Today's outage and next steps

Dear All,

We have suffered several BT faults in the past 10 days. All appear to be due to "human error". Whilst we accept that equipment breaks and, indeed, people make mistakes, it is important that lessons are learned and processes corrected to prevent recurrence. Most important is that mistakes are corrected quickly and we feel that BT has been far too slow on too many occasions when correcting mistakes. Moreover, on each occasion we have given them timely and accurate synopses of the likely root of the fault which has been ignored in favour of following pre-set procedures. In our opinion valuable time was wasted in following unintelligent fault flow-charts fruitlessly. We want to make them listen to us!

Needless to say we would like to sincerely apologise to all of you for these recent outages. Although the outages have been out of our hands, we as the Service Provider have to take responsibility and reassure you, our very valued customers, that we are taking all the measures that we possibly can to avoid the chances of this happening again.

We have requested a meeting with BT Management for these reassurances and we will keep you posted on our discussions. However, it's clear now that we can't rely on BT alone - the risk to our business is too great. Therefore we are in the process of opening discussions with additional suppliers and we will keep you posted on how these discussions progress.

In the meantime, please bear with us, we continue to be committed in providing you with the very best levels of service, and we sincerely believe that despite being repeatedly let down by BT, we are now taking the appropriate measures, to protect us and you, going forward.

Regards
Tim
IDNet

Edited by tim_idnet (Wed 20-Oct-10 22:53:13)

Thanks for that Tim.

Same here - thanks for the update.

On a more general level it would be useful to know how your network works. For example when you say you'll be looking into 'other providers' does this include on exchanges where BT are the only ISP or are you talking about a different part of your network. What's backhaul, main pipes and so-on and where do you and BT fit together etc....

I'm not a technical person and probably like many would be interested in how my service gets to my router and is managed/provided by Idnet. What I do know is that for my £34.99 i get an infinately better service than the previous ipstream based service on my non-LLU exchange but if there's the potential for too many BT mistakes it may make my choice more difficult.

As with last time I can't fault the info we get, albeit that we're reliant on BT for a fix.

Peewee

Thanks Tim for an honest and informative explanantion I hope your meeting goes well and BT listen.

Appreciate the feedback Tim and the Courtesy call from Miriam. Also the very up-to-date status "recorded messages" when phoning into Idnet during the outage went a long way to keeping customers informed and certainly quicker than browser navigating with a smartphone.

Well I awoke Thursday morning to find both lines down. Do not know when they went down at this stage.

The fault appears to be a non payment issue. ie: Incoming dial tone with no fault message. to the dialler. But cannot make outward calls.

One line i pay a year in advance with line rental /ADSL package.

The other line is a recent 2 month old conversion of line rental. Paid monthly and update according to my account. Although I tried to pay in advance. But Idnet's SagePay service is also down and reporting to be 'not receiving payment' ?

8.30 i sent a note to support to Miriam only to be told by 'Brian' that it had been forwarded to Openreach for investigation. On the odd occasion of previous faults. Idnet have always handled it themselves./

I personally find this approach very discerning and very anti competitive. Again 'IF' this is BT's 'fault'. Then I believe Ofcom and the government should become involved. BT should be accountable as it makes a charge for it's products to somebody along the line. And the broadband economy is possible being held to ransom by BT's spreadsheet management style

Is this a parallel example of Plc bitching by Sky and it's removing of sports channel from Freeview services. When it could not get it's own way on a matter with Ofcom.

Due to a recent finding against BT by Ofcom, are we now seeing this from BT?

Fortunately i have now also got http://www.fibrewifi.com/ services, As an internet connection is extremely important to me in my working life.

I have within the last 24 hours I again reported my concerns to IDnet, with no response.

I therefore think there is another issue here, So i have forwarded my concern along wit 'possible' scenario's to my MP http://www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk/ who was involved with the Broadband launch.

It appears that BT's dinosaur spreadsheet management could be effecting Britain's need to recover and move ahead rapidly into the digital era. Not keep playing monolithic catchup game.

Or could there be another issue. Do I need to contact this company http://www.idnetbahamas.com/itSolutions.htm to resolve any financial and Internet problems?

A new day dawns, both lines still down.

In reply to a post by tim_idnet:

Dear All,

We have suffered several BT faults in the past 10 days. All appear to be due to "human error". Whilst we accept that equipment breaks and, indeed, people make mistakes, it is important that lessons are learned and processes corrected to prevent recurrence. Most important is that mistakes are corrected quickly and we feel that BT has been far too slow on too many occasions when correcting mistakes. Moreover, on each occasion we have given them timely and accurate synopses of the likely root of the fault which has been ignored in favour of following pre-set procedures. In our opinion valuable time was wasted in following unintelligent fault flow-charts fruitlessly. We want to make them listen to us!

Needless to say we would like to sincerely apologise to all of you for these recent outages. Although the outages have been out of our hands, we as the Service Provider have to take responsibility and reassure you, our very valued customers, that we are taking all the measures that we possibly can to avoid the chances of this happening again.

We have requested a meeting with BT Management for these reassurances and we will keep you posted on our discussions. However, it's clear now that we can't rely on BT alone - the risk to our business is too great. Therefore we are in the process of opening discussions with additional suppliers and we will keep you posted on how these discussions progress.

In the meantime, please bear with us, we continue to be committed in providing you with the very best levels of service, and we sincerely believe that despite being repeatedly let down by BT, we are now taking the appropriate measures, to protect us and you, going forward.

Regards
Tim
IDNet

Essex, as advised there is a fault in the exchange affecting you and many other lines in your area. BT are working on rectifiying the faults.

Therefore we are in the process of opening discussions with additional suppliers and we will keep you posted on how these discussions progress.

I have suggested this to IDNet ages ago and I am not surprised with the current situation.

But it will only be for the backhaul and not be offering llu via these suppliers.

In reply to a post by cavillas:

But it will only be for the backhaul and not be offering llu via these suppliers.

Let's face it, outside iDNet themselves none of us know exactly what will transpire. It might be a deal will be done for additional backhaul, it may be iDNet start offering services via other LLU suppliers. None of us are privy to what negotiations are going on.

Re j. Neuhoff: iDNet offering other a service via LLU suppliers may sound fine, but if that supplier does not offer an LLU service in your area, you're no better off are you?