BT won't allow business service - how to argue?

Earlier this week, I finally got a nice shiny FTTC connection. The estimated speed according to BT was 10.7 Mb/s down, 1.0 Mb/s up. It is almost a mile to the cabinet, so I'd hoped for a bit more than that - perhaps 20Mb.

As it turned out, the line tested at 39Mb down, 6.78Mb up. After a day or two of sync at 38.8 it has resynced at about 35. That's fine by me.

The problem is that I am only getting 1.5Mb/sec uplink. My ISP, ICUK, have been unable to get BT to switch it to a business connection with 10Mb/s uplink limit. That's what I asked for when I ordered it!

The line is a residential one, in my name, but the FTTC is a business one in the company's name. I can't see why I can't be allowed to use the uplink capacity of the line.

Any suggestions on how to get BT to allow the account to be a business one?

Hoopla
The residential / business designation is on the line not the BB. So A residential LINE cannot have business FTTC. If you pay for a business line you can have business FTTC.

The extra line cost pays for the shorter Business response times on the line.

BT Openreach will say that you are trying to get Business service whilst only paying for a residential service.

If you want the business service you will have to pay for it. Should be easy enough to do.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was your ISP that's confused (along with the complication that kitcat mentions above), 40/10 is available on business accounts - a quick google reveals that.

When I asked my ISP (Plusnet) why they didn't have a 40/10 retail product I got all sorts of stupid answers - even when some of their own customers had 40/10 (the lucky ones who got on the initial trial).

It turned out to be the billing system for charging for the 40/10 product had not been tested, although I find it hard to believe that it's that difficult to add a new product line to their billing system. They still don't seem to have made the 10meg upload an option yet, apparently it's going to cost £2 a month more than the 40/2 product.

Edited by R0NSKI (Fri 16-Mar-12 13:47:17)

What restriction on GEA FTTC 40/10 being only available to business accounts is there?

Now some providers may only offer it as part of their business range, but at the Openreach level there is no such restriction at all.

Something we've seen is that if you order a 10Mb upload service for a line that BT claims isn't suitable, they'll reject it.

Regardless of if the line is residential or business has no bearing on the ADSL or FTTC service that is put on top of it.

Matt

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Hoopla
The residential / business designation is on the line not the BB. So A residential LINE cannot have business FTTC. If you pay for a business line you can have business FTTC.

The extra line cost pays for the shorter Business response times on the line.

BT Openreach will say that you are trying to get Business service whilst only paying for a residential service.

If you want the business service you will have to pay for it. Should be easy enough to do.

Total RUBBISH.

I have a residential line with a residential call package. Over that same line I have a BUSINESS FTTC connection all supplied by BT.

Don't try to make up BTs policy for them - there is nothing to stop a business FTTC connection being supplied over a residential line - and I know of many.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Total RUBBISH.

I have a residential line with a residential call package. Over that same line I have a BUSINESS FTTC connection all supplied by BT.

+1

In reply to a post by uno:

Something we've seen is that if you order a 10Mb upload service for a line that BT claims isn't suitable, they'll reject it.

Regardless of if the line is residential or business has no bearing on the ADSL or FTTC service that is put on top of it.

As in the upstream estimate, which in BT's eye's seems to be sacrosanct.

Odd that he was able to order the 40Mbps downstream in that case though? Or is the estimate limit for that 10Mbps these days, rather than the original 15Mbps?

Or is the 5Mbps product speed-uncapped anyway and that is what he could be on?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

What restriction on GEA FTTC 40/10 being only available to business accounts is there?

Now some providers may only offer it as part of their business range, but at the Openreach level there is no such restriction at all.

The provider calls the 10Mb up "business" but the problem is with BT refusing to allow 10Mb up on this line. I guess that it is because their estimate of the uplink speed was only 1Mb/sec. But seeing as the line supports nearly 7Mb up, that is nonsense.

In reply to a post by uno:

Something we've seen is that if you order a 10Mb upload service for a line that BT claims isn't suitable, they'll reject it.

That seems to be what is happening here. Admittedly, the line won't manage 10Mb up, but it will do several times better than 2Mb.

Wouldn't it be good if there was a decent provider offering competition to BT?

Your provider need to (and probably already are) pushing BT to sort this but I suspect the off-shore team at BT have this and are just relaying what the screen says instead of actually looking at the line data.

Matt

In reply to a post by kitcat:

The residential / business designation is on the line not the BB. So A residential LINE cannot have business FTTC.

That's not the case, but even if it was, the line is through ICUK, not BT.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

If you pay for a business line you can have business FTTC.

