BT Wholesale - Congestion at WNGLC exchange

Having seen my broadband slowing down from +6.5Mb/s to below 3Mb/s and some evenings to below 2Mb/s combined with high latancy as soon as any load was applied to the line, I went through the faults process with my ISP IDNET.
The only conclusion that could be reached which I had suspected for a long time was that I was on a congested VP and from feedback from other people in the community is that it was a widespread problem impacting multiple ISP's.
This exchange WNGLC is a 20CN exchange serving three villages and outlying rural areas, the village nearest the exchange (the smallest) has been FTTC enabled. The remaining two villages, mine included have a part built FTTP network - no spurs installed from the main link through the village as yet.
Work appears to have halted since the end of July 2016.
Towns nearby have had progress on their FTTP and FTTC even though they already have LLU enabled 21CN accessible to them.

Below is some excerpts from my email comms following my initial email to BT Openreach CEO Clive Selley's Office:

Me:

Dear Sir.
> I have been informed by IDNET (my ISP) that BT have confirmed that my
> local exchange (WNGLC) is congested, I quote from IDNET: ' BT have
> advised the exchange is now at full capacity with no available room to
> move the circuit to a separate area with more spare capacity.'
> FTTP is currently partly built but has stopped since 7/2016.
> It would appear that this is affects all 20CN customers on this
> exchange
> - numbering in the hundreds.
> Could you please advise as to why this area has been sidelined in
> favour of already 21CN areas when there is a BIG problem here.

BT Openreach:

The Project Manager for the Glyn Ceiriog area has advised that the work needed to provide fibre to the premises in Glyn Ceiriog is being replanned. Unfortunately we are unable to advise of a date as to when fibre will be available. We will be carrying out improvements and adding to the network infrastructure. This will result in fibre to the premises being available to more people than it would have been on the previous plans.

I understand how disappointing it is that I am unable to provide a date for completion. The Openreach fibre checker is the best place to check for any updates and information, and is updated regularly.

I have included this below for you

https://www.homeandwork.openreach.co.uk/when-can-i-g...

I am sorry I am unable to bring any better news at this time, but hope you will be encouraged by my comments that fibre broadband will be made available to Glyn Ceiriog in the near future.

Me:

As I mentioned previously the exchange is classed as congested by BT Openreach as advised by IDNET.

The reason for contacting you was to find out what was going to be done to ease congestion at the exchange?

If installing Fibre to Glyn Ceiriog is the only option then what is being done to prioritise the build?

The Fibre Checker said we were due to have fibre 2 years ago and has been updated regularly with new dates which have come and gone.


BT Openreach:

Thank you for your further correspondence. We have not been made aware that the exchange is full, until your e-mail advised of this. We are looking into this and I will get back to you as soon as I have any information of value to share.



Thank you for your patience.

Then from BT Openreach:

We can find no evidence to substantiate your Internet Providers claims that the exchange is congested, or that" the telephone network in the village is a mess "

As I have advised in my previous e-mail , work is ongoing to provide fibre to the premises in the future although I have been unable to give a completion date for this.

If any residents experience problems with telephone service, then the correct people to contact would be their Service Provider. This is the recognised industry process. The Service Providers will then contact Openreach for assistance should this be necessary.

Kind Regards

From IDNET:

The wholesaler confirmed during the fault progress they had seen the line is connected to a congested VP and then checked to determine if the line can be moved to a less congested part of the network however found there is currently no capacity to do this. this could be on the network between the exchange and the wholesaler network so may not be visible by Openreach unless they contact the wholesaler to check on the VP status for your line.


Me:

Hi Sharon, I'm forwarding the response I have had from IDNET to your previous email.

My initial contact with your self's was following a response to IDNET from BT concerning my question about speed issues at my exchange.

BT Openreach:

I have asked BT Wholesale to look into the exchange congestion claim you have made, and am waiting for them to respond back with their findings.

I will be back to you by 28th March at the latest to advise further.

BT Openreach:

I have received the response regarding the exchange congestion issue at the Glen Ceiriog exchange. As you have advised, the 20cn capacity is exhausted and there are no plans to increase that. The relief project to bring 21cn in is scheduled for enablement in July 2017 with residual migrations of customer circuits to be completed by October2017.

I appreciate this this means the issue wont be resolved until summer this year at the earliest, but hope this does reassure you that the exchange will be improved.

