Crippled broadband and no means to resolve

Joe_Horner

Just venting really, but if anyone has any practical suggestions I'd be more than happy to hear them!

Briefly, for the past 18 months or so, our connection from Post Office Boradband has been fine during the day ( 2 - 3 Mbps, which isn't bad for a rural location several miles from the exchange).

But, as soon as peak times arrive it drops to as little as 40Kbps and results in endless timeouts even loading things as simple as a vanilla Google home page.

If we monitor a file download when it's bad we can clearly see bursts of 1 -2 Mbps that last for a second or two, followed by 10 or even 100s of seconds where nothing at all is received.

This started within a week or so of BT switching on FTTC at our local exchange and has also affected customers of Talk Talk and Plusnet connected to this exchange.

Our line's been checked and is fine (pretty obvious from the daytime speeds anyway), they've provided a new modem (no difference, hardly surprising given the regular times of the problems) and they've basically said it's a problem with how the exchange is configured, with it ignoring copper connections when the fibre traffic is high.

However, they're not willing to raise an issue with Openreach about it and initially offered us the "resolution" of leaving our contract without penalty. Having been with them for 4 years we're well outside any penalty payment anyway and, when that was pointed out, they "improved" the offer to a £60 credit against our final bill with them.

The resolution we want is simply for them to raise an issue with Openreach for them to check the exchange configuration. If Openreach come back ad say there's nothing they can do then so be it but, until they've been asked, we can't migrate to anyone except for BT because all other suppliers on the exchange are having the same problem.

After over a year of them refusing to do so, and making assorted, contradictory, and sometimes downright illogical excuses about why the issue exists, we approached the Communications Ombudsman who is the ADR service they subscribe to.

They've ow been in touch and said that they can't require PO to raise an issue with Openreach because Openreach aren't one of their subscribers. So they're not prepared to help.

We don't want fibre, we don't need fibre, and fibre will cot us about twice what we're paying r the service we do want and need (but aren't getting at the moment). But, with nobody willing to enforce our rights, it's looking like we'll have no choice but to take fibre if we want a connection that we can use.

So much for a competitive market and consumer choice! :mad:

DavidP24

I think your only solution here is to get other locals to join with you, write a letter to local paper or ask newsletter to put an article in.

Ask your Parish Council or MP to contact Openreach, but really you need some others behind you.

iniltous

Not to sure what you want Openreach to do here, if your line is ok and performance is ok 'of peak' so to speak but slows to a crawl at busy times sounds a lot like it's your ISP's problem, either too many users , or not enough backhaul capacity, but OR are not responsible for any of that...if the Post Office ( who I believe are a re seller of Talk Talk LLU) are effectively saying nothing they can do , ask to be released from your contract penalty free and look for another provider
Even if their is no TT LLU at your exchange, and the PO are re selling you a BT wholesale connection, the fact is only your ISP can sort it out , and if they won't approach their 'broadband' provider (possibly BTW not OR) then move to a provider that will
I think the timing of the problem (coinciding with FTTC availability ) is nothing more than a co-incidence

Joe_Horner

They're reselling BTW on this exchange (the joys of living in the sticks!) but it really isn't a simple case of not enough bandwidth. Not unless every house in this sparsely populated area has suddenly signed up to PO broadband.

We have a reliable 2 - 3 Mbps line speed (shown by the off-peak figures)

When on peak it drops to virtually nothing (I've resorted to a mobile wifi at the moment). By nothing I mean that PO's own speed tests (they won't accept speedtest.net results) simply time out. You get a burst of 1Mb or so, followed by a dead line until the test decides it's had enough.

If you try to download a file, you'll maybe get 200k at a reasonable speed, then it'll simply stop. If you pause the download and immediately restart it, you'll get another 200k or so, then another stop.

Other resellers (at least Talk Talk and Plusnet, possibly more) have had exactly the same issues starting at exactly the same time. So, unless they ALL had a sudden massive increase in customers at the same time (in which case they should be leasing more bandwidth)

PO themselves have said that it's an issue with the exchange ignoring DSL connections in favour of fibre but they've also said they're not prepared to raise it with Openreach because it costs them to do so (their words, not mine).

Unfortunately, all the other affected people that I'm aware of threw in the towel early on and signed up for fibre. I fail to see why we should because we're supposed to have choice and we choose not to pay extra for speeds that won't benefit us in any way with our usage.

We have 2, or occasionally 3, devices connected and may (very occasionally) have two of those streaming standard definition youtube vids at the same time. We don't use or want internet TV (live or catch-up) and most of the time it's simple browsing & emails.