That's the problem. You can't have it, pay or not, if their estimate of speed is unrealistically low.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

The extra line cost pays for the shorter Business response times on the line.

Although I am unconvinced that the Business service is better, I don't actually care. The line is only for the FTTC and not used for calls at all. If it goes down, we'll use 3G till it is fixed. And the line is paid for personally out of my pocket, not by the business.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

BT Openreach will say that you are trying to get Business service whilst only paying for a residential service.

BT Openreach would be wrong if they were saying that, but it does not appear they are.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

If you want the business service you will have to pay for it. Should be easy enough to do.

Oh, I agree. It should be. But it isn't. The trouble is that BT are refusing to supply 10Mb up because their FTTC speed estimate was very badly wrong.

In reply to a post by uno:

Your provider need to (and probably already are) pushing BT to sort this

I think they are. Seems I'm not the only one of their customers with this problem.

Still no progress. This is the latest from BT:

"Thankyou for your email regards achieving 10mbps on your FTTC
circuit,yesterday I took further advise to confirm if there is
anything further that can be done,unfortunately the response is
basically the same as you have previously been advised also that is
the constraint is in the Openreach system not ours. Whilst the line
may currently support a higher up load the OR system does not
recognise this and only predicts 1M when the cab fill increases so
won�t allow a service to be ordered that�s is higher than 2M.Once
again apologies for the inconvenience this issue is causing
you."

So this estimate of 10.7Mb down and 1Mb up (it is the same estimate for every postcode supplied from that cabinet, even the ones five metres away from it) takes precedence over the actual line capability.

And the OpenReach system defines what speeds BT Wholesale can permit on the system.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a company that wasn't utterly useless providing telecoms service in the UK?

Is there any way of taking this to senior BT management with enough clout to make things happen?

"and only predicts 1M when the cab fill increases "
So inother words once more lines on that cab are FTTC enabled, the intereference from crosstalk is predicted to be such that higher speed upstreams won't be feasible. So in order not to sell something that will probably stop working in the future they're blocking the higher upstream now. Seems sensible to me

That does indeed seem sensible, but one has to ask why is the cross talk so bad in that cabinet. The OP states even properties close to the cabinet can't get anything faster, so surely something is wrong somewhere?

I suspect it's a "per cabinet" thing to keep it manageable and also not severely degrade the longer lines. The OP also said that he has quite a long line to the cab (1 mile) which would mean the upstream signal will be quite attenuated by the time it reaches the cab, hence the grewater chance of interefence

In reply to a post by ionic:

I suspect it's a "per cabinet" thing to keep it manageable and also not severely degrade the longer lines. The OP also said that he has quite a long line to the cab (1 mile) which would mean the upstream signal will be quite attenuated by the time it reaches the cab, hence the grewater chance of interefence

The engineer's tester showed a 6.8Mb uplink capability in an actual test. I really don't think that this is likely to fall so far with the cabinet being full, but even if it did, that would not explain why EVERY address served by that cabinet would be so slow.

Seems to me that their estimate is based on the current ADSL estimate for this area (4.5Mb) multiplied by the estimated improvement figure (2.3). Using these figures as the basis demonstrates incompetence at best.

i think you will find its your estimate that is the problem, before i went onto profile17a my estimate was 14mbps down and 5.6 up, so when i oredered bt's fttc they would only allow me 2mbps upload due to my estimate being under 15mbps, since i went onto profile 17a my estimate has gone up to 29/5.6, and so accordingly i have been put onto the 10mbps upload,

The saga continues. The prediction for all postcodes served by our cabinet is 10.7Mb down, 1.0Mb up. Even the ones right next to the cabinet.

When the engineer tested the line, it showed a max synch speed of 38.9Mb down, 6.8Mb up. Of course using the BT-provided modem I can't see what it is capable of now, but I originally got 38.8Mb synch and not it has fallen back to 31Mb. The uplink speeds from speed tests are about 1.8, which probably reflects a 2Mb cap rather than what the line can do.

My ISP (ICUK) have been trying to get BT to allow a 10Mb uplink cap but BT are adamant that as the cabinet gets more lines connected, the 6.8Mb uplink speed will fall to 1Mb so they won't allow a higher cap than it has now. At one time they said that the line can only do 1Mb up now, but that's clearly not true, so they had to change their story.

Is it really likely that the uplink capacity will fall to 12% of its original speed as a result of the cabinet being filled, or is BT making it up?

Crosstalk may reduce speeds in the future, but not to that extent, otherwise the 20 Meg upstream products would also be affected.

Have you tried saying you will be perfectly content if it does fall over time, but you would like the benefit until then?

I think ICUK have said that, but BT are saying that the low estimate prevents them from putting it on the higher profile.