For what faults does UKOnline send BT engineers?

I have been wondering as to how severe a line fault should be for UKOnline to agree to request a BT engineer's visit. They will most probably do it if there is no connection at all (perhaps this has to include loss of voice connectivity, who knows...).

Some recent posts suggest different attitudes. For example, the TTDegs problem (see http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=ukonline&Number=3492409&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=0) was properly attended to and resolved, my own own one (see http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=technical&Number=3500487&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=0&fpart=) was not, and twmorrey's experience (see http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=ukonline&Number=3463534&page=&view=&sb=&o=) was similar. At least, twmorrey appears to have had a couple of BT engineer's visits, whereas I do not seem to qualify even for one.

I wonder what other people's experiences have been so far. My curiosity is driven by the need to make a decision as to whether to stay with UKOnline (with whom I was completely satisfied until I had the problem, the first ever since I joined them more than a year ago), or to leave in an attempt to find better support elsewhere.

Edited by periv (Tue 18-Nov-08 20:54:07)

for what its worth my experience of getting engineers out has mostly been hard, nildram were ok in getting 1 engineer but then closed up, aaisp were great, entanet were very hard to get engineers out and to even get a snrm profile change.

I think BT wholesale have recently changed some policies which discourage isp's to escalate faults.

Saying that tho what I have read on here I think ukonline can do better in calling out engineers.

I expect if voice was down ukonline would tell you to ring BT direct for a voice engineer.

In the case of no sync, an engineer will always be sent out if we can see no fault on our side. There are many, many things that can go wrong with a DSL connection though, and not all of them benefit from BT's input.

Can you please elaborate on your fault symptoms?


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Dan Govier - Escalations & Fault Management
#easynet | UKOnline
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"I'm not a geek, I'm a level 70 Mage."

Have just sent a complete description of the problem through PM. The UKOnline ticket no is 719230.

Well, to give credit where credit is due, after exchanging some further information with UKOnline_Dan, he arranged a BT Health Check on my line, and it happened today.

In the meantime my connection had deteriorated to 800 kbps down / 1024 kbps up, SNRMs 4.7 dB down / 6.0 dB up, attenuations 55.0 dB down / 31.5 dB up (from initial 2593 kbps down / 728 kbps up, SNRMs 6.5 dB down / 9.5 dB up at much the same attenuations, 54.5 dB down / 33.0 dB up, see http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=technical&Number=3500487&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=0&fpart=).

It transpired that the Openreach engineer had, all in all, 2 hours for the Health Check, and some of this time had been already spent at the exchange, at the green street cabinet, and some further time went into checking an extension, despite my polite attempts to convince him to focus his attention on the situation at the test socket. At the test socket, the engineer's USB modem connected at 1024 kbps down / 1024 kpbs up, and we observed the expected rapid accumulation of CRC errors.

The engineer's next step was to disassemble the grey box outside the house, and disconnect and reconnect the underground cable to the in-house wiring. The unexpected effect was that after he did that, his USB modem could no longer establish a connection. However, a brand new Netgear DGN2000, which had arrived on the day before, managed to sync at over 2800 kbps down / 1024 kbps up. At this moment, the engineer decided to check the connection rates at the street cabinet and some time thereafter called me to report that at the cabinet his USB modem could sync at 7768 kbps down / 1024 kbps up and attenuations of 44 dB down / 26 dB up, and there were no errors whatsoever. This was very much at the end of the 2 hours allotted to the Health Check and, in effect, the engineer left without returning to my house, and without being able to prove connection through his equipment at the master socket.

