BT can't read their own diagnostics !

Some of you may recall that in the "digital divide" thread I mentioned that as part of BT's "local improvements" they had installed a new underground box at the base of the pole, leaving the 40-odd year old cable and the half-mile cable above ground totally untouched.

Barely a week after BT's "improvements" my business line developed a really bad crackle, so I phoned 151. I told the woman dealing with the call that the fault would inevitably be the really old cable, or the overhead cable, because we have to call BT out at least twice a year to fix faults on it. She ran a line test, and she told me that my line was 4km long (it isn't, it's just that part of it is aluminium), and that tests revealed that the fault was very close to the exchange, so it wasn't the cable.

The next morning a BT man turns up. It didn't take him long to find the fault - the joint where BT's old underground cable joins the overhead cable, only 500 metres from my house.

So, not only will BT not invest in replacing their worn-out plant, their personnel can't read the diagnostic equipment they have invested in !

What a pity that there is no competition around here for phone lines - I'd really love to take my business away from this clueless, profit driven outfit !

Home ADSL: Sky Max LLU
Business ADSL: ZeN Office 8000

In reply to a post by zebedeee:

What a pity that there is no competition around here for phone lines - I'd really love to take my business away from this clueless, profit driven outfit !

Whilst I accept the general thrust of your post the quote amuses me, especially as your problem was with a business line.

Maybe there is no competition from non-profit driven outfits because most businesses like to make a profit. Does yours?

Bob: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by zebedeee:

What a pity that there is no competition around here for phone lines - I'd really love to take my business away from this clueless, profit driven outfit !

Whilst I accept the general thrust of your post the quote amuses me, especially as your problem was with a business line.

Maybe there is no competition from non-profit driven outfits because most businesses like to make a profit. Does yours?

Yes, but then I don't focus on sheer profit over customer satisfaction, which means I tend to hang on to my customers

Home ADSL: Sky Max LLU
Business ADSL: ZeN Office 8000

Got to pretty much agree with Zeb here. The issue with BT and for that matter all 'utility' organisations is that they supply public services upon which we as a society depend absolutely. The BT bosses need to remember that.

Having just gone through nearly 6 months of wrangling with BT over both PSTN and ADSL capability to where I live and work and all their 'cop outs' and appalling 'customer service' located in places overseas I feel a deserved rant coming on.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the service (wholesale and retail) that BT provides is virtually monopolistic (LLU excepted) and they have end users over a barrel often leaving the end customer impotently dangling between BT and their ISP. Have you tried to get an ADSL (not PSTN) engineer to check your lines ? Oh yes, and there are still far too many cable runs so old that they still contain aluminium cable, and old cable with so many joins in it resistance levels and SN ratios are overly high and low respectively. Do BT care, outwardly, it seems not, all in the quest for wongam and protecting shareholder interests.

The fact is IMO core utilities should NEVER have been privatised in the first place (never mind sold to overseas investors), they are National assets and should be operated in the National interest, and now Gord is doing it again (Maggie being the most prominent culprit !) with the Post Office.

The cable and associated infrastructure in the UK is antiquated at best and desperately requires a FibOp overhaul in short time. Failure to achieve this will leave UK Plc at a genuine and increasing business disadvantage over global competition.

Beats me why Gord and Co do not consider investing our tax pounds in considerably improving the comms infrastructure in UK Plc for the long term (for those of us old enough to remember think just how quickly the natural gas pipeline infrastructure was implemented back in the 1960's) instead of supporting parts of foreign owned corporations in the motor industry which frankly, IMO hardly qualify for using my cash as a bail out.

Edited by ManOfManyBikes (Thu 26-Feb-09 09:00:44)

As for why Gordo, go look at EU State Aid rules, in areas where market is failing to operate things can be done, but if healthy competition is in place then they must stay clear.

Now if say BT and VM were to post £24bn losses like RBS today, and would otherwise collapse then things would change.

Andrew Ferguson, andrew@thinkbroadband.com
http://www.thinkbroadband.com - formerly known as ADSLguide.org.uk

If you think that the British telephone network was better when it was run by the Post Office then you must be too young to remember what it was like. It used to be common to have connections fail when phoning even the next town. Party lines used to be a common feature. People avoided making even local calls because of the cost. As for international - ha, ha. Only millionaires and businesses dared to make them.

BT transformed the UK network from an unreliable, expensive and crumbling system to one of the most advanced networks of its time. Even now 21CN is a very advanced programme.

Despite that they operated (and still do) one of the cheapest services in the world. Telecoms is one of the very few areas where it's cheaper than the US for residents.

BT has it's faults but no way in hell do we want to hand the business back to the government.

Andrue Cope
[Brackley, UK]

Edited by Andrue (Thu 26-Feb-09 11:28:56)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

BT transformed the UK network from an unreliable, expensive and crumbling system to one of the most advanced networks of its time.

It would be arguably more accurate to say that the invention and development of the microprocessor worked most of the magic as much of the telephone network would have been easily understood by Alexander Graham Bell. It's possible, even likely, that a lot of it dates back 30 or 40 years.

Had it remained state owned we would only just be phasing out the last tin can and string lines in rural areas though.

Yeah. Playing the 'what if' game is always debateable. I'm not saying that BT has neccessarily done the best possible. OTOH as a 42 year-old I can remember what the network was like before BT and that puts me off any suggestion of handing control of it back to the PO.

I'd still like to know the truth of the story about BT's plans for a cable roll-out in the late 80s. I'm sure I read somewhere that BT offered to roll out cable but was blocked because the government wouldn't give it permission to be a broadcaster. It sounds feasible and I can't help wondering if the precursor(s) to Sky/NTL managed to persuade the government to give them the business instead.

We can't really complain about Sky - their business model is doing well - but I wonder if the current state of Virgin is better or worse than BT could have done?

Guess we'll never know

Andrue Cope
[Brackley, UK]

Edited by Andrue (Thu 26-Feb-09 15:36:40)

BT did what business can do and governments tend not to - it invested money in the business to convert exchanges from mechanical switching to electronic. Doing that saved them a fortune in maintenance. It also freed up a lot of space I imagine making ADSL possible without having to provide new buildings for DSLAMs. Bit of a two edged sword that one because the alternative of fibre to cabinet based mini DSLAMs would probably be cheaper than new buildings to house DSLAMs and also solve a lot of the current problems.

I've heard the story of Thatcher blocking a fibre roll out but have no idea if it is true or not. I personally doubt it - if BT can't get a return on investment now what possible reason would they have had doing it in the 80's before the internet was even invented and Sky was already up and running.

if BT can't get a return on investment now what possible reason would they have had doing it in the 80's before the internet was even invented and Sky was already up and running.

It could have been the early 90s but I agree that it's still tenuous. I think I know where I was living when I 'heard' it but that spans a decade from mid 80s to mid 90s.

As I remember it BT were planning a cable TV service. Supposedly that's what scuppered it. Their license doesn't allow them to broadcast and without that they couldn't see any value in it.

What intrigues me is that I'm sure I read it in an article somewhere. Maybe even on TBB. Of course it could just have been a user posting so doesn't really help prove or disprove it.

Andrue Cope
[Brackley, UK]

Edited by Andrue (Thu 26-Feb-09 17:10:13)