Openreach And Sky Ding Dong

Going to a relatives place recently to help them during COVID-19 they complained of slow broadband and they were on Sky 20 meg despite the fact that the area was served by Sky LLU Superfast. A check showed that they could get up to 80 meg broadband.

So I placed the order with Sky for Superfast three weeks ago and was given a date the following week for go live. The day of go live I was informed that there was no engineer available and it had to be rescheduled for the following Monday, no problem I thought,. it's just a week.

The following Monday comes and I'm told the engineer could not get access to the cabinet because it was jammed and unfortunately they had to get a tool out to fix that and it would unfortunately be another week an the latest change date was today.

Today has come and surprise surprise, still no change from BT equipment to Sky. Openreach have now claimed that there is a fault between the exchange and the cabinet that needs to be resolved that will require serious works to be completed. However Openreach then told Sky that the problem was between the cabinet and the house and that they would need to dig up another area.

Openreach are now saying that the works that need to be required will take a while to plan and they need to get the appropriate access and it might be because of the current situation they are not viable at this particular time because of Covid restrictions and gaining access to the areas they need to.

Meanwhile since whatever Openreach did this morning, the noise margin has dropped through the floor and the line attenuation has gone through the roof and I'm getting drop outs all of the time and syncing at a lower rate than normal. Clearly something was done this morning.

Needless to say I'm not very happy at all and Openreach are now stalling Sky saying they can't give any more details and they will by the end of the week as per their standard SLA, after already having delayed three times on their end due to various reasons.

Has anyone else had similar experience? It does feel a little bit like Openreach are not really interested in resolving this, perhaps my relative is the customer of the wrong ISP......

Edited by deleted (Mon 17-Aug-20 17:56:59)

Could be a capacity issue that has been lost in translation

If they were on Sky 20, then that is Sky LLU ADSL2+ so Sky equipment at the exchange, nothing to do with BT equipment. There will be Openreach cabling involved in the old line and moving to FTTC means adding in the Openreach cabinet.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Could be a capacity issue that has been lost in translation

If they were on Sky 20, then that is Sky LLU ADSL2+ so Sky equipment at the exchange, nothing to do with BT equipment. There will be Openreach cabling involved in the old line and moving to FTTC means adding in the Openreach cabinet.

The official sky product name is Sky Broadband Essential which was syncing at 19660/1360 according to the router. I wondered if it was a capacity issue but that has been denied and the usual BTWholesale checker doesn't show a waiting list.

Sky were adamant that this was an Openreach issue and Openreach have logged a fault for it that needs some digging the road up or some serious works. Whether that is actually the case or not, bearing in mind the recent excuses I've heard, I'm skeptical about.

I saw an openreach engineer down at the cabinet today around 10 minutes before the line went off and the SNR margin fell through the floor and the line noise went flying up, so somebody did something today. It feels like they've managed to cripple my line somewhat.

Now maybe it's just me, but before today the line was stable for years and now suddenly it's got poor SNR and noise and is dropping out and I can see from the router logs which you have to think may be linked, which makes you wonder if somebody broke something today!

Any ideas what I should expect in the coming days and no doubt weeks? Openreach say they will provide Sky with an update on Thursday afternoon, but I'm not holding my breath it will actually be anything more than an update without any real actions.

Edited by deleted (Mon 17-Aug-20 19:54:51)

Sometime the locks on the fibre cabinets jam. Occasionally a bit of lubricant and appropriate force can release the lock , but sometime there is no option but to cut the lock off with an angle grinder. It's a bit of a specialised practice so can some time to get it organized, especially with the recent weather causing havoc with the network.
What cab is it?

This is the cabinet, which was recently expanded (March)
https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm?xid=1...

BT Wholesale lookup shows
https://i.postimg.cc/fbJmjpLM/Cabinet.png

I understand that locks can jam, but this is the third week in a row where something has gone wrong which starts to look like a bit of a coincidence, especially when whatever someone did today has totally destroyed the quality of the existing ADSL2+ connection as well.

There's some funny wiring going on though, since despite being 500m away from the exchange, the cabinet postcode is almost 6km away, which is pretty ridiculous when there's a bunch of 5-6 cabinets within 1.5km

My cabinet is so far away that it is the only one on the exchange with a CO rather than IP postcode and out of the 28 cabinets there are on that exchange, mine looks to be almost the furthest away from me! Meanwhile, the neighbour two doors down is on cabinet 15, which is literally around the corner.

Crazy that with an exchange and cabinet within 1km instead we've got a line going 7km from the exchange to a far away cabinet and another similar distance to the house. Talk about a long way around. I can't see them being able to provide VDSL over those distances and they're not going to change my cabinet.

A check on my phone number on Samknows also shows as no FTTC but the postcode shows FTTC and next door neighbours phone number shows FTTC. I guess I'm just in an unlucky property that takes a bad route?

Edited by deleted (Mon 17-Aug-20 22:06:31)

The cabinet is not 6km away or the checker is wrong.

Cabinet 1 is at https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.0470141,0.9510769,...

One possibility is that you are currently in the middle of being moved to a closer cabinet

That is very peculiar, since that would be the nearest cabinet that is literally a minute walk away. It would make sense to be that one.

However the codelook website I linked above is showing that cabinet (check list of cabinets at bottom) one as being CO6 5AY
https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm?xid=1... which is a ridiculous distance away so I guess codelook is wrong?

I can't use the BT Phone checker because It's not a BT line, but my above BT checker results were based on address, not the most accurate but without a phone number lookup, the best I'll get.

Edited by deleted (Mon 17-Aug-20 23:06:50)

Codelook cabinet positions are often just a random postcode within the list of postcodes on a cabinet. Hence why I ignore what they say for everything.

The postcode you gave actually has FTTP available to it.

Thanks! it looks pretty random alright. Sadly that's not my postcode though!

Had an update from Sky this afternoon who clarrified a little. Openreach have closed the fault between the exchange and the cabinet as no fault was found despite the fact that the person who went out to the cabnet stated that was the cause.

Sky have logged another fault with Openreach who have stated a fault has been found on the underground cabling at an unknown location between the cabinet and the property and it will require a dig but they seem to be hesitating about actually doing it, guy from Sky reckons they might not want to dig up a lot for one customer.

It's very interesting there was a flawless ADSL2+ connection for years and now we've gone to a situation where we have an unstable connection and a wiring fault which both started around the same time someone was supposed to be switching me over to FTTC.Perhaps there is more to this than people are letting on..

Edited by deleted (Tue 18-Aug-20 14:14:31)

You are probably seeing the effects of a new cabinet being installed and your line being moved to that cabinet as part of the order process.

There are some infill cabinets on that exchange, which would explain your checker result.

Without detail of the address impossible to look into it any further.