The fault tracking shows that the engineer attended and fixed the problem.

No engineer showed-up at the house, and LOS remains red. Not exactly my definition of "fixed".

Currently on-hold in a queue (estimated 30 minute wait) to find out what's going-on. I guess I will not get automatic compensation for a missed appointment because BT's system records that it wasn't missed; I'll need to raise a complaint unless they get someone here today.

Ignore the online fault tracking... it’s not fit for purpose.

Engineers confirmed and arrived. Wish them luck!

The engineers confirmed there was no light at the ONT and found a nest inside the external CSP had caused physical damage. They cleaned-out the CSP, re-spliced the connection, confirmed connectivity was restored and re-sealed it to try and prevent a reoccurrence.

It took about 40 minutes from arrival and I'm happily back online an hour before the mini hub arrived. 26 hours from report to fix is pretty impressive for a residential service on a fault that needed a physical repair. They just need to fix the dodgy fault tracking.

I now have the mini hub already here should there be any future outage, and having free unlimited data enabled on the kids' phones was a godsend, particularly during half-term during lock-down!

In reply to a post by DougM:

The engineers confirmed there was no light at the ONT and found a nest inside the external CSP had caused physical damage. They cleaned-out the CSP, re-spliced the connection, confirmed connectivity was restored and re-sealed it to try and prevent a reoccurrence.

Perhaps you should "Tweet" the result!

Ah the joys of wildlife. Bird, insect or other nest?

I'm kind of glad I don't have a CSP because we already have too many issues with wasps and house martins setting up shop in all manner of weird and awkward places.

This was insect damage.

It's interesting to see the new houses nearby served by both Openreach FTTP and Virgin Media FTTP (RFoG). Like mine, Openreach has capping that seals around the duct that covers the tube into the CSP. Virgin Media has an exposed green duct with the smaller fibre tube emerging and going into their large external wall box without any capping or obvious attempts to seal anything. Makes me wonder how resilient they will be over the years.

Wow - what sort of insects, I assume ants?

I just tested the BT 4G Mini Hub on the Fritz!Box 7490 and it works perfectly as a WAN backup, subject to coverage.

- Connect the BT 4G Mini Hub to one of the USB ports and power it on
- Log into the Fritz!Box UI and navigate to Internet > Mobile Network (this menu only appears after a supported modem/dongle is connected)
- Check the box "Internet connection via mobile communications enabled" and submit

The online monitor page now shows the router is connected via the mobile network.

If using VDSL2 (FTTC), the Fritz can be configured to auto-failover to the connected 4G modem with the option: "Connect to the internet using the mobile communications network only when the DSL connection fails".

Sadly the coverage here is terrible, with no signal in my comms cupboard, but the above information may be useful to someone else using BT Halo with a Fritz!Box.

In reply to a post by DougM:

I now have the mini hub already here should there be any future outage, and having free unlimited data enabled on the kids' phones was a godsend, particularly during half-term during lock-down!

You don't have to send it back once the fault is cleared?

In reply to a post by candlerb:

You don't have to send it back once the fault is cleared?

The email says I get to keep it in-case of future outages:

When your broadband's up and running
We'll let you know when we've switched off your Mini Hub and Broadband Backup.

After we've switched off your Mini Hub, keep it somewhere safe. That way, if there's a problem with your broadband in the future, we'll be able to switch it on again straight away.

It gets automatically enabled anytime I raise a broadband outage fault via MyBT.