Exchange Only - What Hope

I am currently one of the unlucky people to have an exchange only telephone line. To top off my stream of bad luck in this area the line is almost 3KM long, I actualy have my suspicions that it does a victory lap of the town before it reaches the exchange.

My speed was slightly over 4mb for some time, originaly the speed was <1mb however I persisted like a dog with a bone and had multiple Openreach Engineer visits (over 10 so far). As a result almost everything replaceable was (so they say!) and my speed was finaly at 4mb. Then after a few months it dropped again to 3mb, not much of a drop but it is still 1/4 the speed, so for me a massive drop. I am now approaching the 3rd visit in 28 days (to allow an escalation). I have to say the engineers are somewhat useless. I enquired about network re-arrangement and was laughed at and told if i want faster speeds I should move house. This seems to be the party line.

I have to say my ISP has been pretty good (sky), I dont see changing ISP as an option as I am a heavy user.

So to my point, there are 2 Fibre cabinets in differing locations under 100 meters from my house ( I swear they were put there to tease me ). From everything I have read so far it would appear I have no hope, cant get Fibre on Demand as I am not connected to a cabinet and even if I was to pay to get connected I would be looking at a small fortune.

I currently live in the "KA1 3" postcode area of Kilmarnock, Scotland which has been identified as the number 2 broadband blackspot for towns with over 44k residents.

I can almmost feel the value of my house drop with the influx of fibre availability and my current [censored] speeds.

What hope do I have?
Is there anything I can do ? (I have contacted my MP regarding, and await her response).

Sounds like you need to contact your local council to see if you are in the footprint of the BDUK project and if so what phase you might be in. It does sound like Openreach have spent a lot of money trying to fix your issue - a lot more than they are likely to make back from you anytime soon.

3km long and should be able to do 7 Mbps - what is your downstream attenuation?

Sky is sometimes a little conservative with its DLM, but it can be good, 3.5km from exchange here and sync is just under 9 Mbps.

As for the exchange only issue, 12 cabinets still without FTTC at the exchange so until they are done then unlikely that EO will be addressed. Remember Scotland has a 85% connected to fibre solution target by 2015, would you bet a months salary on a 85% chance? The higher 95% for 2017 is actually less than the rest of the UK, as most of the UK is aiming at 95% superfast, but Scotland is taking the 95% fibre based target instead.

There looks to be several clusters of EO across Kilmarnock,
Dundonald Road/Mount Ave
Bank St, Sandbed St
Parts of Bonnyton Road
Bowmore Road
Southcraig Drive

Around 1,500 premises in total, but with 19,000 premises on the exchange, they could be ignored and targets met.

I shall do that today ian72, thanks. I was pondering the words to use and you have provided them

I had spoken with the Lord Provost over this matter however I feel that I was talking to a brick wall on that one.

Indeed Openreach must have exceeded normal amounts of funding for my issues. They will no doubt be back again in the next week, I shall speak with my ISP tonight.

The telephone pole is situated in my garden, a visual reminder of how guff my service is. I own an axe

Just to add, for the five years we have lived their the telephone has never worked correctly, at night we hear other talking on the line, anytime the phone is used the internet drops out and trains for ages. But the telephone line is really only their for the broadband for us. It is gauling though.

I pay line rental for [censored] that barely works (perhaps im renting the mammoth cable!)
People a stonesthrow away pay the exact same for a working line and broadband 20x faster.

It really doesnt figure.

If you hear other people talking when the broadband hardware is unplugged then keep the pressure on to get the telephone line brought up to standard

I suggest that if you have not done so, try the Quiet Line Test, particularly when you hear other conversations.

17070

Option 2

Have you heard of any complaints from neighbours?

If you do the QLT several times over some days, any neighbours hearing the responses such as the initial statement of your Phone Number, may stimulate them to report faults to their phone providers.

I think if i were to use the home phone line for calls more then I may do better at pin pointing the issues ie. call the ISP when they happen. Unfortunately though we tend to rely more on mobile phones for calls now so the telephone tends to be like an unliked relative sitting in the corner gathering dust.

There have been occasions when I have went to use it and it sounds like an old spectrum game loading (ohh memories lol).

I am on router number 3. Telephone number 3. Countless new adsl filters. No extensions, Openreach fitted noise filters (fitted on Saturday).

Stranglly though the last engineer to visit (a broadband engineer) on Saturday came back after the visit a couple of hours later to inform me that he has replaced the entire line and that they do not normally do that. Whether that is true I will never know but I would imagine replacing 3KM of phone line wouldnt be that easy, so could just have been lip service.

I will persist trying the quiet line test.

