Common Fibre Cabinet, common failure, multiple subscribers?

I live in a village near Bedford, connected to the SMWLS exchange, we have a single fibre cabinet that connects everyone in the village.

Yesterday my FTTC line, synced at 80Mbps/20Mbps, lost throughput, dropping from 8MBps+ down to a few tens of kBps at best. Still able to get a PPP connection to ISP (Utility Warehouse, via Talktalk) kit in the house is NTE5 with filtered faceplate, data extension cable kit and an unlocked HG612 (all installed by openreach in 2015, I unlocked the modem). I have the 3-puck Google WiFi router/APs, they have been perfect for 2+ years.

On the same morning, at roughly the same time (pre-9am) 3 other houses in the village (there could be more) all started seeing the same symptoms, all reduced to ~1Mbps throughput even though all have good sync speeds but they are on at least 2 different ISPs.

Pursuing this via UW is awkward, they want to send me one of their routers (which I did not need 3 years ago when I changed to their BB) and say they can't do anything until I see the same symptoms with a single ethernet-connected device to the router with it connected to the NTE5 test socket. This seems massive overkill to me, their tech support bod didn't know what an HG612 is and said that unless I use their router they can't support me and I don't know when the one they're sending will be delivered so even getting an escalation is going to take days I reckon.

Anyone have an idea how to get this progressed in a "we all have a throughput problem on different ISPs that started simultaneously while all connected to a single PCP" basis? Is that even possible?

I realise that I can't go direct to anyone other than UW, but it seems clear to me that the problem is somewhere in the local cabinet or beyond. I also noticed that during yesterday morning, a hi-vis-clad bod with an unmarked white van was down in an openreach access chamber a bit further down the road from where the PCP is, in his hands he had one of those multiple-leaved fibre tray devices where various fibres are connected and split/joined. Suspicious me is wondering if these events are connected.

Suggestions welcome!

Ask Utility Warehouse to send you their router. Likely you will then have the same problem which UW should be able to see and then report the problem to Openreach.

I think most ISPs expect you to have one of their routers when reporting a fault.

You just might be able to get UW to run the usual VDSL line tests anyway.

Alternatively you may also have a telephone line fault which you could report.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

Ask Utility Warehouse to send you their router. Likely you will then have the same problem which UW should be able to see and then report the problem to Openreach.

I think most ISPs expect you to have one of their routers when reporting a fault.

Yes, I know, but the thing is they were happy enough not to send me one 3 years ago. It's being sent, but I wanted to get the fix sooner by short circuiting the process as the symptoms point to it being OR's kit or configuration at fault. Just maybe Talktalk but it seems less likely.

You just might be able to get UW to run the usual VDSL line tests anyway.

Alternatively you may also have a telephone line fault which you could report.

They ran the line tests and said no fault found.

I don't have a telephone line fault either, so I can't say that I have one although I well recall the days of 4km of soggy cables from the exchange that often crackled madly due to water ingress. Those were replaced after certain light-fingered mobile types pulled a couple of 500m sections of cable out of the ground to sell the copper in it. My ADSL sync speed doubled immediately this event was all repaired.

If you're confident its a common issue then may be you should request an Openreach engineer and agree to pay any charges if its not the case. Otherwise you will have to let it play out.

You raise a fault via your service provider.

Ask the others that you state have the same issue to do the same.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

You raise a fault via your service provider.

Ask the others that you state have the same issue to do the same.

Then if one of them uses a more pro-active ISP the generic fault may be actioned quicker than by your provider.

Then if one of them uses a more pro-active ISP the generic fault may be actioned quicker than by your provider.

👍👍👍

And then UW can say "hah, we we right all along, there was no fault!"

Are they all on TT backhaul by chance?

If your sync rate is good then there's not really much Openreach can do here, the ISP have to deal with it, and if that means using their router then that's a hoop you'll have to jump through.