Ooops, missed this reply, sorry.

In reply to a post by DrSteve:

To be honest I had forgotten about the exception part of all this (despite the title of the thread) as it was so long ago! It took 5-6 weeks to get it sorted and resulted in a new manual order. When I sent my email I only really relayed the problems with the stuff after the order went through.

Well as far as I am aware (I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong) anytime there is an issue a Exception TAG is put in place and the issue needs to be resolved before they will remove it and continue on until they get another issue where another TAG get added and so on.

In reply to a post by DrSteve:

What do you mean by go either way?

I mean, if there is too much of an issue getting it resolved they "might" say its no longer viable to be done.

They did the same down the bottom part of my road an the bottom side roads, where they installed all the FTTP hardware (which is all still there by the way) many years ago, but just didn't flick the switch, and last year they were given FTTC.

And when I asked I was told it was no longer viable to do so due to the cost of engineers (2 stage install) and the average package the people was asking for.

I can see their point, but at the same time surely fibre has a less maintenance cost than copper well for our area it should be due to engineers are always in my area working on the copper lines.

Paul

Another quick update. Apparently Openreach have opened a Director of Service Office case and assigned a case manager. All sounds very important!! We'll see what happens.

I see where you're coming from regarding the installation no longer being viable. I would not be surprised with this scenario or another big excess build charge. Just got to keep my fingers crossed I suppose.

In reply to a post by DrSteve:

Another quick update. Apparently Openreach have opened a Director of Service Office case and assigned a case manager. All sounds very important!! We'll see what happens.

If I recall they are called Case Handlers who will communicate between your ISP and BTOR's Case Handler (so I have been told), we had one with our issue, but mine was useless, one of my neighbours has his resolved in 5 mins while put on hold, mine took 2 to 3 weeks, also to remember we both used the same Splitter Node and Fibre DP and Manifold.

So some Case Handlers are not that good and just believe what they are told.

In reply to a post by DrSteve:

I see where you're coming from regarding the installation no longer being viable. I would not be surprised with this scenario or another big excess build charge. Just got to keep my fingers crossed I suppose.

Agreed, but I am sure it will be resolved.

Paul

The saga continues. Today is the 6 month anniversary of the day I placed the order!
There was a definite increase in communication from Openreach after the complaint and I was offered some dates for another engineer visit. Today was the chosen day. Unfortunately I got a call just before 5pm yesterday to say that Openreach had cancelled the visit. There's still no clear info on what they were planning to do but they did say they required access to the house which might indicate something more than just external works. At least it looks like the installation will go ahead but who knows when!!

Well I hope it all goes well.

Paul

OK so another update. Engineer came again today. Bit of a worrying start again as he measured out the distance again and pointed out that it was over 350m which we already know from previous attempts. Then pointed out longest reel is 350m and he didn't have any of those anyway. My heart sank!
Then he came good. Set off on 90 mile round trip to get the reel. Then brought in reinforcements to help with the job and also a jointer to sort out the joining of 2 lengths of fibre. Top marks!
All wired up with a solid green PON light on the ONT but no internet. Tried 2 routers but neither worked. Both configured correctly for PPPoE with the correct login details. He headed on saying it was all set up correctly from his end and that I needed to contact my ISP to sort it out.
Spoke to Zen who tell me that the order is still showing as not completed by Openreach and still at KCI-3. They have confirmed router setup is correct. Mentioned something about the engineer needed to hand over that the installation has been completed.
Any ideas where the issue is? Does it take while for things to update? Will it just come alive at some point this evening? Installation was completed around 3-4pm so not holding out too much hope for this evening.
So near and yet so far!!

That sounds somewhat suspicious to me ... there�s no way the engineer would have gone to all that effort (and well done him) and then not �closed� the installation task on his phone.

My bet is some hiccup between BT Wholesale and Zen.

Did you keep the engineers number ? Ring him tomorrow and ask if he �comped� his task .... (damn sure he did) then it�s time for you to force Zen to chase this up with BTw I reckon.

I suspect with all these delays their bit of the order has been delay/cancelled.

I'd be inclined to agree with you there. The engineer was great. I was at work all day but did get to chat to him before I left and he seemed to have the whole thing worked out within about half an hour. He was straight on the phone to get the second engineer and jointer arranged and then off he went for a 2 hour journey to get my cable.
I was getting updates via my wife while at work and the guy seemed puzzled when it wouldn't connect.
I assume the PON light just means that there is a confirmed connection between then ONT and exchange? At this point I assume I somehow get passed through the network and handed off to Zen at some point. I take it that's where the problem lies?

The issue is definitely with Zen and/or with their carrier (eg BT Wholesale). A solid PON light indicates the ONT has been registered on the Openreach network and is 'synced' with the OLT at the exchange - however the line hasn't been activated by the ISP yet. You will need to get in touch with Zen again and ask them to get a move on. But at least you're close to going live

Guess what....



On one hand I'm over the moon. After 192 days I'm finally connected. On the other hand the single thread speed isn't that great.
I can break the 300mbps barrier on other speed tests such as dsl reports which has 12 threads. I'm not sure what the normal pattern is for FTTP but the speed builds very gradually and only maxes out at the very end of the speed test. Here is my dslreports speed test.
There seems to be a thread on the Zen forums about single threaded performance. Is this something I should be concerned about?