Getting the Runaround From Idnet regarding Phone Line Fault

Dakota2 · Apr 01, 2015, 15:43:08

My land line has been us since 2am on 31/3/2015. Idnet won't kick Openreach to find out what's going on. Anybody have the email address for Idnet senior management?

Adrian · Apr 01, 2015, 16:29:18

I believe the standard BT response time is 48 hours. That's how long it too BT to come and restore my phone connection after my FTTC cabinet was wiped out by a car.

Dakota2 · Apr 01, 2015, 16:35:34

Openreach are well known for sticking their fingers in their ears and going La,La,La. As long as they are allowed to they will continue to do it. I expect Idnet senior management to kick Openreach on behalf of their customers, something they don't seem capable of doing. When I was systems and network manager for a large PLC I wouldn't take the runaround from anyone.

Simon · Apr 01, 2015, 16:44:19

Unless you have priority / enhanced care (or whatever it's called these days), then I think BTOR will work at their own pace, on the basis that one person's line fault isn't any more important than anyone else's.

Dakota2 · Apr 01, 2015, 16:51:16

Yes, but the time BTOR have quoted Idnet to fix the fault means my land line will have been out of for 60 hours not 48. Senior management doesn't seem to want to manage these days. Sigh!

zappaDPJ · Apr 01, 2015, 16:58:49

My phone line and/or broadband (sometimes one but not the other - go figure) have gone down due to a local fault more time than I can remember in the last 8-9 years. I have never known the fault get fixed in less than 4 working days (it's supposed to be within 3) and it's sometimes taken much longer than that. I've always been able to claim a derisory sum from BT's Customer Service Compensation Scheme after the event which of course is really no compensation at all. Now I've migrated my line to IDNet I guess I wouldn't even get that now although I should say I've not had a line fault outage since I switched. I don't know what to suggest really.

Dakota2 · Apr 01, 2015, 17:52:53

As long as Openreach are allowed to abuse their monopoly position they will do so. What's needed is a few strong willed telephone service providers to take them on! The monopolies and competition authority would be a good place to start.

nowster · Apr 01, 2015, 18:06:36

Enhanced care just means that they'll acknowledge the fault faster. It doesn't mean anything about fixing it.

Tacitus · Apr 01, 2015, 19:37:43

Quote from: Dakota2 on Apr 01, 2015, 16:51:16
Yes, but the time BTOR have quoted Idnet to fix the fault means my land line will have been out of for 60 hours not 48. Senior management doesn't seem to want to manage these days. Sigh!

You should hop over to http://www.revk.uk and read some of Adrian Kennard's rants about Openreach and how they are screwing the smaller ISPs. Apparently fixing faults is now considered a chargeable 'service'. Somebody really should take them on, since OFCOM seem about as much use as a chocolate teapot. You could also try this link: http://www.revk.uk/2015/03/what-comes-after-sfi2.html

Dakota2 · Apr 02, 2015, 03:22:33

A&A are my ISP these days and from reading RevK's rants and I gather they take on Openreach on a daily basis. Unfortunately he doesn't offer a home phone service as such.

Tacitus · Apr 02, 2015, 08:26:04

Quote from: Dakota2 on Apr 02, 2015, 03:22:33
A&A are my ISP these days and from reading RevK's rants and I gather they take on Openreach on a daily basis. Unfortunately he doesn't offer a home phone service as such.

I think he does and good luck to him, but I think it needs a concerted effort by ISPs as a group before OpenReach will do anything. That includes political lobbying including as much pressure as they can muster for OpenReach to be hived off as a result of the EE merger. In a sensible world it would be either fully State owned or at the least something on the lines of the old BP model which as I recall, despite being quoted on the Stock Market, was 51% owned by the government.

Despite all the cries by the privatisation lobby, it didn't seem to do BP much harm.

Dakota2 · Apr 02, 2015, 08:57:05

Adrian is trying to get smaller ISP's to band together he is trying to get a Wholesale buyers forum together: http://www.wbbf.uk/

Tacitus · Apr 02, 2015, 11:58:40

Quote from: Dakota2 on Apr 02, 2015, 08:57:05
Adrian is trying to get smaller ISP's to band together he is trying to get a Wholesale buyers forum together: http://www.wbbf.uk/

Interesting link which I must have missed. I note that it says nothing about political lobbying but is about a forum for discussion - in other words a talking shop. IMHO they are not likely to get very far without a great deal of political lobbying. BT will simply dig in and stall them.

