Potential fault - who owns the router/modem?

Hi. I seemingly have a fault on my line (FTTC 40/20) where my speed will initially be close to the 40Mbps maximum but over a couple of days will drop to below 30. I reboot the modem and it's fine again for a couple of days but then drops again.

Sky can't see any problems on my line remotely - the line is stable and experiences no disconnections.

I have a separate OR VDSL modem and an original Sky hub (which I don't use). Sky's first suggestion was to replace them both with a new all-in-one hub but they wanted to charge me £30 for it. I politely declined as I don't see why I should pay to fix a fault so they are sending OR around this week to check the line.

Having thought about this some more, I believe that OR still own the VDSL modem, am I right? So, if that is at fault then OR should be replacing it.

Also, although I don't use it, do Sky still own the hub? I don't remember having to purchase it (except for delivery maybe), but is it the same as the Sky TV box where I own it after a year?

Thanks.

Edited by deleted (Tue 09-Feb-16 11:24:45)

In reply to a post by FlamingDazzler:

Having thought about this some more, I believe that OR still own the VDSL modem, am I right? So, if that is at fault then OR should be replacing it.

Seems like a grey area. Tons of people have sold their Openreach modems on Ebay, so they at least must assume it belongs to them.

In reply to a post by FlamingDazzler:

Also, although I don't use it, do Sky still own the hub? I don't remember having to purchase it (except for delivery maybe), but is it the same as the Sky TV box where I own it after a year?

Yes, the Hub is your property, under guarantee for a year.

Thanks Oliver. It seems more likely to be a problem on the line anyway. I will see what the OR visit turns up.

Did they notify you of a Openreach charge to investigate your issue? They would only send an engineer FOC if they detect an issue on the line, otherwise you're going to get hit with a charge from them.

Been assured that there would be no charge regardless of a fault being found or not. He told me that is Sky's policy but don't know if that's true. Certainly when I was with O2 I had about five OR visits to track down a fault, no one ever found anything but I never got hit with a charge.

[Edited to add]Also, I've been told in the past that their remote fault finding system isn't worth jack so you couldn't rely on it to prove a fault anyway. It needs a line check in person. Again, don't know how true that is.

Edited by deleted (Tue 09-Feb-16 19:16:21)

for the sky router, you own it, so long as you are out of your 12 or 18mth period.

For the sky q service that is just about to go on sale it looks like you are renting the router and do not own it.

How far are you from the cabinet?

I turned it around with Sky with their HD box, should work with their router too. Because the router can only be used with a Sky system and the router is made specifically for them, Sky are classed as the manufacturer. Under your statutory rights (sale of goods act as amended), you have a right for an item to work for a reasonable amount of time. So long as it isn't wear and tear, you should be able to get them to take responsibililty for any fault that occurs.

Mark

Thanks, I did the same thing with my Sky box recently that packed up after ~18 months.

To give some background on the actual fault; I'm about 300m from the cab as the crow flies. Always got max speed in the two years or so I've had FTTC. The gradual speed drops have been happening for a few weeks. I've been running with nothing else connected to the phone line except the OR modem plugged into my test socket with a microfilter so fairly sure it's not on my side. The dude at Sky accepted from my speed stats that there's something wrong but couldn't see anything wrong with the line, so the suggestion of replacing the router/modem (at my expense, although he offered it at £30, reduced from £70) was a shot in the dark. That's why I declined, if it could be proven that would fix it I might consider it. So, his next suggestion (not mine) was to send OR.

In reply to a post by iand:

for the sky router, you own it, so long as you are out of your 12 or 18mth period.

The Sky Hub becomes the customer's property on delivery.

In reply to a post by FlamingDazzler:

I'm about 300m from the cab as the crow flies.