In a supposedly competitive and open market why should we be forced into a more expensive service that we don't want or need and wouldn't use to anything like its capacity? It's like going to the shop for a pint of milk and being told you buy a whole cow or nothing.

kwikbreaks

Do a full BT Wholesale speedtest (ie both parts) in the evening = http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/ If it is as bad as you say the reports should say there is an error and your ISP should action it.

One frequent cause of evening only erroring is noise pickup on the ring wire due to increased MW broadcast radio levels. Check your internal wiring = http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm

If it really is an area wide issue then you've already been given reasonable advice in raising a local petition.

Joe_Horner

When it's bad the BT wholesale speed test won't complete so doesn't create a report at all (possible room for improvement there?).

That's the one that Post Office wanted us to use. Initially they tried to tell us that there wasn't a problem because all of the completed results from that were ok. It took over a month to get them to understand that they were only seeing results from when it was (relatively) good because when it was bad there were only time-outs on the test.

The situation is the same with everything internal (including all phones) disconnected except for one 3 foot lead to the modem, plugged into the test socket. The socket was a new installation about 4 1/2 years ago and is within 2 feet of where the wires enter the building. So not much room for local interference.

Totally agree that getting a local group together would be worthwhile but all the people we've found so far who experienced it just switched to fibre so no longer have the problem.

Anyway, had an interesting call off Openreach today. I'd emailed them describing the problem and Post Office's lack of interest and asking them to consider just having a quick look when they were passing (so to speak).

Even they agreed from the description that it sounds like a problem at the exchange but were very apologetic that they simply can't do anything without it being raised by one of the suppliers using them. Hopefully the engineer will remember next time he's there for something else :rotfl:

DavidP24

Always worth asking local engineers for their mobile and if they ever do any "private" work, they all need beer money.

I did the same with AA once, called the guy up when I bought a car which was a repo and immobilised, he cut it out in 2 mins for £50.

If you are near exchange you could always lurk about car park, ask one "are you an openreach engineer", then ask them what they think the problem might be.

It seems to me that it is likely to be how they configured kit in the exchange, now has too much congestion at peak times.

I suspect that when the fibre was installed they took out some kit to make space, then configured setup so that old connections get only a certain percentage of bandwidth to share. It is a clever strategy if you are trying to force people to upgrade to pay for the kit you just installed.

A friend of mine moved to BT a few years back, he was on ASDL but the kit was fibre with some sort of limit on it, when he upgraded to fibre the kit remained the same.

One silly question, are all your tests on a wired ethernet connection to your PC/Laptop?

Joe_Horner

Mixed wired and wireless tests but exactly the same results on both - we're out in the middle of nowhere so no other wireless networks to worry about and we only have at most 4 devices connected (2 phones, 2 laptops) and only one or two of those in active use at a time.

Curiously, having emailed Openreach in desperation on Thursday afternoon it was passably usable yesterday evening for the first time in months and seems to be again tonight - currently testing at just over 1Mbps, which is fair enough for peak time on a 2 - 3 Mb off-peak line.

Of course, probably jinxed it now

Somerset

Hi Jack. I know nowt about the technicalities but something chimed with me. You said the Post Office use BTW. They used to but in 2012 moved to talk talk. The reason I know this is because I was with the PO, also in the sticks and had exactly the experience you are describing till I jumped ship. From googling the story seems to be bandwidth - talktalk acquired customers/companies, obviously the PO moved to them. Chaos. If you google PO broadband problems, you'll find streams of similar stories. Any company using the talktalk platform is having problems.


You mentioned locals with TT and plusnet having the same issue. Do you know anyone with BT as their provider ? If you do, check how their broadband is behaving. Basically anyone who isn't on the talktalk platform.

Mister_G

Yep, I had a similar experience to Somerset.

For many years I was on Virgin as an 'offnet' customer. When I was dumped by them onto TalkTalk my speed dropped dramatically from 1.5Mb down to 0.5Mb and even less in the evenings.

We are on a long line (5km) and our local exchange is a Market 1 with no LLU. I believe that TT just ran out of backhaul capacity at the exchange as they took on all these new customers. I think that if you were on one of their unbundled exchanges, where they have their own equipment, then things were not so bad.

Like Somerset, I jumped ship to Plusnet and now get 2Mb all the time.

Joe_Horner

The thing is, as far as I'm aware, PO don't have many customers in this area. Besides, if that was the problem you'd expect it to get better as people switched to the newfangled fibre (which isn't offered by PO) rather than considerably worse.

My optimism over the past couple of days was misplaced, btw. Currently at 19 minutes waiting for a 19 MB driver download, which I make somewhere around 150 Kbps and that's with just this laptop connected.

Still, at least it's kept going rather than timing out and failing after the first 3 or 4 MB as usually happens.