Please can you advise if you are happy for the case to be closed.


Now to me this raises a question as to how many other exchanges around the country are in the same position?
It took for me to ask a knowledgeable technician at IDNET to chase this up with BT Wholesale to start getting any answers.

Now it would appear that several hundred customers at this exchange are in the same boat as me and as yet no assurances from BT that they giving any added priority to the build at this location.

The Community Council has recently been flagging up issues about the poor telephone service in the area with BT, our AM and MP due to lots of voice line faults and complaints to them about internet issues - hence my mention of it being a mess in one of my emails.
Having spoken to various engineers I have been told that there is a lot of aluminium multipairs installed in the village and various joints have been disturbed during the build - mostly laying pull ropes as no fibre spurs installed yet as far as I'm aware (our cabinet has had patch bays installed recently to replace the crimp connections).

Main aim of this is to give BT a kick up the to get this sorted ASAP.

Any advice what to do next is welcome.

You have already been told what is happening in replies to your previous posts on the subject in the "Idnet or Now TV?" thread. Your exchange is being updated in around six months to 21CN. There is little or nothing that you can do that will speed up that process, instead be pleased that the problem should be fixed even though not as quickly as you want. Remember there are also many others also waiting for their connections to be upgraded or improved.

In reply to a post by MCM:

You have already been told what is happening in replies to your previous posts on the subject in the "Idnet or Now TV?" thread. Your exchange is being updated in around six months to 21CN. There is little or nothing that you can do that will speed up that process, instead be pleased that the problem should be fixed even though not as quickly as you want. Remember there are also many others also waiting for their connections to be upgraded or improved.

On the 20th March she said there was no completion date, then on the 31st March having confirmed the previously denied congestion issue she said it 'should be' by October 2017, as mentioned, dates have come and gone for over three years now not to mention the national rollout of ADSL2+ that never happened here.
I fully understand that many areas are waiting to have their networks upgraded but neighbouring exchanges that are ADSL2+ enabled with their nice fat NON CONGESTED 1Gb/s backhauls have been upgraded to FTTC and FTTP.
The point here is to make sure that the build doesn't get put on the back burner again as this is still a 20CN which is VERY CONGESTED.
If this were a non congested or even a less congested exchange then I would be happy to just shut up and join the queue, but it is VERY CONGESTED.
The situation is also getting worse - noticeably since Christmas, I suspect that with the rise in awareness of streaming services with Amazon Fire sticks, Kodi etc plus basic O/S updates etc now being much larger the old backhaul is totally inadequate and the situation is rapidly getting worse.
I have as yet had no assurances from BT that this build will be prioritised over non congested exchange builds.

They seem to have told you they don't have a date for completion of the fibre project. The date for completion of 21CN move is a different thing.

BT will not give you assurances that you are prioritised over other work. For a start they have contractual commitments on BDUK so that would be a higher priority. They also will be using the engineer resources available in your area so it is a smaller pool to prioritise in anyway. And they will have planned in for doing the work - changing that to make you higher priority would potentially cause issues with a number of other planned activities.

They are a large company juggling big projects and BAU work and tweaking planned activities can have big impacts. The fact they say the 21CN work is booked for July would mean that it would be highly unlikely you could get it any quicker than that - in big business 3 months is a very short period of time.

How do you think posting ranting on here, a private forum of complete irrelevance to BT Wholesale, is going to either "Main aim of this is to give BT a kick up the to get this sorted ASAP"
or
get you the assurances you want, as in "I have as yet had no assurances from BT that this build will be prioritised over non congested exchange builds"?

There are thousands if not tens of thousands of people in the country not even approaching a connection speed of your worst case 3Mbps throughput. You and your exchange are not special.

You'll be giving yourself a nervous breakdown or heart attack.

"The point here is to make sure that the build doesn't get put on the back burner again ...". There is no point here.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 04-Apr-17 08:57:49)

In reply to a post by ian72:

They seem to have told you they don't have a date for completion of the fibre project. The date for completion of 21CN move is a different thing.

BT will not give you assurances that you are prioritised over other work. For a start they have contractual commitments on BDUK so that would be a higher priority. They also will be using the engineer resources available in your area so it is a smaller pool to prioritise in anyway. And they will have planned in for doing the work - changing that to make you higher priority would potentially cause issues with a number of other planned activities.

