No Broadband Internet

[Simon]

And they certainly wouldn't out of spite. 

[Wingnutz]

Andy1967:  I have investigated this issue for you and can confirm your VP is heavily congested, unfortunately there is no available capacity to upgrade the VP. BT will lock the VP to stop new circuits being added, eventually as circuits are migrated away or ceased the congestion will ease, as you can imagine this will not be a quick resolution i'm afraid. I have provided more detail in a reply to your email to support when you get a chance to read it.


Wingnutz: I am getting an update for you on this as we speak, when I spoke with BT briefly this morning they mentioned the situation is worse than they first anticipated. I will post an update as soon as I have it.

Kind regards,

Miriam
IDNet Support

Cheers Miriam - look forward to the update later.

Still at work until 3pm ish but will check when i get home to see if there has been any change.

Thanks again...

[Wingnutz]

It's not an exchange issue, Wingnutz, but a node, one of the 20 in the country. They act as concentrators, taking line from a wide geographical area and feeding them into the BT backbone. Despite living in MK, I'm not affected. As Steve says, we've seen this happen elsewhere, Peterborough being the most recent. BT don't seem to build any redundancy into the system, unfortunately.

Thanks for the explaination..... where would us simpletons be without you to guide us....

Nice of BT not to bother with any system redunancy though.

[Rik]

I know, you'd  think it would be a basic part of their design, wouldn't you.

[Niall]

It's a glaring mistake if you ask me. Clearly done to save money as this is not something you'd overlook. It's not like they weren't short of money this year either. It's all well and good trying to roll out the UK, but if what we have can fall over at a moments notice, what good is that to anyone?

[Rik]

Exactly, Niall, a fragile system is no good to anyone.

[davej99]

If speed is <400k are BTW not obliged to act?

[Rik]

Not necessarily, Dave. Their only statutory obligation is to provide a 28.k service. For the rest, they can argue that it's outside their own spec and they will fix it, but they can't be held to a timetable, at least afaik.

[davej99]

I had in mind the contractual obligation to resellers?

[pctech]

I hate ADSL, hope VDSL arrives soon.

[Rik]

I had in mind the contractual obligation to resellers?

The problem is, push them and BT can just turn round and condemn the line. They make their own rules and Ofcom seem happy to let them.

[Wingnutz]

Evening all...

Still on dial-up here. Spoke to support (Brian i think) just before 6pm. BT are still working on the problem and no updates are expected until tomorrow.

Seems the problem is bigger than BT first thought.

[Rik]

It does sound very much like Peterborough and also Lincoln, where they started with a small fault and then discovered it was a big one. I'm just waiting for them to cut me off...

[Steve]

21CN uptake has been higher than anticipated and BT is juggling capacity and you've hit unlucky

[pctech]

I didn't have a choice about going onto 21CN but have stayed on an ADSL (up to 8Meg) profile

[Rik]

Node capacity problems can still affect you though, Mitch. Oddly, as far as I can find out, no-one in MK is affected, it's just the MK node.

[Steve]

MK probably goes via somewhere else

[Rik]

 

Birmingham, probably.

[Wingnutz]

It does sound very much like Peterborough and also Lincoln, where they started with a small fault and then discovered it was a big one. I'm just waiting for them to cut me off...

Rik,

In your experiance how big a problem do you think this is ? I've tried looking - slowly...... - around the net for others reporting problems such as mine. Can't seem to find anything (aaisp, plusnet, talktalk status reports showing nothing ) or am I miss-reading something ?

Any pointers gratefully recieved - mainly out of shear bloody mindedness to learn more.

Cheers

[Rik]

I went through something similar at the end of last year, but it was just for a few days. It's really down to how quickly BT extract their digits. I can't find any other references either, but what tends to happen in these situations is that BT only tell ISPs who've raised the issue with them.

There has been some planned unplanned engineering work at MK, BT gave out the wrong date. Whether they broke something in the process I don't know, but it wouldn't be the first time.

[Wingnutz]

Thanks Rik - it's just annoying that as soon as i get my sync up nice and high with a stable noise margin i lose all ability to access any websites.

This dial-up lark is like being back in the dark ages !!!!

[Rik]

I can understand your frustration, as can everyone at IDNet. Unfortunately, BT don't share our sense of urgency.

[Wingnutz]

I can understand your frustration, as can everyone at IDNet. Unfortunately, BT don't share our sense of urgency.

Quite - if only BT had the same level of customer care and service...........

[pctech]

If they had the same level of care and service as IDnet (and some of the other ISPs)  then they'd be more popular than they are.

It must be really frustrating to be the poor souls in an ISP responsible for the ADSL tail circuit (bit from your house to the exchange) provisioning and management, on the one hand you've got customers complaining about bad or completely dead connections and on the other you've got to deal with the lumbering dinosaur that is BT.

[Rik]

Who have little interest in the end user or in the ISP who can potentially lose business.