As crows don't usually carry internet data I'll pluck one of the feathers and see what it says.
Looks like it says about 400m, At that line length I think 30Mb is about what to normally expect. As another guess,you are rebooting router and it is synching at a unstable speed so drops after a few days. How you where on 40Mb for two years I don't know,but then this is all speculation and guess's on my part.

In reply to a post by burble:

At that line length I think 30Mb is about what to normally expect. As another guess,you are rebooting router and it is synching at a unstable speed so drops after a few days. How you where on 40Mb for two years I don't know,but then this is all speculation and guess's on my part.

Sadly Sky users can't use the BT line estimator.

I'm 450m from my VDSL cabinet and get 50mbps downloads - and 9mbps uploads.

In reply to a post by burble:

In reply to a post by FlamingDazzler:

I'm about 300m from the cab as the crow flies.

As crows don't usually carry internet data I'll pluck one of the feathers and see what it says.
Looks like it says about 400m, At that line length I think 30Mb is about what to normally expect. As another guess,you are rebooting router and it is synching at a unstable speed so drops after a few days. How you where on 40Mb for two years I don't know,but then this is all speculation and guess's on my part.

Not sure how you're calculating my line distance, but Google Maps says 340m and I think it's a pretty straight run.

As for stability, the only disconnects Sky are seeing is when I reboot the OR modem so if that is the case then their DLM is borked.

Speed test results for the last 90 days or so, run at about 07:00 every morning. As you can see, the speed drops started around the 22nd of January. I haven't rebooted the modem since the weekend at the request of Sky.

04/11/2015 36.65 Mbit/s 24/12/2015 36.77 Mbit/s
05/11/2015 36.06 Mbit/s 25/12/2015 23.01 Mbit/s
06/11/2015 36.37 Mbit/s 26/12/2015 36.72 Mbit/s
07/11/2015 36.63 Mbit/s 27/12/2015 36.43 Mbit/s
08/11/2015 37.11 Mbit/s 28/12/2015 30.35 Mbit/s
09/11/2015 36.48 Mbit/s 29/12/2015 36.68 Mbit/s
10/11/2015 35.99 Mbit/s 30/12/2015 36.58 Mbit/s
11/11/2015 36.82 Mbit/s 31/12/2015 35.14 Mbit/s
12/11/2015 36.35 Mbit/s 01/01/2016 35.95 Mbit/s
13/11/2015 36.93 Mbit/s 02/01/2016 36.31 Mbit/s
14/11/2015 37.03 Mbit/s 03/01/2016 36.82 Mbit/s
15/11/2015 36.33 Mbit/s 04/01/2016 36.03 Mbit/s
16/11/2015 36.99 Mbit/s 05/01/2016 36.92 Mbit/s
17/11/2015 36.84 Mbit/s 06/01/2016 37.06 Mbit/s
18/11/2015 36.66 Mbit/s 07/01/2016 37.07 Mbit/s
19/11/2015 31.94 Mbit/s 08/01/2016 36.03 Mbit/s
20/11/2015 36.25 Mbit/s 09/01/2016 36.57 Mbit/s
21/11/2015 36.54 Mbit/s 10/01/2016 36.67 Mbit/s
22/11/2015 35.62 Mbit/s 11/01/2016 36.35 Mbit/s
23/11/2015 36.58 Mbit/s 12/01/2016 36.83 Mbit/s
24/11/2015 37.06 Mbit/s 13/01/2016 36.62 Mbit/s
25/11/2015 36.82 Mbit/s 14/01/2016 36.56 Mbit/s
26/11/2015 36.95 Mbit/s 15/01/2016 37.00 Mbit/s
27/11/2015 36.59 Mbit/s 16/01/2016 35.42 Mbit/s
28/11/2015 36.99 Mbit/s 17/01/2016 36.44 Mbit/s
29/11/2015 35.92 Mbit/s 18/01/2016 36.51 Mbit/s
30/11/2015 35.70 Mbit/s 19/01/2016 35.83 Mbit/s
01/12/2015 34.94 Mbit/s 20/01/2016 35.90 Mbit/s
02/12/2015 36.12 Mbit/s 21/01/2016 36.62 Mbit/s
03/12/2015 20.38 Mbit/s 22/01/2016 30.88 Mbit/s
04/12/2015 35.22 Mbit/s 23/01/2016 36.10 Mbit/s
05/12/2015 26.94 Mbit/s 24/01/2016 27.68 Mbit/s
06/12/2015 36.74 Mbit/s 25/01/2016 27.49 Mbit/s
07/12/2015 33.28 Mbit/s 26/01/2016 27.58 Mbit/s
08/12/2015 37.06 Mbit/s 27/01/2016 36.92 Mbit/s
09/12/2015 35.33 Mbit/s 28/01/2016 36.81 Mbit/s
10/12/2015 37.13 Mbit/s 29/01/2016 36.91 Mbit/s
11/12/2015 35.82 Mbit/s 30/01/2016 30.16 Mbit/s
12/12/2015 36.72 Mbit/s 31/01/2016 31.26 Mbit/s
13/12/2015 36.82 Mbit/s 01/02/2016 31.06 Mbit/s
14/12/2015 36.88 Mbit/s 02/02/2016 36.25 Mbit/s
15/12/2015 37.07 Mbit/s 03/02/2016 35.24 Mbit/s
16/12/2015 34.64 Mbit/s 04/02/2016 30.03 Mbit/s
17/12/2015 36.97 Mbit/s 05/02/2016 35.72 Mbit/s
18/12/2015 36.48 Mbit/s 06/02/2016 35.73 Mbit/s
19/12/2015 35.63 Mbit/s 07/02/2016 29.33 Mbit/s
20/12/2015 37.06 Mbit/s 08/02/2016 35.68 Mbit/s
21/12/2015 36.84 Mbit/s 09/02/2016 26.11 Mbit/s
22/12/2015 36.83 Mbit/s 10/02/2016 30.02 Mbit/s
23/12/2015 36.95 Mbit/s

