Computer says no

I'm currently on cable and dissatisfied with VM so I've been watching the Infinity cabinets go in and waiting till I can order. I found that the exchange is accepting orders from activated cabinets and from the spreadsheet I know my postcode is all supposed to be served by cabinet 6 which appears to be up and running.

Using the checker I find that a house 8 doors up can order. My house is served by the next pole down from that one and can't. The next cab just down the road is also active and an address near that can also order so if by some screwup my house was served by that cabinet and not the one I thought I should still be OK.
One house over the road served by the same pole as me is good to go but the one next door to it - still on the same pole - is showing ADSL only.

When I binned the line a couple of years back because of an HRDIS which BT failed to fix one of the engineers said I was on the cab back towards the exchange (I assume 6 but it isn't numbered) when he swapped me onto a different pair to try and fix the fault.

So it seems to me that the backend data must be incorrect or for some reason most houses served by the pole my house is on have been excluded for some reason I can't fathom out. When I called BT retail to enquire they insisted the data cannot be wrong. Not sure what to do next - just wait or give up an Infinity and let VM have another chance by upgrading from the 10Mbps I downgraded to when the local congestion got to be appauling.

Edited by kwikbreaks (Sat 19-May-12 14:48:16)

What telephone number are you using to check? Is it on an active BT telephone line?

NOTE: BT Retail filters orders, and does not let you have infinity if the BT Wholesale checker says it might be slow.

May i ask your Reason for the dissatisfaction, the reason i ask is, i also have been VERY dissatisfaction with VM and was for 12 months. No help from customer services and constant issues, i then contacted the office of VM's CEO. after 2 months of messing and waiting my connection went from having 2500+ ping and jitter to local servers. to being generally very stable and usable for most things, But it takes persistence and patients. Ask for a VMG300 Modem over the terrible Superhub and get a third party router, ive also had suggestions that setting the superhub into modem only mode and using a router that is external to any VM equipment is MUCH better than using the superhubs built in router.

I suggest the EnGenius ESR6850 as it is a brilliant router and cost a lot less than the equivalent Big Brands, but does the same job as them.

Believe me i don't suggest for people to take VM if they have a choice not to, but if your with them there are ways around the issues, upgrading to the 100 Mbit service might also be more beneficial as the recent upgrades by VM for the "double speeds" that will be released in june/july and the fact that is now around £10 per month cheaper than it was, can be very much worth while, BUT you must complain to the HIGHEST level or your complaints fall on the ears of useless first line support, who in all fairness are about as trained as goldfish, in fact that is an insult to goldfish,

this is just my honest opinion, as a person who no can not have any other isp due to the way in which i canceled my BT line after 2 years of issues with the telephone line.

John

My own VM is fine, gone from 10Mb to 20Mb, added a superhub and now DOCSIS 3, but that does not help you. I have looked at Infinity, and we also have Digital Region in our area. Both were quite viable options, or so I thought.
Finally, the BT checker came up with Infinity as a possibility for my area, but they wanted a phone number to do a proper check - and the VM number I have failed of course. No, I cnanot order Infinity.
For both Inifinity/FTTC and Digital Region, the final mile comes into play. In my case it seems that we are connected to a cabinet that's 1300 metres away. Over three-quarters of a mile. That's despite there being several cabinets a lot closer, at least one must be on the route my particular line takes.
Both BT and DR suggest I could get about 18-20Mb, but the distance to the cabinet would have an effect on upload speed. I upload a lot of things I've worked on as part of a charity I volunteer with.
Overall I decided to stay where I am, The move to 20Mb has not done a lot for me as I was fine with 10Mb.
If the postcode check says Infinity is available then it's probably worth pushing with a couple of ISP's to see what they say. I was rather upset to discover that the nearest cab's to my home were not where I was connected.

In reply to a post by JonasTone:

No help from customer services and constant issues...

been there...

In reply to a post by JonasTone:

Ask for a VMG300 Modem over the terrible Superhub and get a third party router, ive also had suggestions that setting the superhub into modem only mode and using a router that is external to any VM equipment is MUCH better than using the superhubs built in router.

I never even tried the built in WiFi, just a single Ethernet port to set the service up when the Superhub arrived. It was then put in modem only mode and my own Belkin router connected. No problems at all. Pre-warned !

In reply to a post by JonasTone:

...this is just my honest opinion...

me too

How long is the line between you and the cabinet?

If it's over about 1400 metres, you probably won't be able to have Infinity because the line is too long (to do 15Mbps) so that may well be the answer.

If so you could still get service from another ISP, and if that's the case then you might see higher upstream than with 10 meg cable, but potentially no/not much faster downstream. Have you tried other ISPs to see what they say?

If cable turns out to still be the fastest or only option then you could upgrade back to 50Meg or whatever and keep demanding bill credits for poor performance. In this manner, you might get the fastest speed you can (even if it's only burst speed!), for the least money. Until they pull their finger out and upgrade capacity.

I looked in 192.com and got three business numbers. One is a vet a couple of doors down - no Infinity, one is a post office 15 doors up Infinity OK, and the third is just a bit further up towards the cab and OK for Infinity. Checking on postcode only the cutoff point is the pole one towards the cab. Daft thing as I said is that one postcode fed off the same pole as my house just over the road gets infinity OK on the checker. The cab I'm sure I'm on is 300 meters away the nearest which is further from the exchage is 200 meters away.

This is purely a data error. There is no obvious reason why my house cannot get Infinity as all those around it other than the handful coming off the same pole can order now. Trying to get anybody at BT to listen is going to be an uphill struggle so I'll just give it a few weeks and if it isn't sorted upgrade the cable which is working OK again now.

Edited by kwikbreaks (Sat 19-May-12 22:51:11)

I don't have constant problems - if I did I would have gone back to ADSL. My gripe is that when it went massively over utilised 5Mbps at times on a 50Mbps connection) the fix date was months away and they really didn't seem to care. I downgraded to 10Mbps which can be problematic with the low afternoon/evening cap if I exceed it.

The second issue I have with them is the car boot stall way they sell their products - a new customer now will get three times the speed I do for the same money. Sure I can call in and get a speed increase but only if I recontract or upgrade - my automatic speed upgrade is planed as Oct 2012 - July 2013.

I managed to get a VMNG300 modem in exchange for that bug ridden Pos the Superhub but any speed increase may result in them insisting I take a Superhub again as it is teir only supported CPE for 30Mbps and over.

300meters from the cab I think my line would be on and 200meters from the nearest.

If you post your postcode, I can tell which cabinet the December spreadsheet says your connected to, I can also post a list of postcodes that the cabinet serves, you can then also easily look up addresses and put them into the BT Wholesale checker to build up a picture of what's going on.

There does seem to be loads of errors in BT's data, seen it many a time on the forums, and in my own research.

Once you've gathered evidence you can then put it to Openreach or email the CEO of BT Group.

PS. to other posters, he's not too far from the cabinet, he stated the house across the road supplied from the same DP (distribution pole) can get fibre, and I doubt two different cabinets feed the same DP, although I guess it's possible.