The frustration of dealing with BT!

MeAnBoY

MeAnBoY

MeAnBoY

Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
3,501
Location
Hampshire
Bit desperate for help here guys!

My internet has been down since last Friday (17th) and shortly after my phone line has also completely died (it did work before but had a lot of static through it). I'm unable to use my phone or connect to the internet in any way and just seeing what you guys can suggest really.

I've tried using different routers to no success and also I get nothing through my test socket either. Now short of waiting for the next available engineer to come out and have a look (on the 3rd of Feb!!!) is there actually anything else I can do??

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated!
 
TBH sounds like a problem on the line between your property and the exchange - possibly with recent weather damp or actual water has got into a box/joint somewhere.
 
Howdy mate, long time no see

They're super busy at the moment after all the bad weather, getting an engineer to call out is a pain in the butt. Besides asking a neighbour for wireless or using a 3g connection, there's sod all you can do :/
 
Wow cheers for the quick response lads, it really does sound like naff all I can do right this moment doesn't it :(

Unfortunately our house is too far to even get wifi from our nieghbours and living in a rural area 3G is well.. a bit pap :D

It's been made all the more frustrating as I literally built a new gaming computer after 10 years of laptops the very day my internet went kaput hah!

Ps. Bledd indeed mate long time, I'm much more of a lurker on the forums these days! You tried the new CS yet? I'm thinking about installing it when I get some broadband back just for old times sakes.
 
CSGO is great, some new game modes and plenty of instant respawn servers if you're just up for a deathmatch setting :D

Left 4 Dead 2 is great fun too

SteamID : bledd
 
03/02 does seem a long way away. What part of the country are you in? Most engineers I've been booking have been 1-2 days for appointments and faults not needing a visit also within a day or two. Was that the first available appointment or the first one you could be in for?
 
MissChief said:
03/02 does seem a long way away. What part of the country are you in? Most engineers I've been booking have been 1-2 days for appointments and faults not needing a visit also within a day or two. Was that the first available appointment or the first one you could be in for?
Click to expand...

First available appointment sadly
 
I see you're in the south east. Openreach still have an MBORC (matter beyond our reasonable control) notification across most of the south so I'm not surprised.
 
With regards to the 3G being a bit naff, there are some options to potentially improve the 3g signal you get, especially if at the moment you've only tried a normal 3G USB dongle or just your phone.

The first is trying different mobile networks, if you haven't already. Three are quite often the best, but it's worth checking O2, Vodafone and EE as well. You can pick up a Three data SIM preloaded with 3GB of data for about £21, and Giffgaff (who use O2) will do over 3GB for your first £10 topup (as it's a first time bonus of £5, bringing you up to £15, and 3GB is £12.50). Can you get your mates to see what sort of speed they get at your place on their network?

If all you have tried is a USB dongle, try using a 3G -> Wifi router of some kind. This can be a smartphone (Android or Apple) set to "Mobile Hotspot" or "Wireless Tether" etc, or a dedicate box like the Three MiFi or T-Mobile Wireless Pointer. That way, you can put the router/phone where it can get the best reception (taped high up to a window, in a bag on a pole out the window, tethered weather balloon, giant statue of Christ in the garden etc), and so long as you're in Wifi range of the phone, still pick it up on your laptop/desktop.

You can also try using a bigger and better aerial. Some of the dongles and 3G routers have a socket for an alternative 3G aerial. A cheap one can sometimes give much much better results that the built in one.

It might be worth asking friends and family to see who's got what that you can borrow, and try different networks, especially higher up in house or in the attic or something. There's probably no point in going too crazy if it's hopefully only going to be out for another week, but if you can borrow a dongle or your sister-in-law has an old android phone sitting in her kitchen cupboard, you can try and get something to tide you over. Or buy something, use it until your line is fixed, and then flog it on some auction site.
 
Hi Nexy, appreciate your help there mate, some really solid advice.

I have been using my phone for tethering for the last week or so just so I can do some light browsing whilst at home. It's slow but hey of course it's better than nothing. Had phones with most of the providers and no matter who it is, the area I live in will only give me speeds enough to slowly browse web pages!

Oh well one more week of no internet :(
 
Hi folks,

eventually had BT to come out and 'fix' my problem. Turned out it was fairly trivial in the end, bliss I thought, so I get back from work and have a look round. See below for my router stats just now.



System Up Time 00:02:12
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 2673 2430 0 2203 18181 00:01:55
LAN 100M/Full 791 0 0 1010 0 00:02:10
WLAN 11M/54M 2561 3635 0 18553 3538 00:02:02

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 288 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 44 db 28.5 db
Noise Margin 31 db 23 db

Is this some kind of joke? :confused: It might as well still not be working seriously. Also just to top that off the engineer has decided to take MY ADSL Nation faceplate away without saying a word (my gf was at home at the time and she's not really computer savvy) I mean come on ffs! Not only is my net far worse than it was when it used to work, BT have actually stolen my own blood property ARGHHH!!

Now the engineer has mentioned to my gf that it can take up to 7 days for my net speed to improve, can anyone see anything in my line stats to suggest that it will or is it textbook babble from the engineer?
 
Your noise margins are huge, presumably because of the errors. Those margins will come down as the sync rate goes up, just give it time. Regarding your faceplate being nicked I would take this up with BT and aim for some sort of credit so you can buy a new one.
 
No idea why they would nick my face plate tbh. I can only assume that the lad who was sorting things out wasn't paying attention or didn't really know what it was (apparently he didn't even know what my TP-Link power line adapters were!) even though it doesn't have BT's branding on it.
 
Low sync will have high SNR if the line is "ok", the sync rate rises until the SNR drops close to a threshold at which point it tries to stabalise there.

Given those SNR numbers and the downstream attenuation you should be fine for 8Mbit downstream and probably upto 10-11Mbit with a router like the DG834. Given those exact numbers you are synced at my concern is your connection might be stuck in "failsafe" mode if it doesn't increase in speed after ~3 days leave it unplugged for about an hour and if it doesn't resync higher after reconnecting you'll probably have to get the profile reset (good luck with that).
 
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Caged said:
Did they just remove the whole NTE and replace it, or did it get swapped for an Openreach VDSL filter?
Click to expand...

Well it was an ADSL Nation one before and now they have swapped it over to a Open Reach Mk2.

Also about your previous post, your suggestion it to leave it a few days for it to settle? Is this really necessary? Now I don't know what was actually wrong in the first place apart from a wire being loose outside the building but if that was reconnected surely it would've been service as usual?

Is it worth me opening up the new face plate and trying the test socket?
 
No, the stats are fine. The noise margin is up in an errored state, it will need to train down. :) If your ISP's customer service is decent then they can reset it instantly for you if you wish to speed it up.
 
I'd try to avoid unplugging it for 2-3 days or so as that could be seen as the line worsening (BT's blip logic is um not very worky). If the sync speed doesn't start to rise of its own accord after 72 hours though it would look like to me the line proflile has become stuck.
 
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