR of 6, which is only going to work for homes very close to the exchange apparently (up to 1km, and we are around 6km away). The engineer that had this capped reported lots of errors on the line ... he could only see these at the cabinet apparently though.

This did help a little, but it didn't remove the problem altogether.

One think I have noticed (and mentioned to BT several times) is that we now have (an unreliable) 3Mbps or so. Before the Exchange upgrade we had around 2.4Mbps which was generally OK although we have had a number of issues on this line over the past 18 months or so.

It may be that they have to force our SNR down still further. Hopefully we will keep some kind of decent connection when they finally get to the bottom of this

Mick_G_2

Well, it is Tuesday and no word from BT (for the third "engineer visit" in a row), so I phoned my helpful network problem team contact.

Apparently our line is now one of the best in the area now and the engineers could not find any problems with it. Guess that is why they didn't think it was worth ringing and telling me :mad:

Anyway ... I was asked to run a test on speedtester.bt.com and part 2 failed downstream, which apparently means we have a throughput issue. BT asked me to configure the business hub to run step 3 and it lost the plot. I can't even ping it so the only way back for that is factory reset/reconfiguration it seems.

I was asked to go back to one of my other routers (a Belkin) and the BT contact didn't want to risk reconfiguring this for speedtester part 3 too just in case we are left without an Internet connection altogether.

This is now being escalated to the "complex problem team" at BT wholesale. Wonder if this team will finally manage to resolve our issues (sigh) ...

Mick_G_2

Well, 36 phone calls and 4 engineer visits later, this has finally been resolved. Thought I would post the resolution in case it helps somebody else.

BT manually set our SNR to 12, and our service immediately became usable again. Still a bit sluggish occasionally, but perfect most of the time.

Also spoke to the customer of mine that was having problems, and their resolution was exactly the same ... their SNR was manually set to 6 (they are much closer to their exchange than we are).

BT agreed to refund 4 months' charges to make up for the issues caused, which was appreciated. Fingers crossed all stays good from now on