Getting Activated after Switching Providers

Walaboobah

I've had a disaster, been paying £96 a month for 900mb for BT, the offer I got was a ten pound reduction so decided to shop around. I've been with BT for around 12 years or so but didn't want to commit to another 24 month contract at they price with it going up each April too.

Did a price comparison and read some reviews and switching looked straightforward so decided on Cuckoo, £54 a month but no phone but we've not used the landline for 4 years really so not bothered by that.

Router came, although I have a mesh set up and planned to use that, text the day before it was due to go live from Openreach that service would go live tomorrow but it could take up until midnight for it became active, fair enough no major issue with that.

The BT broadband disconnected about 00:15am so no internet after that, luckily the BTWIFI (neighbour has BT) was still working so I used that to work on Wednesday. Text at 4pm from Openreach, "Your service has gone live"

Excellent I thought, went down to check, but nothing the router was showing a red light against the internet, although everything else was connected up and showing green. The ONT was displaying the lights as expected but no internet.

Phone Cuckoo, "oh there's a note on your file saying there's a delay from Openreach but no details as to what it is!" OK I thought, teething trouble, it will be fine tomorrow (Thursday). Woke up on Thursday, still red light (I've rebooted both the router and ONT as instructed a couple of times and I also tried my mesh network by "no internet access"! Grrrrr.

Rang Cuckoo again and emailed them. The email said your service is live but there must be something wrong with your set up, when I spoke to someone, there's a delay by Openreach but we don't know what it is!

Called again at lunchtime, same message, so I asked them for an update by the end of the day. 5pm comes, no update, sent an email back to the same person who told me the service is live and she said the same again!

No idea what is going on, my set up looks good but it just can't connect. Suspect it will need a visit from Openreach to sort it out so goodness knows how long I'll be without internet access!

Oh and I now need to pay for a pass to access BT, which I'll be asking Cuckoo to take off my first bill from them.

I don't suppose anybody knows what I can try to get online in case there is something wrong my end!

iniltous

The fact that your ONT is showing the appropriate status but your router isn’t , means that any Openreach visit is unnecessary, and if your provider is suggesting it is , frankly shows the incompetence of the ISP you have chosen to use , similarly the usual excuse of  ‘it’s not us that’s the problem it’s Openreach’ is nothing more than deflection, the fact is you have absolutely no contractual relationship with Openreach , you are a customer of your ISP , you are not a customer of Openreach.

Its possible that there may be some Openreach involvement, obviously at some point your ONT which shows the correct status , so is already authenticated by the headend and was working satisfactorily when you were with BT , needs to be ( in software not physically ) ‘pointed’  at your new ISP backhaul provider , this may be your ISP responsibility or it may be Openreach , but if it’s Openreach why would they do the removal from BT backhaul provider but not then the  allocation to the new backhaul, it’s much more likely this is your new ISP responsibility, BT did their work , Cuckoo haven’t, or haven’t done it correctly.

FYI , there was a similar problem on another more technical forum where a poster was complaining about the fact that their switch between ISP’s on Openreach hadn’t been done successfully ( as far as I remember BT were neither the old or new provider ) after much defection and blaming of everyone other than themselves, the new ISP eventually accepted it was their responsibility to sort it out , the new ISP effectively ceased their new customers ‘account’ and then re-provided them as a new customer ( basically stripped out the old data and entered new ) , that was successful and the customer started working ,

Sorry for this long post but ultimately it’s Cuckoo that are responsible for supplying your service, no one else , don’t take any BS about ‘it’s not us’ , because it is .

FYI , the current BT price  on the comparable product to Cuckoo is  ,after 5 months half price of £27.50 , is  £55 ( 900Mb ) before any haggling , if you were paying as much as you say ( and were not on something like Halo 3 , making your comparison to Cuckoo price pointless ) , then you could have easily reduced your monthly fee to around this price by contacting the retentions department dropping any ‘extras’ , but  obviously you may have other reasons to leave BT and don’t like doing renewal negotiations 

QrizB

Walaboobah said:

I've had a disaster, been paying £96 a month for 900mb for BT,

When I started reading this, I assumed that paying almost £1200 a year for broadband was your disaster!

That aside, I agree with iniltous; this is Cuckoo's problem to sort out. Don't accept any excuses from them.

Are they part of Ofgem's automatic compensation scheme?

Walaboobah

Thanks both, they "Cuckoo" have done some line checks, and it is showing as a fault on the line.

It was a Halo 3 contract with BT, perhaps I would have been better staying with them but there you go.

The main reason for switching was a 12 month contract with Cuckoo v 24 months with BT, but once bitten as they say.

