In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

This is why things like Enchanced Care are a good idea.

Do you have it and if so, who is your telephone provider?

Edited by deleted (Wed 21-May-14 10:26:30)

I have one of the priority care packages on my Infinity service - cannot remember exactly which. Service is delivered across my residential phone line. The advantage is that if my phone line fails, it is likely to affect Infinity so I get "free" coverage of that too.

For FTTC - the DSLAMs or MSANs are the street side cabinets. These are owned, operated and maintained by Openreach.

The fibre from the cabinet (or for FTTP from someone's house) is connected to a OLT (optical line termination) card in the exchange. LLU ISPs then pay Openreach to connect their backhauls to the Openreach NGA networks via a layer 2 switch (in Openreach lingo it's known as the GEA Cablelink). BT Wholesale also pay Openreach to link up their 21CN network to the Openreach NGA at all exchanges via the same GEA Cablelink.

LLU ISPs don't use their DSLAMs for FTTx - they are essentially paying Openreach for access to its network.

For ADSL and unbundled voice, it's a different story.

In reply to a post by MHC:

I have one of the priority care packages on my Infinity service - cannot remember exactly which. Service is delivered across my residential phone line. The advantage is that if my phone line fails, it is likely to affect Infinity so I get "free" coverage of that too.

I don't think we are singing from the same hymn sheet here. Have a look at
http://business.bt.com/phone-services/bt-totalcare/ where we can see that it relates to voice services only. True if voice services are lost then it might impact on the broadband service but it has been reported many times on TBB that the broadband service has continued even though no voice service was available.

So turning this on its head, let us assume the broadband service has gone down but voice is still available. You may well have Total or Critical Care but as far as I can see this does not give you any kind of priority attention to restore your broadband service; even more so if your voice and broadband service is delivered by two different suppliers.

But sticking with the same supplier with a single line for both voice and broadband, I don't know of any ISP who will give a priority fix service, for an additional fee, if just your broadband service goes down when you still have a voice service. I stand corrected on that though.

So you fall back on your business interruption plan which may mean going to a different geographical location or invoking your business interruption insurance. If you are in the minority that has a duplicate broadband service, with physical different paths back to the exchange, then I suppose you are covered for some eventualities like fire, flood or worse like the area being sealed off due to a suspect package.

You make a risk assessment and have a plan according to your budget.

"some" people are demanding lower prices.

its an assumption by marketing everyone wants that.

in regards to what ofcom have to do.

Alternatively BT's shareholders can eat it and there is no problem, they are perhaps a bit greedy?

There is something very wrong within BT in how much much it needs to spend to rollout technology, how much it needs to charge for engineer visits, how much it needs to charge for backhaul, and yet it has had to be fold to get its act together on fault turnaround.

I agree ofcom's obsession with low cost broadband is excessive, but BT arent blameless.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 21-May-14 20:16:05)

MHC has Business Broadband Infinity, which does have priority fixing.

As line faults and broadband problems often go hand in hand, what he is saying is that most line issues will get fixed in the course of fixing the broadband ones.

Your citing of broadband connections working when the phone doesn't is spurious. The broadband in such cases is severely downgraded. The cause of this scenario is one wire of the pair becoming disconnected somewhere. His cover level on the Business Infinity would come into play.

Correct ...

And when we needed it, BT pulled out all the stops they could and had a team on site at 5:00 AM on a Saturday morning.