Please do tell lacb - who is the BT owned ISP ?

Plusnet is owned by bt, has been since 2007

Madasafish actually (née Freenetname) but this is now part of the PlusNet group too.

Well - you never know when you are getting into unexplored territory.

BT Have sent me my own pet robot !!

It has to sit quietly in the corner of the room connected to my currrently-not-quite-so-reliable FTTP connection.

Apparently it will report 24 hours a day on the performance of the fibre-optic circuit to the BT techy guys and gals.

Typically the instructions for its installation were less than satisfactory, although BT have implored me not to feed it.

I fully expect my browsing history to appear on Google shortly.

And wasn't Madasafish a great name for a company.

A rather unexpected turn in our jolly saga.

During the installation phase of the fibre optic cable, BT Openreach opened every manhole and pit to pull cable through and install equipment. The pit and manhole covers had been sealed by years of muck and other stuff and BT had to apply significant force to open them up.

When the cover lids have been refitted the seals are no longer as effective as they once were and when the rain set in last week - originally it did not seem so heavy - many of the pit covers leaked.

Naturally some of the pits filled quickly with water and the flood water then found the weak spots in the cable joints and insulation. A handful of us have had lines fail and had overwhelming crackle on our lines. Typically mine was one of the first to go early last week - but my repair was completed within 40 hours.

Unfortunately some of those affected have been elderly neighbours - one with a Linkline alarm that has become unusable. Three days of constant calls to try at least to get my neighbour's emergency link re-established by BT has only resulted in them extending the forecast repair period from 3 days to 5 days. Somewhere sits a BT Welfare Team who adjudicate on priorities and they declined to prioritise my neighbour's case.

Despite BT's Code of Practice defining a ‘Free Priority Fault Repair Service’ if you have a long-term illness or disability and my neighbour being registered thereon - it seemingly makes no difference. I await an escalation call from a BT manager.

Any one else having any experience of this latest fiasco ?

This post was last modified: 01-05-2012 01:40 PM by jgdoherty.

One hour after I posted last a local BT engineer rolls up and tells me he had been allocated the job that morning.

I was very grateful - not quite the 24 hour promised response - but 48 hours is better than the five days BT were quoting only this morning.

It served once more to prove BT's right hand does not know what its left hand is doing.

Local BT guy tells me he is dealing with a lot of water based issues at moment - so I tell him about the other elderly neighbour, he calls his control - gets the job allocated and he fixes that too - a twofer and all before 4:00pm. He was a star.

Received "escalated call" after 5:00pm from BT to tell me that they now accepted job was a priority and would be dealt with "urgently" - they were almost deflated when I said repair in fact had just been reported complete.

I am grateful the linkline is re-established.

That sounds like the BT we all know and love!

So the FH Exchange is enabled for Infinity but our line shows it not being available. I've heard rumours that our road is lined up for FTTP.

Does anybody have the inside track on the schedule for FTTP in the area?

Sorry BarCar

I was trying to find the most up-to-date information. It has not been easy as BT have reduced the frequency of publishing the more regular updates that were once the norm.

http://fttc-check.alc.im/

This link will enable you to enter your postcode (without gaps) and give you the proposed position - although with some caution, the info may be 3-6 months old.

It will not tell you precisely when the install will become available but will specify what Phase your cabinet will be in. For the record Phase 5b became available in Jan 12 and Phase 5c in March 12.

It will also advise whether you will get FTTC or FTTP and what uplift (or multiplier) you will obtain on your current speed.

A strong tip - ensure that you obtain BT's written estimate of FTTP/C speed before you sign your new contract.

Many thanks jgdoherty.

According to that site I'm in phase 5b with 100% probability of FTTP (fom cabinet P30). If that January 2012 date is still valid then I guess something else must be going on since all ISPs show no Infinity availability...

Very frustrating!

How many BT engineers does it take to... ok, no, won't make fun of them.

But three of them were sitting around a makeshift fibre optics nirvana in Garthorne Road today. One had the most important job by far: holding an umbrella. Not sure what the other two were up to, but their faces looked a teeny bit worried.

A correction for BarCar

I can confirm that the data supplied was last updated by BT Openreach in December 2011 (so just over 5 months old).

However their last report shows the majority of postcodes covered by LSFOR (the Forest Hill Exchange) to be in Phase 5b with the only exemptions listed as SE23 codes that have no phase allocation at all.

I cannot find any detail as to over what period of time Phase 5b is planned to be undertaken, however it is a fairly firm assumption that BT continue to launch within LSFOR on a cabinet-by-cabinet basis for FTTC and on a postcode basis for FTTP (cabinets do not play a part in this type of service) . They do not seem to publish a programme that provides the granularity of when any individual postcode or cabinet will be activated. However given that BarCar's postcode is allocated to Phase 5b there is some re-assurance, however faint, that at least you will be connected.

Therefore the most up-to-date check on a regular basis that can be made continues to be on the BT website itself, where activation data seems to be updated as soon as a cabinet or postcode goes live. Whilst this page moves around on BT's site - it is currently displayed here.

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/co...icId=25795

It may also be prudent to disregard the Phase 5c info supplied in my previous post.