I will go back to Cuckoo again and see what they say

iniltous

Your ONT is ‘working’ , if it wasn’t the PON light wouldn’t be lit , if there was a line fault your LOS ( loss of signal ) light would be lit , and apparently it isn’t , so their claim it’s a line fault is absolute nonsense, and simply speaks to their ignorance of how a PON works .
If you had a ‘line fault’  that was before the splitter all members ( up to 30 ONT on a splitter including you ) would have no service,  and your LOS light would be lit , as would be potentially 29 others ) if the line fault were in a single ‘leg’ of the splitter, affecting only you , just your LOS light would be lit , but from a ‘testing’  point of view they could not tell your leg from the potential 29 other legs that were OK and working , and although they couldn’t ‘see’ your ONT , that could be because it’s not powered , or has failed electronically, however  your  PON light is lit disproves that it’s just  your individual splitter leg that has a line fault.

From the splitter back to the OLT and from the OLT to the ISP backhaul, many customers data is aggregated ( bundled  ) together ) so if only one customer is affected and all the others are not , then it’s a configuration issue , not a ‘line’ issue 

Walaboobah

iniltous said:

Your ONT is ‘working’ , if it wasn’t the PON light wouldn’t be lit , if there was a line fault your LOS ( loss of signal ) light would be lit , and apparently it isn’t , so their claim it’s a line fault is absolute nonsense, and simply speaks to their ignorance of how a PON works .
If you had a ‘line fault’  that was before the splitter all members ( up to 30 ONT on a splitter including you ) would have no service,  and your LOS light would be lit , as would be potentially 29 others ) if the line fault were in a single ‘leg’ of the splitter, affecting only you , just your LOS light would be lit , but from a ‘testing’  point of view they could not tell your leg from the potential 29 other legs that were OK and working , and although they couldn’t ‘see’ your ONT , that could be because it’s not powered , or has failed electronically, however  your  PON light is lit disproves that it’s just  your individual splitter leg that has a line fault.

From the splitter back to the OLT and from the OLT to the ISP backhaul, many customers data is aggregated ( bundled  ) together ) so if only one customer is affected and all the others are not , then it’s a configuration issue , not a ‘line’ issue 

I've checked the ONT again and the PON light is flashing green not stable, does that indicate it is an issue with the line?

Thanks

iniltous

A flashing PON means the ONT is receiving ‘light’ from an OLT , but the OLT ( the headend equipment ) doesn’t recognise the ONT ( it’s not authenticated ) this would actually be an odd situation if the service worked previously as changing provider doesn’t change the ONT , so if the ONT was authenticated when  BT were the provider, then that should be it, unless OR had to change the ONT due to it developing a fault, even if you stop using BT and change to another ISP, the authentication of the ONT doesn’t need changing, on new builds for example the PON light is steady even if the service is never actually used by the occupants.

That suggests to me that someone has been into the headend systems and either deliberately or mistakenly deleted or changed your  ONT serial number  , so the PON light is now flashing because of that .

Judging from comments on the BT Community forum , it’s possible for BT customers to call the BT FTTP customer service team with their  ONT serial number in this situation , and BT can check if the serial number is correct ,  if it’s not ( or missing ) they can enter it .

I don’t know if your provider has the same option to call in with this information, BT has no superior access , if BT can do it , so can everyone else , it’s if your ISP customer service staff have the knowledge, expertise etc …if they don’t , then presumably you will need to wait for a visit from Openreach ( assuming your ISP have arranged one ) so they re authenticate the ONT in the same way they would with a brand new provision or when swapping out a faulty ONT 

Walaboobah

Thanks for that information iniltous, I'll go back to Cuckoo. Their Customer helpdesk, whilst polite isn't particularly helpful or knowledgeable I suspect.

I have had a text off Openreach and an engineer has been booked for Monday so might just wait for them

iniltous

It would be interesting to know when the ONT PON light went from steady ( authenticated ) to flashing , if it were well after BT stopped supplying service or at the exact same time , the most unlikely ( but possible ) reason is the ONT coincidentally developed a fault at the same time as the changeover, that would absolve Cuckoo from messing up , but wouldn’t explain their apparent poor technical knowledge 

Walaboobah

I didn't notice that as there was a delay of about 16 hours from the time BT went down to the time I got the notification from Openreach that the service was active.

iniltous

As you state , given you have supposedly an Openreach visit on Monday, it’s hardly worth giving this any more attention, hopefully after the visit you will be back on line , and this isn’t simply a preview of continued poor service by this ISP , TBH once you are back up and working , if the performance is worse than your previous provider, you will know that the OR part is exactly as it was , so any reduction is entirely with  the new ISP remit, but perhaps once this initial (unnecessary) obstacle is out of the way , performance with be as good or possibly better than before (  I wouldn’t count on it though )