ADSL Woes

Sorry for the rant in advance, but I need to vent.

Last Thursday I noted that my broadband speed dropped from their usual blindingly fast 1.2Mbps to 0.8Mbps. I awoke on Friday morning to no broadband whatsoever, which is how things remained until Sunday when my broadband coughed and spluttered back into life with a jaw dropping 0.2Mbps.

I've spoken to EE who said that there was a voice fault on the line, and an OpenReach engineer came out today. Anyway...surprise surprise there wasn't anything to find on the line despite nearly two hours of diagnostics. The engineer fiddled with the line, then said give it a few hours and my broadband connection should start to improve.

So here I am...10pm and absolutely no improvement to my broadband speeds whatsoever. I managed to speak to EE (Indian call centre) earlier and suggested to them that my line might be on a banded profile. After 20 minutes of box ticking questions, the chap finally agreed that I was on a banded profile and sai for me to leave it with him...and then promptly hung up on me.

My line stats are as follows:

adsl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime
Retrain Reason: 8000
Last initialization procedure status: 0
Max: Upstream rate = 536 Kbps, Downstream rate = 672 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 440 Kbps, Downstream rate = 277 Kbps

Link Power State: L0
Mode: ADSL2
TPS-TC: ATM Mode
Trellis: U:ON /D:ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 5.7 9.4
Attn(dB): 65.5 39.8
Pwr(dBm): 0.0 12.7

ADSL2 framing
Bearer 0
MSGc: 64 12
B: 8 55
M: 1 1
T: 1 1
R: 12 8
S: 0.9231 4.0000
L: 182 128
D: 32 8

Counters
Bearer 0
SF: 804500 721944
SFErr: 0 17
RS: 56314900 110103
RSCorr: 2990513 749
RSUnCorr: 0 0

Bearer 0
HEC: 0 20
OCD: 0 0
LCD: 0 0
Total Cells: 8500375 13447504
Data Cells: 5722561 5913329
Drop Cells: 0
Bit Errors: 0 2190

ES: 0 18
SES: 0 0
UAS: 117 117
AS: 12990

Bearer 0
INP: 8.00 2.00
INPRein: 0 0
delay: 7 8
PER: 16.15 18.00
OR: 34.66 8.00

Bitswap: 5262/5263 0/0

Total time = 5 hours 44 sec
FEC: 4570783 1090
CRC: 0 39
ES: 0 18
SES: 0 0
UAS: 117 117
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Latest 15 minutes time = 44 sec
FEC: 5744 0
CRC: 0 0
ES: 0 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Previous 15 minutes time = 15 min 0 sec
FEC: 116375 12
CRC: 0 0
ES: 0 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Latest 1 day time = 5 hours 44 sec
FEC: 4570783 1090
CRC: 0 39
ES: 0 18
SES: 0 0
UAS: 117 117
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Previous 1 day time = 0 sec
FEC: 0 0
CRC: 0 0
ES: 0 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Since Link time = 3 hours 36 min 35 sec
FEC: 2990513 749
CRC: 0 17
ES: 0 9
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on? Will I ever get my super amazing 1.blah Mbps broadband back or am I stuck with a connection that is barely better than dialup?

Cheers for sticking me with this far!
John

Are the attenuation figures in line with what you had before?

Evening,

Yes...no real difference. It is what is making me think that something else is going on :/

JT

Okay in which case I think the line may have been banded based on the upstream speed. Not very harsh banding but hints of it.

What you need now is EE to do what they should have done in the beginning and arrange a broadband engineer visit. Voice should only be booked if the voice line is playing up when all broadband hardware has been disconnected.

If the line is clean then the engineer can recommend a DLM reset so line can train from new once more.

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Is the removal of the profile something EE can do without OpenReach intervention as the tech support guy suggested?

I got the distinct impression that I was being fobbed off tbh :/

JT

Removal is something BT Wholesale do, but usually they like to have gone through hoops to show its not an end-user wiring/hardware issue which the Openreach engineer will do. Resetting DLM when a fault exists is pretty useless as in a few days you end up back at the same position.

Some providers are better at handling all of this and some just say the right things so you go away.

Ok, thanks for that. I'll see if anything changes over the next 24 hours then give them another call.

So, after trying all day to get through to somebody who could help me (I was hung up on three times and fobbed off twice) I managed to get through to somebody who sounded like he knew what was causing the problem.

Apparently, there was a voice fault registered on my line and as such I'd been placed on a banded broadband profile. I have been told (after the chap consulted with Level 2 support) that by closing the fault, their system should remove the banding within 24 hours. If not, then I'm to call back tomorrow and they will register a broadband fault on the line.

I'm not holding my breath tbh, and I now seriously doubt that I'll be renewing my contract with EE when I'm up for renewal.

I guess you only find out how a good a company is when something goes wrong...

Hello,

So the total omnishambles continues. After speaking to five (yes...five) separate people today I managed to get a call back this evening from "Level 2" support....hooray!

Sadly...not hurray. They tried to go through the whole scripted nonsense yet again, but tonight I refused and decided not to play ball. After "tests" on the line they determined exactly what I'd been telling them all week, that the line should get between 1Mbps and 3Mbps...and that I was stuck at 0.2Mbps.

Their solution...another full day appointment for yet another BT engineer to come to my house. Anyway, I refused...if the engineer who was here for hours earlier in the week couldn't find a fault at my home, I'm presuming that the fault/issue must be somewhere between my house and the exchange. Honestly, my wife and I both work and can't sit in the house all day waiting for an engineer to come out...and the earliest it was going to happen was two weeks on Thursday!!!

So, I refused...and magically the fault has now been passed back to BT to deal with at the exchange...apparently.

EE should be totally ashamed...I've been lied to, hung up on, and fobbed off. If anyone is reading this please please please have absolutely nothing to do with EE. Their customer service is staffed by script reading robots, and their ability to deal with (quite frankly) basic faults is appalling.

Next stop for me will be Ofcom sadly...nobody should have to battle this hard to get a fault taken seriously.

Totally agree with your conclusion on EE.

I have had dealings with many ISPs over the years, but EE are by far the worst. I've never had a supplier charge me FOUR times for the same bill, then threaten to suspend my services, despite being over £300 in credit!

If it weren't for the fact I paid my line rental up front I'd transfer to another provider. As it is they still want another £100 if I cancel my contract.