In reply to a post by FlamingDazzler:

[Edited to add]Also, I've been told in the past that their remote fault finding system isn't worth jack so you couldn't rely on it to prove a fault anyway. It needs a line check in person. Again, don't know how true that is.

Remote line test is of limited use it will find obvious faults but it will miss a lot sometimes it needs an engineer to site to perform a proper test with a JDSU.

It's also incapable of telling if the line is actually in the right place either (I.e it might be able to tell a line tests ok, what it has no way of knowing is that an engineer got their wires crossed in the cab and the line is actually connected in the wrong building)

The older Sky Hub with OR modem combo should report the connection speed still in the web interface, are the downs and ups of the speeds matching the speed test results, which show periodically you are getting 23 Mbps speeds. e.g. you did have a slow result on 25th December

OR visit this morning. Line tested fine. He could get maximum (40 Mbps) sync speeds and recorded potential speeds of much higher. What I expected really. He hasn't seen a problem like mine before but confirmed it wasn't the DLM. He suggested that all I do if I continue to get the speed drops is to push it back to Sky as a throughput issue.

The strange thing is, it drops down to 30 or so, and I thought if I left it it would continue to drop but it doesn't. Back up at 40ish now as the line has re-synced this morning so I'll have to see how it goes.

To answer what was my original question; the OR engineer seemed to think that officially they still own the modem but he said they're not allowed to swap them out unless obviously faulty as their stocks are low and they're keeping them for business customers.

When things are slow find the connection speed which is pushed to the Sky router even when using an OR modem. If that is still the usual figure, then points towards a throughput issue rather than a sync/line issue

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

When things are slow find the connection speed which is pushed to the Sky router even when using an OR modem. If that is still the usual figure, then points towards a throughput issue rather than a sync/line issue

Ah, I don't use the sky router so didn't know you can get line stats from it even with a modem in the way. I will have to dig it out. Thank.