As I said earlier, since the network is effectively a monopoly - Virgin cable doesn't count in my opinion - it should be State owned or at least State controlled. The network is the platform on which competition in the provision of services takes place. That's not simply the provision of a Broadband connection but value add such as IPTV, VOIP/telephony, Cloud services, remote backup and so on. It's in those areas where competition and innovation should take place; the idea that real competition can take place at network level is simply daft, since the barriers to entry are so great.

Dakota2 · Apr 02, 2015, 16:46:15

Update: More than one fault on the line, fixed one but couldn't be bothered to find second fault. From my line stats it looks like there is a high resistance connection somewhere. Attenuation has gone from 10dB to 29.5dB . Openreach B/S: "No engineers available due to workload and shortage of resources blah, blah, blah can't be fixed until 4/4/2015" What a way to run the UK telephone network, you couldn't make it up!

pctech · Apr 02, 2015, 18:43:28

I think the speed of response also depends on whether the exchange serves businesses and how many businesses that it serves, if it serves a lot then there are likely to be regular engineer visits to it in order to provision new connections so faults are likely to be resolved more quickly as faults might be added to an engineer's work for that day, if it's purely residential it maybe less of a priority as residential accounts don't bring in as much income.

Am quite lucky that the exchange I am on serves a number of industrial estates so when problems have occured they have been resolved quickly.

I would like to see Openreach taken out of BT's hands and made a mutual non profit owned by the telcos/ISPs who are it's customers, just like the London Internet Exchange.

On the plus side, the Openreach engineers I have encountered have been very pleasant, professional people who want to fix the problem for the end user (you and I), I think the problem is further up the chain of command to be honest.

I'm fairly sure the Directors of the likes of IDNet and other small ISPs take no pleasure in their customers suffering outages and having to wait for OR, as you've commented yourself though, Adrian is rather more vocal than most and I can imagine that he has probably visited OR HQ on more than one occasion to vent his views based on his comments in his blog posts.

Adrian · Apr 02, 2015, 19:10:11

Quote from: pctech on Apr 02, 2015, 18:43:28On the plus side, the Openreach engineers I have encountered have been very pleasant, professional people who want to fix the problem for the end user (you and I), I think the problem is further up the chain of command to be honest.

I agree about the individual OR engineers. In my case, without exception, they have done a good job and have been very pleasant. In a couple of instances they have gone way beyond the call of duty to try and fix things.

While I agree that the problems lie higher up the food chain, there are also some exceptionally good people. When I first went on to ADSL in the days of the green frog modem, I was moving from Home Highway and due to a mistake at the exchange I was left on a Friday afternoon with no internet access and no phone (a bit like my fibre saga last Sunday!

). I don't remember how, but using a local phone box I got through to a charming lady who listened to my sorry tale and got an engineer out to the exchange withing an hour or so to fix things, which he did. She then phoned me to check everything was OK and said that as she was going on holiday that evening she would give me the direct line number of the Home Highway manager and said I should ring him if I had any further problems.

Yes, good people do exist in BT but I suspect they are a dying breed, or they have just given up trying to fight the system.

pctech · Apr 02, 2015, 19:23:20

I was once left with no broadband for a week when I upgraded from 512k to ADSL Max as it took BT (OR wasn't in existence then but we know OR is BT anyway) one week to obtain and install a new line card which apparently failed during the upgrade process.

The ISP I was with at the time did give me a month free in compensation so couldn't grumble too much.

Dakota2 · Apr 03, 2015, 05:27:53

A week to swap a card! Pathetic is the only word to describe it.

Dakota2 · Apr 03, 2015, 15:02:46

This morning as I threatened to last night I emailed VIP management at Openreach and threw my toys out of the pram. I got an immediate response and a very competent and pleasant Openreach engineer fixed the final problem, dodgy underground cable. I've also gained another 2Mbps on my donwload speed!