BT - Is 100+ engineer visits a record?

More of a moan than anything constructive

I've lived in my current house (near Godalming & Haslemere in Surrey) for c 12 years. I started with ZEN who as an ISP were fine, just they had to deal with Openreach, I moved to BT a few years ago as they have to deal with Openreach as well.

They started with some high quality sub 1Mb/s and peaked with an occasional 15Mb/s about 3 years ago.

Currently 8-11 Mb/s download with sub 1Mb/s upload, that's when it it's not slowing to sub 5 Mb/s, or having massive 1000ms+ ping rates or dropping entirely.

From the TBB stats it appears I'm in the lucky 0.5% of {censored} service in my region, and that's when it's actually working.

So over the years, having had contacts with every BT Group CEO up to the previous one and several BTW and Openreach CEOs, I've had over 100 engineers visit, I think 5 at once was the record, amusingly with another Openreach van on the road for someone else.

Meeting the engineers so often I ended up giving one of them some pensions advice as he was in the DB scheme.....

Pretty sure it would have cost them less to fibre my house.

Last night I had 2Mb/s down and 1 up.

BTs comment is normally 'it's all fine our end, no dropouts, synch speed fine', which was funny as we've had 3 powercuts in the last 2 weeks and BT say they have 100% connection to the hub during that period, which must qualify for a nobel prize in some new physics they've discovered.

At least the openreach engineers are usually honest, admitting the cabling to the cabinet is a pile of s***t and unless they change all of that, it wont get better.

They are no plans to upgrade our exchange to FTTP, and Openreach will charge a minimum of £350k for FTTP, this includes them taking all the broadband vouchers, so probably more like half a million. They might be able to do a survey in 2 years time if we commit to this.

4G is the same or slower, with one house on the road not even able to get FTTC, so have slow 4G via external antennae. We even looked at satellite, but apparently no good due to lots of large trees, which makes sense as I can't get a sky tv signal here either.

I never realised moving slightly into the country meant almost moving back to the previous century, I'm pretty sure the NTL cable I had in the late 2000's was better

And breathe.....

In reply to a post by wsurfa:

More of a moan than anything constructive
...
And breathe.....

A brilliant post. Well worth signing up here to make. (Welcome to you).

Sorry I can't help, but you never know what might turn up that you aren't expecting.

not quite sure what this sarcastic comment is supposed to mean

They are no plans to upgrade our exchange to FTTP, and Openreach will charge a minimum of £350k for FTTP, this includes them taking all the broadband vouchers, so probably more like half a million. They might be able to do a survey in 2 years time if we commit to this.

It means

1.) Our exchange is not listed under any Openreach plan to upgrade to FTTP, and they have confirmed this to us (my road has a company to manage it that all residents are part of and contribute to ). It is not listed in their 'final third' push which aligns with their statement that they are not doing it in any foreseeable future.

2.) Openreach have given an initial quote of £350,000 (subject to increase post physical survey). This cost is after they have deducted the value of the Gigabit Voucher Scheme, so the actual price is higher, and will go up post survey based on what they indicated verbally, but would not confirm in writing. This is the £500,000, or more

3.) Openreach confirmed in writing that if we committed to the above project, then they could do a physical survey in c24months time, as they are really busy and covid etc. Then it might be another 18m months to completion of work.

Is that clearer for you, or are there areas you still don't understand?

You seem to be saying your road is a private estate, presumably not adopted by your local council? If so, it may be a factor in Openreach's attitude.

It is a private road, however their answer to others on the main road that ours spurs off is exactly the same.

Answer to other houses near us from Openreach = No FTTP, no re-cabling of existing lines, it'll cost you many thousands to pay us and we still wont do it for years.

Openreach don't give tinkers cuss about adopted or not roads, FTTP is going in to several private roads served by other exchanges near me.

IIRC FTTC didn't arrive until end 2013 or beginning of 2014, and was still so poor for a few years that my average speeds were lower than NTL cable I had in late 2000s.

Fair enough. I expected you would have checked up long ago, as you obviously did. You'd be surprised how many people don't think of why they might have a problem though.

It is a mess that Openreach think they have better fish to fry, but as I said before, you never know.

Thanks - I keep myself amused by trying to ensure every little glitch on the road requires an engineer, within the bounds of everyone's ISP contract of course

Something to while away the lockdown/tier hours

Just out of interest....

When was your last FTTPoD Quote? You also don't mention how many houses are on your road/estate, and if you approached any neighbours in relation to starting a Community Fibre Partnership

It's been noted on here recently that certain places have started Community Fibre Partnerships, that initially had high costs (and large amounts of people willing to take service), that got moved from being full CFPs to being a Demand Led (I think that was the term) where BT Take most of the Risk in the upgrade process?

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong I'm sure because i frequently am

interesting

3.) Openreach confirmed in writing that if we committed to the above project, then they could do a physical survey in c24months time, as they are really busy and covid etc. Then it might be another 18m months to completion of work.


if this is under communtity fibre partnership majority arer not surveyed in advance and contract terms is based on 12 months from signature

buy hey ho what do i know !!!!