After some experimentation with the three modems that I have at the moment, a Netgear DG834Gv2, a Speedtouch 585v6, and a brand new Netgear DGN2000 (all with the latest firmwares), it became obvious that the Netgear DG834Gv2, which had been capable of maintaining a reasonable connection until a fortnight ago, was no longer able to do so, similarly to the engineer’s USB modem. The Speedtouch 585v6 managed to achieve for some time 2816 kbps down / 992 kbps up at SNRMs of 5.0 dB down / 6.0 dB up and attenuations 54.0 dB down / 31.5 dB up, but CRC errors started to accumulate once again towards the evening, with the expected detrimental effect on throughput (the thinkbroadband downstream speedtest results deteriorated to 570 kbps from 1496 kbps earlier in the day). At the moment, I am using the Netgear DGN2000, which is achieving 2266 kbps down / 762 kbps up at SNRMs of 4.9 dB down and 9.0 dB up and attenuations of 55.0 dB down / 32.3 dB up with reasonable CRC counts (due to an ADSL2 connection making use of SRA).

So, all in all, the BT Health Check brought about some improvement and showed that my line had been suffering from two different faults: bad connections within the outside grey box, and something else, potentially more substantial, along the underground cable from my house to the street cabinet, which is still there. A trace of the route of the cable on Google maps shows that it is just under 1 km long which is perhaps a bit too long. There are new marks (distances and arrows) on some of the covers of the inspection chambers which suggest recent work which may have changed the condition of the line.

To conclude, after the BT Health Check, I have a line which for the moment is working better, but only with some of my equipment, and not with the equipment of the Openreach engineer. I would welcome ideas as to how to proceed in this situation, and hope that UKOnline_Dan will be able to extend his support until the problem gets fully resolved.

BT have always argued if they can synch using their own equipment then there is no fault, in your case his own equipment didnt synch but amazingly he abandoned the job. Amazing you got a communication out of him for synch speed at cabinet, my experience of engineers is they play a video on their laptop and say im off no fault found.

Well, the engineer repeated several times that he could not exceed the two hours allocated to the health check and left me with the impression that the aim of the health check was to diagnose problems and repair only obvious minor ones, whereas major problems would require further action by the BB provider. Realistically, checking 960m of underground cable interspersed with some 20 or so inspection chambers would probably take more than two hours.

The information about the speed at the cabinet is very useful, as it clearly shows that the problem is between the cabinet and my house. With FTTC just round the corner, Openreach should be proactively looking for and eliminating problems of this type, but perhaps the number of people who complain is not sufficient, and the current procedure of routing all fault reports through the BB provider and making the provider pay for the repairs is entirely counterproductive, as it drastically decreases the number of fault reports which lead to actual engineer visits.

How far is the cabinet from your house exactly? Depending on that will reflect on how much cable under the ground would need to be checked. My green box is literally a short walk to the top of my road. If you have a similar set up you should basically get the same figures in your home as he gets from the box.

The very fact you have trouble and the engineer had trouble connecting in your home indicates either your home wiring is a complete mess or there is a problem between you and the green box.... A problem which BT sooner or later from the sounds of it will need to fix, before you have no broadband or phone connection at all.

Careful tracing of the route of the cable from the house to the cabinet on google maps indicates about 960m, so it is not exactly a very short walk in my case.

The home wiring is completely all right. Before fiddling with the grey box outside the house, the engineer managed to achieve a 1024 kbps down / 1024 kbps up connection at the test socket. I could not see both SNRMs, but the downstream one was 3 dB and he was getting no throughput due to CRC errors. After disconnecting and reconnecting the wires in the grey box he tried to connect his modem at the grey box and could not achieve anything. However, my Netgear DGN2000 which was still on the line managed to connect straight away. Perhaps it was silly of me to have the DGN2000 on the line, I should have kept the old Netgear DG834Gv2 on the line, as it cannot connect at the moment, or should at least have kept my mouth shut. But there you have it, I am an honest person...

I agree, BT have always had bad fault handling but looking at what changes have been made in the recent year, they are all changes designed to discourage fault reporting as now when a customer raises a fault they are threatened with a engineer callout fee which incidently has gone up in price during this 12 months as well.

Agreed on the synch info on cabinet been useful as well but the problem I see is that there is inconsistencies, another engineer may not have bothered to do that for you and simply fobbed you off. The 2 hour thing doesnt help matters either. Bear in mind official openreach policy is as long as your line has voice it isnt faulty. Until that policy is changed its very hard to get broadband faults logged.