Openreach - messed up records?

spicypixel

spicypixel

spicypixel

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Bit perplexed by this but here we go...

I was casually looking to see what openreach products the checker says I can order on a new flat I've recently started renting.

Getting the keys to the lower ground floor flat next month so got some time to work this out prior to it being an issue.

Anyone else had a situation where flats above adjacent have it and ones don't? I checked other flats along the road and they all come back being able to order ultrafast 300mbps, so guess I'm perplexed why a singular property is excluded.

Any ideas?

ky4h4uXl.jpg
 
G.fast isn't property/location related (FTTB, FTTP or FTTH), it's still to the cabinet like Infinity/VDSL/ADSL and then copper to your place, which means individual lines to the cabinet are the key factor. Possibility that the cabinet had already been maxed before the lower ground unit got their line in (prior to when you got it). And so it's connected to another cabinet elsewhere instead which doesn't have G.fast or too far away.

I've read of instances where users have made an entirely new order and there was room in the cabinet and so was able to connect like that for a new installation fee. But that's assuming there's room in the cabinet and if you're prepared to pay out for a new line installation. There's more technicaly detail in the way but I don't remember it all exactly, but overall that should be roughly what you're looking at.
 
It's going to be a database issue, there will (likely) be one central DP and then a multipair cable runs back to the cabinet. All the lines in that building will go to the same place.
 
Okay so I had a long phone call with BT sales, his first impression (as meddling-monk suggested) was it was going to a different cab so it would be a longer line, but we confirmed all the flats go cabinet 47, the one outside the flat.

Next up he assumed there's an openreach record keeping error but they can't log an openreach support ticket unless I'm their customer, and he was hesitant to suggest becoming an infinity 2 customer just on the off chance gfast might be available.

He was also surprised that the line speed readings for the flats were so different too. Those ones get the full 80/20 estimate and the lower ground flat gets a 55/15 estimate despite going to the same cabinet outside the flat.

Not something sales can deal with, technical can't touch it till I have an active BT line, and openreach probably won't reply to my email I sent asking about it.

It's a shame not more ISPs have taken up the gfast trial because I'm basically stuck between hedging my bets with talktalk or BT, and the former is basically the worst option and the latter is slightly less worse.

Think I'll ask AAISP though...
 
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spicypixel said:
Okay so I had a long phone call with BT sales, his first impression (as meddling-monk suggested) was it was going to a different cab so it would be a longer line, but we confirmed all the flats go cabinet 47, the one outside the flat.

Next up he assumed there's an openreach record keeping error but they can't log an openreach support ticket unless I'm their customer, and he was hesitant to suggest becoming an infinity 2 customer just on the off chance gfast might be available.

He was also surprised that the line speed readings for the flats were so different too. Those ones get the full 80/20 estimate and the lower ground flat gets a 55/15 estimate despite going to the same cabinet outside the flat.

Not something sales can deal with, technical can't touch it till I have an active BT line, and openreach probably won't reply to my email I sent asking about it.

It's a shame not more ISPs have taken up the gfast trial because I'm basically stuck between hedging my bets with talktalk or BT, and the former is basically the worst option and the latter is slightly less worse.

Think I'll ask AAISP though...
Click to expand...

In 2018 I still find it so unreal how dire the UK's Broadband infrastructure is compared to most other countries.
 
Okay, so to add to this, I tried with VM...
Exactly the same story, flat above? Can order 350mbit, my flat below? "Not in a VM area".

I'm starting to wonder if the UPRN is horribly misaligned with geographical location.
 
Can't tell, is there an easy way to find out? Just wondering if I just get a basic phone line/broadband package engaged I'll somehow be able to convince the ISP to get openreach out to have a butchers at the situation.

Edit: Getting somewhere but it's bad news.

If you look up the apartments by address the both say cabinet 47, if you look up via UPRN it says the slower (mine) is cabinet 60.

Seems the address and UPRN aren't correlated correctly.

Guess now I have to wonder if openreach can be convinced, if it's possible, to change the wiring if it is indeed connected to a cabinet much further away.

It could have been wired in prior to 47 even existing I guess.
 
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Yeah, was worried it was a wiring issue prior to your arrival, possibly way back when the whole place was one thing and not divided up. In which case, if they won't move the line (and from what I've read they will never do that unless absolutely necessary and it doesn't sound like the case here since your line does work) you might want to see if ordering an entirely new line might connect you out to the front, but that also assumes that the cabinet at front is also got space to do this, so even this is hit or miss.

Otherwise, I think you're stuck. Not unless you can convince a FTTB provider like Hyperoptic to enable the building (but needs others to agree and after inspection of viability if I'm correct), then you can jump straight to 1gb connection. Good luck with getting that sorted.
 
I'm thinking just taking the existing talktalk FTTC contract over (out of contract but it doesn't renew the contract to move it seemingly) to tie up the existing line, then put in an order for a new line as you say, see what they say.

