Broadband Problems

jenniemiller177

Having problems with my home broadband! Having so many problems with my home broadband at the moment. After spending over an hour on the phone, they have told me their is a fault on the line and it will take 2/3 for an engineer to come out. Well, this isn't any good for me. I work from home and this is going to cause me a loss in earnings. Anyone had similar problems and know what I can do about it?

fwor

Realistically all you can do is to have a fallback plan to give you access if/when your main broadband connection is down.

My sister is in the same position - working from home with internet access essential, so I bought her a secondhand mobile broadband dongle for the 3 network, plus a self-activating 30 day SIM.

Total cost was about £20, which to her was worth paying, as her business broadband has been down twice now - once for 3 days!

You would of course need to check (e.g. on 3's website) whether you are within coverage of one of the mobile broadband networks.

Figment

What problems? which ISP? What tariff are you on?

fishybusiness

I work from home and this is going to cause me a loss in earnings.

There is nothing you can do if there is a line fault apart from wait.

If you use your broadband for business, and it has the potential to affect your earnings, for a few pounds more a month you could have business broadband.

Service is better, faults are sorted more quickly, and generally you get a better service.

For example, and business order I put through a couple of years ago was messed up. Two business phone lines, one fax and ADSL to be moved to a new property, on a certain day. All went dead, within an hour of talking to business support lines were on and an engineer was sorting the ADSL. You don't get that with domestic broadband.

victor2

As already said, have a backup plan and ensure you're on a business service, just like you have a backup of your data if your business is so dependent upon computer activity, which you do of course have...

spike7451

jenniemiller177 wrote: »

Having problems with my home broadband! Having so many problems with my home broadband at the moment. After spending over an hour on the phone, they have told me their is a fault on the line and it will take 2/3 for an engineer to come out. Well, this isn't any good for me. I work from home and this is going to cause me a loss in earnings. Anyone had similar problems and know what I can do about it?

Not a lot unless you have a business broadband & SLA in place (Service Level Agreement)
If you're using residential broadband for business then you are possibly breaking the terms of them suppling you broadband.

macman

2 to 3 days to fix a residential fault is not at all bad-5 working days is fairly typical.
Have you actually reported this to your line rental provider-a line fault is their responsibility-not your ISP's (unless they are the same company)?
You can ask for a credit of your line rental for the time the line is down, but that's all you will get under a residential contract.
As above, if you use it for business you are technically in breach of the T&C's anyway.

prowla

Yes - I had this problem with Sky BB; I now have Virgin as well, therefore I can use either.

The monthly fee combined is less than the cost of going to the office for a day.

victor2

prowla wrote: »

Yes - I had this problem with Sky BB; I now have Virgin as well, therefore I can use either.

The monthly fee combined is less than the cost of going to the office for a day.

Nice solution assuming it is Virgin cable. That gives you two separate physical lines coming into the house, so if one is damaged, the other may still work.

mark_rush

you could try 'bonding' which uses a second connection as a failover device. the one i have is a UBM 200 (google it) it works with both normal internet and cable (which is how i use it) but you could plug in a 3g dongle if you needed to i guess.

thetriggerhappypwner

I am gonna take a guess and suggest that this is BT again. Am I right?