Mobile broadband in the UK

[HtV]

You could always blame mr. O. b. Laden.

[bgowland]

Unfortunately there's nothing conveniently placed that could fall on it etc. I was half hoping in the last gusty weather spell, the board the cable's attached to on the front of the house might get ripped off by the wind. No such luck.

Time to phone up for my daily whinge - maybe they'll send out an engineer for the third time - strange that the IP profile has reverted back to 4MB+ 12 hours before the last two engineers were sent out. Hmmm.

Cheers,
Brian

[stu8080]

When i was having problems with my BT line a few years ago, the engineer for UKOnline (who were excellent, tech support was actually a technician who knew what he was talking about!) stated that BT Openreach, formerly BT Wholesale, were responsible for the line right up till it enters your property, ie passes through your bricks and mortar.

How are they going to know the wind didnt rip it off? If your getting nothing now (got mobiles i assume for phone calls for a week?) you have nothing to lose by ripping it off and having them come and replace it! :-)

[ACTCMS]

How are they going to know the wind didnt rip it off? If your getting nothing now (got mobiles i assume for phone calls for a week?) you have nothing to lose by ripping it off and having them come and replace it! :-)

What if the engineer they send is a GBPVR fan and keeps his eye on the forum...

[ACTCMS]

Then I would expect him to drop in and break the cable as a favour

Yep - it IS amazing how far GBPVR users will go to help another user...

[bgowland]

Thanks guys for the (slightly dubious) comments. :eek:

If I were to do something illegal I'd go and buy 30 metres of telephone cable and fix it myself.

I spoke to the ISP helpdesk (yet again) and have now found out that the IP profile only gets updated every 72 hours. Oooh goody - somewhere around 8am Saturday morning I might see normal service.

Cheers,
Brian

[bgowland]

If I had a blog I could make my current daily updates all about my ongoing broadband connection - but I don't so here will do.

As much as for reference for anyone else who experiences similar problems, this is the latest progress.

It's probably not my line (lucky I didn't succumb to temptation and arrange an accident ).

My broadband connection has been dropping regularly today and we haven't had any strong winds. I phoned my ISP helpdesk (once again) and the guy there said he could hear the excessive noise at his end and suggested I phoned BT Retail to report a line fault. The automated test said my line was fine so I hung on for an advisor who, despite not being trained in broadband diagnostics, spoke the most sense of anyone I've dealt with.

He too could hear the excessive line noise and basically told me to unplug the line connection from the back of my router - instantly I got a cystal clear phone line.

In short - the noise on the line isn't as a result of a faulty connection and isn't causing the broadband fault. On the contrary, the noise is digital noise being produced as a side-effect of faulty broadband equipment.

Back to my ISP as they own the broadband equipment in the exchange.

One step closer.

Cheers,
Brian

[bgowland]

You hope! (Well we all hope)

Sounds feasible, but doesn't quite gel with the wind theory though :confused:

True - and I was surprised last night when my connection started dropping every 15-20 minutes or so. The highest wind speed we've had in the past 24 hours is 6 mph (mostly around 2-3mph).

Maybe it's a case of paranoia on my part - my house is quite old and I'm all too conscious of gusty winds as they whistle through the eaves. Couple that with the equipment at the exchange misbehaving at the same time and maybe I made 2+2=5.

Oh well - the fault has been logged for investigation by an engineer (for the third time). Maybe 'third time lucky'.

Cheers,
Brian