Any time I have spoke with neighbours about broadband they are actualy suffering slower speeds than I am, obviously I have been vigilant in persuing faster speeds though. Their speeds range from 1mb - 2 mb. I have only spoken with a small handful of neighbours. It is a reallyt quiet area and I tend to keep myself to myself.

Thanks for all the input folks it is really appreciated.

Fast reply!

Generally from observation and experience, I would recommend that the QLT should be the first resort if line problems (including internal wiring) are suspected.

It costs nothing (apart from some minutes); and can reveal a lot.

Try to get (some of) your neighbours to do so also, including offering to do it for them.

Hopefully, they will co-operate.


Even if you never normally use the Land Line for Phone Calls, its condition is vital for good Broadband service, whether ADSL or VDSL.

I shall try the test when i get home

Line attenuation for down is 59db , up is 36db , noise margin is 7.1db

I am getting 3mb down and 1mb up (3027kbs and 1007kbs to be exact)

59dB is either 3.5km of aluminium or around 6km of copper.

Getting the voice sorted out, without any mention of broadband is the first step. The requirements for a voice line are well understood by the openreach engineers

In reply to a post by RossMcG:

so the telephone tends to be like an unliked relative sitting in the corner gathering dust.

You may not need your phone line for voice but if it is providing sub-standard voice, whether you use it or not, then it will certainly be degrading your BB.

If you ever need to diagnose BB faults, always have a cheap corded phone handy, even if you never call from it, and do the QLT at the 1st opportunity, Any noise report to your voice provider, never mentioning BB.

The quiet line test passed , also booted me off the internet while running it lol.

Openreach engineer first said my line was almost 8km then said it was 3km as the crow flies it is 2.6km. So sounds like my line is doing loop'de'loops and a tour of the town.

I was given this code from one of the open reach engineers, apparently this is the line I am on: dp1783

Openreach told me in writing that there are no junctions in the line that is a straight line to the exchange (I still have that email) now I find that hard to believe, much like the last engineer telling me he replaced the entire line :/

Makes no sense to me

@ XRaySpeX - I always keep my corded phone next to the socket, it was fairly cheap (about £5) but at least it works and cant be blamed like the cordless phones.

The frustrating thing is when the engineers come everything is said to be perfect yet then it gets to night time and it starts playing up again. despite all the visits I have never had a REINN (i think thats the name) engineer out. I had an incling perhaps it was electrical at one point but just had a new kitchen fitted and all appliances are brand new and the electrics were all tested, although that may mean nothing

Electrician tests are just safety based.

Turn off everything at fuseboard apart from what is needed for broadband do things improve?

I recently had a new kitchen fitted and a lot of work done throughout the house. For a couple of days we had no internal power but the workmen allowed me to use their generator thing to keep the broadband running so I could watch netflix on the laptops. It worked fine for a while then as ever there were multiple drop outs. Ordinarily I would say they could be caused due to the powertools etc that were being used but some happened when the men were on their lunch break.

I explained all that to the openreach engineer and asked if perhaps a neighbours system is causing the drop outs (I read central heating systems can cause REINN), he said I had no chance of getting a REINN engineer and I should just "live with it".

I was also told by another engineer if I persist they will only move me to another line, which will probably be slower.

Seems to be really "hit or miss" with engineers attitudes, one thing is abundantly clear, they do not like working weekends lol.

I have to say though most have been courious, must be frustrating for them too.

I had a look on this checker: http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/fibre/checker.php

I was wondering if anyone could answer a couple of questions. Here is the results (edited to tidy up as in table format, postcode is KA13TQ):

This postcode has some Exchange Only lines
This means there is currently no cabinet to run FTTC from.
Openreach may deploy FTTC/P in the future to this area. 47% M_A

This postcode has some Exchange Only lines
This means there is currently no cabinet to run FTTC from.
Openreach may deploy FTTC/P in the future to this area. 47% M_D

FTTC 5% 15.94 8b P34
.....................

I am wondering why the top 2 are listed as Cabinets "M_A" & "M_D", what does that mean in English?

Also if 5% of a postcode area is connected to a cabinet then surely it cant be that difficult to re route a few lines?

Perhaps I am just being nieve.

M_A indicates the cable ID in the exchange.
Re routing E/O lines into cabinets is not easily done as the main cables are sealed and pressurised . If trying to divert into existing cabinet then that may not be ocated near the cable and just trying divert the odd pair would not be worth while from a business perspective.
If going to go done the cabinet route then may make more sense to do several hundred lines at once and put in a whole new PCP or go the FTTP route.

