Disconnects - BT/Openreach Assistance Required Please

At the beginning of the year I made a short-lived switch from BT to Vodafone. I switched back & ever since have had frequent disconnects of 2-3 per day. This has resulted in speed drops from 50mbps on switch back to 29 mbps today.

I did have an Openreach visit booked last week as speed had dropped below the guaranteed minimum of 27mbps. But a couple of days before Openreach were working on my pole & speed went back up tp 43mbps. On the basis that the engineer wouldn't be able to fix something that wasn't broken, I foolishly cancelled & needless to say, disconnects have now returned along with the speed drop. Openreach were again working on the pole yesterday & disconnects have got worse.

Reason I'm asking for Openreach assistance is I've just asked BT to rebook & they've refused, on the basis that a snapshot line test showed no fault & speed was above guaranteed minimum. Can anyone advise how I can get this escalated back to a visit other than enduring the disconnects for as long as it takes for the line speed to fall below the guaranteed minimum? I'm pretty sure there's a duff connection in the cab.

Something else that may be relevant. When conducting speed tests before this switch the test would hit full speed & stay there. Now it wavers from around 10mbps & gradually increases to 30mbps.

What are the actual connection speeds reported by the router?

The speed test result, could be down to massive amounts of errors or could be a Wi-Fi issue, or router issue or just plain old congestion.

If the speed is recovering sometimes, then suggests the DLM has probably not intervened which would be usual given the reported scale of the issue.

6. Data Rate: 8589 / 34999
7. Maximum Data Rate: 8589 / 61650
8. Noise Margin: 6.1 / 14.1
9. Line Attenuation: 34.1 / 22.0
10. Signal Attenuation: 0.0 / 0.0

It's not WiFi or router at fault as router has been changed & results are the same on ethernet. I doubt congestion is an issue mid-morning on a weekday or in the early hours of the morning when the line typically drops.

34999 looks like banding, during a disconnect presume the data rate vanishes, but is it always this value once it comes back?

Intermittent issues are always a pain, as invariably they fix themselves by magic when someone is looking at it

As of the last few days, the connection has been reported as live but with no actual connection. I switched DNS servers to eliminate that. Must admit I haven't looked at stats while disconnected, will do next time.

Data rate fluctuates on reconnection. It was down to 29,999 when the download fell below the 27mbps guarantee.

As you say the difficulty I currently have is getting a drop while BT's service desk is open so they accept a fault. Although I then expect a battle as a power cycle will resolve temporarliy. Then when/if Openreach visit.it will be pot luck as to whether I get someone who is prepared to look at the most likely cause & change something or just immediately close with NFF.

Edited by rbz5416 (Wed 13-Jun-18 13:40:59)

What you need is a Fibre Boost Task raised by BT Retail - when they cost tell the engineer that you issues have occurred after OR have been working on your pole.

Do you have good clear dialling tone on the line ?

Problem at the moment is that BT won't rebook the boost appointment as the speed is currently above the guaranteed minimum.

Line is silent on a quiet test & remains up when the BB drops.