BT repair

[Davey]

Yesterday after lunch, I tried to connect to my broadband service, but
could not. The router's DSL light was flashing, I performed standard
checks in the house, and the Fritz!box did its own tests and concluded
that the fault was in the external wiring.
I contacted Zen, my ISP, and they reported that there was a known
incident locally, cutting off some houses. No details were available,
but the estimated time of the repair was just before 7 pm. They said I
could call back at about 6:30 if I wanted an update. I logged on to the
internet using my Mi-fi, and the Openreach (listed as BT) report said
exactly what Zen had told me. The fault was fixed, as predicted, just
before 7 pm. Today, the ticket just adds that the fault was fixed, and
the time.
The fact that Openreach could accurately predict the likely time of
repair, only a short time after it was reported, and five hours before
it was due, sounds as though it knew all along what the fault was,
otherwise how could they be so accurate? It sounds to me like a planned
Openreach outage, that wasn't flagged up in advance. Recent weeks have
seen Fibre installation vans appearing at every corner of the village,
it couldn't have been anything to do with that, could it?
Luckily, I don't need my internet for business, but it would have been
a real pain if I had needed it, it was dead all afternoon. Could I claim
any compensation in that circumstance?

[Graham J]

Davey wrote:

[snip]

Post by Davey
Luckily, I don't need my internet for business, but it would have been
a real pain if I had needed it, it was dead all afternoon. Could I claim
any compensation in that circumstance?

Worth reading Zen's T&Cs - but probably not for an outage of less than
several days.

I've seen several hours of down-time when converting VDSL to SOGEA,
which given that it can't be more than Openreach clicking a button on a
computer screen is a bit worrying.

I think Zen offer a Premium support option at perhaps £20 per month
extra. This may only get you quicker support from Openreach - given
that Zen in reality simply re-sell the Openreach product. In practise
this may reduce a guaranteed five-day response down to a one-day response.

Many businesses these days rely on continuously available broadband - so
even a break of a minute is unacceptable (think VoIP, cloud file systems
and apps). Resilience in electrical power is easy - one UPS or several,
and a backup generator - but even diverse routing of several internet
connections doesn't really solve the problem of how to achieve a highly
reliable internet service.

I wonder what the military do? Can't see them being prepared to
tolerate an intermittent internet service for fighting a war!

[Chris]

Post by Graham J
I wonder what the military do? Can't see them being prepared to
tolerate an intermittent internet service for fighting a war!

Primarily, they wouldn't use OR for access.

[Rupert Moss-Eccardt]

Post by Chris

Post by Graham J
I wonder what the military do? Can't see them being prepared to
tolerate an intermittent internet service for fighting a war!

Primarily, they wouldn't use OR for access.

Untrue.

[Chris]

Post by Davey
Yesterday after lunch, I tried to connect to my broadband service, but
could not. The router's DSL light was flashing, I performed standard
checks in the house, and the Fritz!box did its own tests and concluded
that the fault was in the external wiring.
I contacted Zen, my ISP, and they reported that there was a known
incident locally, cutting off some houses. No details were available,
but the estimated time of the repair was just before 7 pm. They said I
could call back at about 6:30 if I wanted an update. I logged on to the
internet using my Mi-fi, and the Openreach (listed as BT) report said
exactly what Zen had told me. The fault was fixed, as predicted, just
before 7 pm. Today, the ticket just adds that the fault was fixed, and
the time.
The fact that Openreach could accurately predict the likely time of
repair, only a short time after it was reported, and five hours before
it was due, sounds as though it knew all along what the fault was,
otherwise how could they be so accurate? It sounds to me like a planned
Openreach outage, that wasn't flagged up in advance.

I suspect it's more about getting a person to the appropriate place to fix
it. Six o'clock was the earliest they could schedule a visit.

Post by Davey
Recent weeks have
seen Fibre installation vans appearing at every corner of the village,
it couldn't have been anything to do with that, could it?
Luckily, I don't need my internet for business, but it would have been
a real pain if I had needed it, it was dead all afternoon. Could I claim
any compensation in that circumstance?

Nope. Residential service agreements don't come with any kind of
commitment. That's why business contracts are much more expensive.