Thanks for the info. I'll keep watching out for the OpenReach van...

Unfortunately, although I am in Phase 5b, with a 100% probability of FTTP from my cabinet, my postcode is showing "Removed or Deferred from deployment "

You may be able to guess that from the tone of my earlier posts, I have a moderately skeptical view of BT's pronouncements.

So far, BT have stated that for FTTC that there are only two circumstances when your telephone line is "Removed or Deferred from deployment ". Either it has a direct link back to the exchange or your line is categorised as being attached to a cabinet where there is insufficient demand from customers to make it commercially viable to activate that particular cabinet.

Several questions have to be asked of BT, these are:

Do you know if your line is in fact directly linked to the telephone exchange or is this one of BT's fallacies ?

If you are deemed to be in an area where only FTTC is to be delivered, are you actually connected to a low demand cabinet. If this is the case get your neighbours to express an interest in FTTC/P and raise BT's assessment of the demand.

For FTTP, in principle and in practice, neither of the two previous conditions apply. BT almost certainly have laid new fibre optic cable past your front door and unless you you are in an extraordinarily isolated location, FTTP is almost certainly deliverable to your address. As someone has said recently, have you seen Openreach vans and gangs of men pulling cables and installing them ?

It is almost inexplicable that BT have one more major category of premise that they have declined to deliver high speed Infinity to.

If your premises are part of a large development, are part of medium scale multi-occupancy development or have premises that somehow prevent BT from linking to you on and individual basis, BT might declare that they are still trialling those types of installations.

This can be interpreted as meaning that BT will defer this type of installation until they are ready and not before.

From a customer perspective, who do we ask these questions of? The only interface we have is the online availability checker. It's answer is 'computer says no'.

If you do talk to a human at BT they refer you back to the availability checker.

Chicken, meet egg.

A letter arrived from BT Retail this week offering 100Mbit service. Both the retail and business availability checkers confirm this but a call to BT Retail and Business reveals that the service is still not actually available on either line.

The BT Wholesale checker at https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static...cker.html# still indicates the service is not yet available and that, apparently, is the source of truth on this matter.

Sigh...

Have received this interesting e-mail from BT in last day or so - please go to the end of the quoted section to read further.

"Dear BT Infinity Customer,

We hope you are enjoying the benefits of your superfast broadband, but how would you like to have a free upgrade to even faster speeds up to as fast as 300Mbps, free of charge for up to 6 months?

We are looking for Customers to trial our new Infinity higher speed products and provided you agree to re-contract for 18 months with BT on Infinity 100Mb (Option 3), all you need to take part is:-

· Be an existing BT Infinity Customer with a Fibre optic connection to your home.

· Be willing to provide feedback about the service

We are trialling 2 new higher speed products, at either 160Mbps or 300Mbps.

· The trial is only open to customers who re-contract to BT Infinity 100Mb with BT for 18 months. By accepting this invitation to join the trial, you are agreeing to a new 18 month contract and an order being placed to increase your speed to one of the above trial variants.

· We will send you our standard terms and conditions which do not extend the 18 month contract term or incur any additional price. The additional speed is free during the trial and you are free to leave the trial at any point.

· If you are currently an Option 2 (80Mb) customer, you will be upgraded to Option 3 at £35 a month and we will provide you with one of the faster speeds above.

· If you are already on Option 3 (100Mb) there will be NO change in price to take part in the trial. Please note that you do need to still continue paying for the underlying 100Mb product, it is only the additional speed which is provided free.

· The trial is expected to run until the end of the year, and you will be contacted before the end of the trial to discuss your options once the trial has ended."

This all sounds superb but the difficulty is that my existing FTTP 40mbps service is still performing in a fractious fashion.

It drops out pages and performance slumps to levels where I cannot even stream the BBC IPlayer (video or radio) for about 20% of the time

BT have installed a robot in my home and have discovered that there are problems within their own network after my routers etc make connection at the exchange end. For the techies there is a significantly higher level of malformed frames inside the BT network.

BT have not as yet settled on a permanent solution.

So there is the new problem - jump and try the new 300mbps and hope the network issues go away or persist with what I have until BT sorts the problem out.

Time for a cold beer in a padded room - or maybe I will put my dilemma to the BT tech team that is trying to solve the problem.

Quite the dilemma. I have the FTTC service and was on the 40mbps option 2 when they offered the free upgrade to 80mbps. The reason I found out about it was that on that particular day my speed was very slow and I got a read back of 6mbps via speedtest.net and I went to the BT website to complain to somebody. I bit the bullet, re-signed for another 18 months, and my speed shot up within an hour or so to 74.6 down, 16.7 up. In general it has been better since the upgrade. but there is the odd day where things aren't so smooth. One day recently I was trying to download some archives from my company's US headquarters and noticed I was only getting 12mbps down. I confirmed this via speedtest.net and indeed I was getting 12 down, and 16.7 up!!! went to make myself a drink (to centre myself before the taxing call to BT) and when I came back 20 minutes later it was up to 36mbps down and a little later back to my normal 74.6. These occurrences didn't happen at all when Infinity was first installed, but then started creeping in on the original system. Since the upgrade there's still funny business, but much fewer and further between.