They are a large company juggling big projects and BAU work and tweaking planned activities can have big impacts. The fact they say the 21CN work is booked for July would mean that it would be highly unlikely you could get it any quicker than that - in big business 3 months is a very short period of time.

Ah Ok, so the July upgrade is exchange upgrade to 21CN ie ADSL2+, I was under the impression that Fibre was going to be the solution.
The aim of my inquiries was to find a solution to the congestion at the exchange - the title of my email discussions with BT Openreach was 'exchange congestion'. I for one will sign up to fibre when it becomes available but would be able to manage quite comfortably on an upto 8Meg if it were not suffering the congestion issues it currently is and would be waiting patiently for the fibre rollout. The latency issues is the big killer.
At no time until during my discussions with BT Openreach or IDNET was the future upgrade of the exchange to ADSL2 and hence the VP's mentioned - only how to check with the BT Superfast site for progress which keeps changing anyhow until the last email from BT Openreach about the July upgrade.
Hopefully the exchange upgrade would not be subject to the same sort of external delays as the far more complicated fibre roll out as there appears to be an FTTC cab already active near the exchange so the fibre backhaul is already in place?
Just somewhat surprised and frustrated about the lack of communication between BT Wholesale and Openreach about congestion at the exchange with BT Openreach flat out denying that there was an issues at my local exchange which possibly led to a delay in the planning or priority for an upgrade?
At the end of last year I finally got a high resistance type fault sorted out by BT, at one point my connection got re profiled down to IIRC 400Kb/s, pings were still around 20ms but as soon as any load was applied they rocketed up, it would appear that those on long lines that can only achieve these figures are also affected by the latency issues, compounding their poor line at peak times so the congestion is also making their lines worse than they otherwise would be.

The 21CN is BT Wholesale and thus Openreach has no visibility of what that hardware is doing or how congested or not it is.

If you want full end to end visibility on service performance that is NEVER going to happen unless you buy service from a vertically integrated operator like Virgin Media

On the load and rising latency, it is not clear if you understand the issues that can arrive when you get close to saturating either download or upload or both on an ADSL connection.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The 21CN is BT Wholesale and thus Openreach has no visibility of what that hardware is doing or how congested or not it is.

If you want full end to end visibility on service performance that is NEVER going to happen unless you buy service from a vertically integrated operator like Virgin Media

On the load and rising latency, it is not clear if you understand the issues that can arrive when you get close to saturating either download or upload or both on an ADSL connection.

I guess the same applies to the BT 20CN, surely BT Wholesale should have flagged the exchange as congested to BT Openreach with a view installing more capacity?

Re the load, yes I am aware of the effects of a saturation and have been experimenting with OpenWRT and Gargoyle firmwares, the Gargoyle firmware has some decent monitoring features which used in conjunction with ping in the O/S I can monitor the effects of load verses latency, for a given percentage of available bandwidth both up and down the latency jumps as the exchange becomes congested ie if I have 6.7Mb/s in the daytime and play a HD video there is no latency issue yet when I play a 320p video when there is only 2.7Mb/s bandwidth available, latency increases, in both case upload is still within a tenth of what is available to me as tested before and after experimenting.
Even with Gargoyle Active Congestion Control and setting it to 1Mb/s down and less than 80Kb/s down, which is below the available bandwidth the latency makes any realtime use unusable, I can download Ubuntu, windows updates etc flat out during the day with no latency issues and my sons gaming is unaffected, come 4pm on, latency increases a lot.

A link to your ping monitor of my ip:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/5ac1bda9629...

On the left is Battlefield One on overnight download, on the right is typical usage with some catchup TV and browsing.

Why would BT Wholesale flag the exchange to Openreach? It is BT Wholesale who deliver and manage 20CN and 21CN backhaul

It is wait for BT Wholesale to make available the backhaul network that is more scaleable, or use competition to get a competitor to arrive and deliver LLU which was the mandated way of making things better for people for over a decade now

BT OR are not a customer facing organisation. Their job is only to manage the connection from exchange to house. What happens outside of that is not part of OR's remit and therefore not something they would normally be asked about. It is the ISP that should be dealing with all comms with you - they should talk to BT Wholesale about congestion. They should talk to OR about any problems with the connection to your house. They should talk to 3rd parties providing the with peering connections.

If you go direct to a part of the service and ask them about something for which they are not responsible then you are going to get incorrect answers - OR do not have the information from other parts of BT as Ofcom enforce separation.