I would guess that there is probably a maximum of a hundred households attached to my postcode (complete guess of course). I understand that it would not be financialy viable to do that work when the uptake could be less than 1/3 of homes ordering fibre. I personally believe there would be a much higher uptake due to the current speeds of 1 - 3mb. Alas that would never be considered I would fear.

I am learning quite a bit from this conversation which is good, every day is a school day after all

Does anyone think there could be any truth in the engineer informing me that he replaced the entire line? From pole to house had previously been replaced.

The guy also informed me that he told the ISP that they should consider replacing my router, which would be my fourth router. The annoying thing is how useless sky routers are.

Replaced line - unlikely. Most likely switched you to a spare pair, so not new copper but an existing line that was not used by anyone else.

Lines live in bundles so changing one physically is not possible, they run a new 50 or 100 pair cable and then spend a morning swapping people around.

Many people find the Sky routers very stable and generally sync well, but noise can affect different lines differently.

Whatever he replaced made it slightly worse, typical

I have the same gripe as most people do with sky routers, they are extremly slow with file transfers. Even with a decent power line adapter set up im lucky to get over 6MB/s transfer rate, why they never made the new ones GB is beyond me. If i am streaming a full 1080p movie it can get choppy (I have 2 x NAS set ups)

I think the worse thing is the DLM and the constant drop of connection and slow down.

Looks like I have no chance of decent broadband

6MB/sec as in 48 Mbps, so I presume you are talking about the WiFi aspect, then yes they are not the fastest wifi devices, but that can be solved with additional wireless access points, and additional gigabit switch to keep more LAN traffic away from the Sky Hub.

Yes the Sky Hub is not the best multi-media data centre type device, but various commercial options available.

When wired im lucky to get 7MBs, I wouldnt even attemp to stream using the wireless. A GB switch is on my wishlist Strange how wifi works as its slowest closest to the router.

Sky did send me a wifi extender, when using it the transfer speeds were almost halved, so needless to say that quickly got bagged

I may pop into the supermarket on my way home, buy all the coconuts and string then give Openreach a run for their money by setting up my own rubbish communications infrostructure!


edit: ohh forgot to add, I didnt get a sky hub router, they sent me the old N Type saegem, that was about 6 months or so back. Cheap scapes!

Edited by deleted (Tue 01-Apr-14 15:43:10)

Almost sounds like the network ports are defaulting to half duplex for some reason.

Well I finaly got some kind of answer from Digital Scotland, all be it a tough luck your getting sod all, as my line is so long installing a cabinet at the exchange will do zero as an improvement to my current woes. here is the reply:

Thank you for your enquiry in relation to the development of Next Generation Broadband. The Scottish Government is working to ensure that the digital needs of all of Scotland are fully addressed and to that end our Digital Strategy commitment, that Next Generation Broadband will be available to all by 2020 and significant progress will be made by 2015, applies to all of Scotland regardless of location. The Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme is a key step toward the Scottish Government meeting its Digital aspirations. Commercial deployment plans cover certain areas in the country but there are many areas where commercial infrastructure providers have chosen not to develop. The Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband Project aims to provide fibre broadband infrastructure to those areas. Combined with the current commercial roll-out plans, around 95% of premises in Scotland should have fibre broadband by the end of 2017 and 85% by the end of 2015. East Ayrshire Council is a key investment partner of the Programme and has contributed an additional £1.2 million to maximise coverage in the local area. Due to this additional investment it is estimated that over 98% of East Ayrshire Council will have access to next generation broadband by the time the Programme is complete in 2017. Your postcode KA1 3TQ is included in the eligible intervention area for the programme. This means that we aim to improve broadband in your area. The roll-out map gives an indicative timeframe for East Ayrshire Council from July 2014 to December 2016, unfortunately I am unable to be more specific regarding your postcode. Exchange Only lines are connected directly to the local telephone exchange rather than passing through a street cabinet that can be upgraded with a fibre broadband connection. There are cases where some EO lines can be fibre enabled, for example by building an additional cabinet close to the exchange. Where exchange only lines cannot be enabled for fibre, alternative technologies such as wireless or satellite may be needed to boost speeds. All available information on the website can be found at www.digitalscotland.org. On the site you will find a postcode checker and a high level map with a rollout timetable. The information on the site provides an indicative view of how we currently think services will be rolled out across the country. Further work is being carried out to create a more efficient roll-out, maximise coverage and speed up the roll-out plans as much as possible. The maps and timetable are therefore subject to change as we carry out this further planning work and surveys take place. There are a couple of ways to keep up-to-date with progress and announcements in your local area, the following link will let you sign up to our �keep me in the loop� newsletter http://www.digitalscotland.org/newsletter-signup/ there is also a twitter account to follow @scotsuperfast.