Edit: This is going to test my patience. (Currently on VM300 Mbps)
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Wow. That bites. That's a massive difference there. It's likely going to be quite noticable a change.

I think what you should try and do is find out if the cabinet out front is full first. Then work from there, whether it is trying to get Openreach to switch lines for you, or for ordering a new line. Both of these require it to be non full, so that I feel is the first thing to obtain.
 
Exciting update time (disclaimer: not exciting)

Talktalk refuse to migrate the line, they can't provision FTTC due to lack of capacity, but more interestingly, can't actually provision ADSL2 either. So they offered to cancel the contract penalty free which is nice of them.

Since the line max speed estimate is 55, opted for BT infinity 1 with the 52mbit package it should be a good match while I then try to prod BT into issuing a second line, but therein lies the rub.

BT sales guy on the phone said he can't issue two lines to a property if one is gfast, it's one line per property.

So I'm going to have to try and provision a second line @ 80/20 and HOPE it's wired up to the gfast cabinet next to me, then ditch the first infinity 1 contract somehow (probably a costly issue) and roll with a gfast upgrade on line 2.

He did mention something about "in house migration" so I don't necessarily need to have two BT lines, but it was very up in the air and nothing concrete - especially since BT won't install a second line for free without existing lines being utilised. If the penalty is sufficiently high I guess I'll just operate 55mbps FTTC1 as guest wifi or something.

God what a faff, I just want a copper cable sorted for a cab literally metres from me, ducts are already presumably dug if the other 5 flats have lines.

In terms of the cabinet being full, I asked if he could start the order process for the flat above and it went through to the next stage where usually it'd prevent a sales team member from getting that far if there's no linecard slots left. So that's promising at least.

If I was full of money I'd just get AAISP to sort it out, fairly sure they can sort out anything re: openreach.
 
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I'm surprised we've not heard more of issues like this where you've got a lot of what were houses with one phone line being divided up into a load of flats. Hope you get sorted!
 
Any chance of agreeing something with the flat above to share a top speed connection? Easy enough to run some Cat6 between the 2 flats.
 
Turnover is high, 6 month rental contracts, would rather not involve others if possible but good idea.

And yeah surprised this isn't more common where the original line being retained isn't up to snuff with additional lines added for flat conversions.
 
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BT record keeping is a joke. I know categorically that I'm on cabinet 21... have been since the house was built and have been on infinity 2 from day 1.

Time came to switch ISP... put my number in the Plusnet checker and "sorry you can't get fibre". Hmmm, weird. Tried again the following week assuming there was an issue... same thing. Turns out they'd bodged up the records somewhere along the road (for god knows what reason) and had put me down under another cabinet.

In the end I had to go through someone on a forum to get the records corrected before I could migrate.
 
Ah that's not surprising but utterly demoralising, I'm actually not sure if my line is on the right cabinet or not or if they're using out of date records, if I search with address it says cab47, if I search with UPRN it's cab60, won't know till phone goes live I guess to get a final look.

https://i.imgur.com/Jc4MToi.png - Address lookup
https://i.imgur.com/h28DKbd.png - UPRN lookup

Same stats, different cabinet. (least for VDSL2, the ADSL2 scores align with the fact cab47 is much closer than cab 60)
Something somewhere is wrong!
 
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EVH said:
BT record keeping is a joke. I know categorically that I'm on cabinet 21... have been since the house was built and have been on infinity 2 from day 1.

Time came to switch ISP... put my number in the Plusnet checker and "sorry you can't get fibre". Hmmm, weird. Tried again the following week assuming there was an issue... same thing. Turns out they'd bodged up the records somewhere along the road (for god knows what reason) and had put me down under another cabinet.

In the end I had to go through someone on a forum to get the records corrected before I could migrate.
Click to expand...

Had a similar experience just a few weeks ago with Openreach/BT and their god forsaken database records. I moved from Plusnet to BT (got a cracking deal)... Due to switchover and internet died, they unplugged me and messed something up at the exchange. It took them 7 days to activate my internet again... Even though after day 3 I'd escalated it to Exec/CEO level.

Then I realised on the OR line checker after activation, my phone number only shows I can get 1Mb ADSL and no fibre - the record just looked very wrong and empty! All ISPs said I couldn't get fibre despite still having it. Escalated again back to BT, guy said it should sort itself in a few days. I went back to him a week later and said it hasn't rectified itself at all. I had to TELL him to escalate it to whatever relevant Openreach team.

Next day he rings me up "sorry yeah something has gone wrong, we'll sort it within 7 days" that was last Monday. It's only just today my line record has just been fixed and now the Openreach checker says the correct info for my line and fibre availability.
 
It'll be hard to know till the line goes live on the 14th June, guess now I've ordered infinity 1 in the meantime I'm now a customer and can at least possibly hope to get through to openreach by proxy soon... We'll see.

I'm fairly confident that openreach would do the least possible work if I did order a second line and try and just run it over the existing copper to cab 60.
 
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