How to get the routing of my line checked

our company has (rubbish <3MB) adsl on one of our lines.
BT records show that the line goes via a street cab that is not fibre enabled.

However a couple of years back we had a fault on the line and when openreach attended and did a lift n shift, the engineer said the records were wrong and our cable went the "other way to all the others on the estate" to a cabinet that was having a fibre cabinet installed next to it, so we were in luck.

This is quite possible as it seems a previous occupant had 30pr Cu ISDN30 installed and we have our own DP number where the lines comes in.

The records never seem to have been updated and try as hard as we can we cannot get anybody to look at this.

Essentailly we need to find a way to get Openreach out to confirm the correct routing and update the records so hopefully we can get FTTC offered.

Can anybody help please

Not many ways to confirm the routing unless you happen to see a BT engineer or have one in for some work. You could try and order a FTTC service off your existing DP & see what happens - thats about the best you can do.

DP's will still go to a cab anyway.

Go to a decent ISP of your choice and ask them to order FTTC, if its *auto rejected* then ask them to do a manual order and see what happens. If the order gets a far as BT the engineer will soon confirm/deny your routing.

Tried to nab an engineer at the cabinet, but wasnt allowed to work on any other job, even for a few quid. Perhaps I need to find a more imaginative one!

Cant seem to get anywhere going down the isp route.

A line fault maybe the only way forward.
tbh I would quite happily pay the £180 charge to get somebody out, refunded if there is indeed an error in their records. Just not possible to arrange this.

Yes engineering isnt the way it used to be and unless there assigned the job they cant tell you much - i was more hoping you might find an engineer who was able to say 'oh yes DP xxx comes out in cab n'

Actually you dont need them to *do* any work on the lines, you just need them to confirm if it appears in the cab you think it does. If its a 'good modern cab' with Krone blocks inside it should be nicely labelled with the DP number, if its an older messy cab then the cable that feeds your DP should be tagged or written on with the DP no.

Have you got any lines from that DP in traffic at the moment (for voice or anything)? and which ISP(s) have you tried? I know Both Zen and A&A can progress a manual order if required, and A&A used to be quite good at kicking BT into touch. It is a 12 month contract though so pick your ISP with care.

Getting BT to correct line routing records is a pain they will generally only do it when there is a job open on a line and they find an error. Now they might try and correct the error and move your DP onto the correct cab (which for you would be bad) or they will just update the records with whats built so the local engineers and exchange know whats going on.

Edited by IamQ (Wed 25-Sep-13 17:56:45)

some engineers will play game.

I found one recently who was swapping all the pairs between cabinets (tie pairs?) and he caught my attention because when he shifted the pairs my attainable sync speed increased by over 35mbit, long story short he came back to do some diagnostics a few days later and now he has raised a fault, his opniion 2/3 of the pairs between the cabinets have noise injection but he isnt sure if its crosstalk or external, the pairs go underneath a traffic junction as the cabinets are not the same side of the road. Since my cabinet has 2 FTTC cabinets he thinks everyone on the first will be moved to the 2nd or as many as possible as they all wont fit and then they will replace all the pairs between the voice and 1st fttc cabinet, I managed to get this by nabbing him whilst he was still at the cabinet.

"If its a 'good modern cab' with Krone blocks inside it should be nicely labelled with the DP number"

Do you mean in the cab ? if so dream on. All DPs should have there number on them.

Sounds like the OP may well have had a new DP put in at the same time as the ISDN30 if so one would hope it has a number on it and that R&R know what cab it goes back to.Its very rare for R&R to get that wrong.

Do you mean in the cab ? if so dream on.

Seconded Bert, that just doesn't happen. If lucky there will be a network records sheet in the cab, but then these were stopping being updated back in the 90's, so if it's a new DP it won't be on there.

I've seen a shining example of a cab rebuilt (though it was only small) and it was a dream to work on... They do exist!

I can only really say that the cab at the entrance to the ind estate is #32 and this is the one recorded as having our lines connected to it.
However when we had a fault a while back the engineer took ages and came back saying that our line(s) went the other way to a cabinet further up the road that was having an fttc cab installed next to it so we were in luck.
However the record were never updated.
The only reason for mentioning that we have our own dp (I guess due to an old isdn30 installation, it does indeed have a number but dont recall it just now) is that it provides some support for the fact that the line(s) may not necessarily be routed the same direction as the others on the estate.

All of this revolves on the openreach engineers comments about the error in the recrods.

I do know of A&A ISP and may indeed give them a try.

Oh, yeah, they do exist, it's just that in an earlier post, someone said that a new cabinet would have pairs marked to say which DP they went to, this is never the case.