FTTP installation - no signal

[Steve_C]

In the last few months new Openreach fibre cables have been installed in our area. Having checked it was available I ordered a full fibre installation with BT.

On 18 July as agreed, two engineers called. One went up the nearby telegraph pole where all the new cables are connected. The other disconnected my analogue phone line and cut the cable. A few minutes later, the first engineer came down and announced there was no fibre signal. I agreed for them to proceed with the fibre installation into the house. They said they would arrange for a specialist engineer to call the next day to investigate the fibre signal fault.

The next day an engineer came. After checking the signal from my house to the nearest junction box was working he said the fault was further back on the network. He said another team would need to find out where the fault was.

Nothing happened until 22 July when I rang BT Customer Service. The representative checked what was going on with Openreach and said they were waiting for the fault to be investigated and their next review date was 29 July.

Again, nothing happened until I called BT again on 30 July. This time the representative arranged for a mini-hub to be sent out and my EE phone data to be set to unlimited. The representative checked what was going on with Openreach and said they were waiting for the fault to be investigated and their next review date was now 5 August (today).

I suspect I might be the first to be connected in our area but I know they have been installing fibre to other households in the last week.

I would be grateful if a Forum Moderator could apply some pressure on Openreach to fix the fault.

[naylor2006]

Unfortunately I dont think a moderator will be able to apply pressure onto Openreach and it wont make you feel better that I had to wait 2 months and a bit before my installation was fixed. I was also the first in my my street and at least the two neighboring roads to  take up FTTP as soon as it was installed, I expect the pain I went through helped everyone else who has subsequently ordered without issue since.

You might be better raising a complaint through BT and you will be assigned a case handler who will hopefully give you some further updates with maybe a bit more clarity.....or at least when you do eventually go live some goodwill and further discounts. Ultimately the complaint i had open for similar did not speed up Openreach and updates beyond "specialist engineer to attend" were lacking, they very much worked in their own time....but the complaints handler took pity and applied some nice discounts and a couple months free due to the lengthy period offline.

The methodology of cutting off the copper and installing fibre is an 'eggs all in one basket' thing....generally most installs go without issue and this is a clean way of doing it, but for those who dont having no internet is a pain.

[Steve_C]

Thanks for letting me know your experience. It seems Openreach engineers are fully committed to installing new fibre networks but this is at the expense of fixing faults. One Openreach engineer I spoke to said the situation was pathetic but could not help me.

Not long after Openreach installed fibre along our road, BRSK came along and fitted their cables. It's quite likely their network is up and running, so if it isn't fixed in the next few weeks I may see if I can cancel the BT service and give BRSK a try.

Tomorrow morning I will again get in touch with BT Customer Service, who I must admit have tried to be as helpful as they can. I have raised complaints but so far to no positive effect. Not a good advert for BT.

[chrisjp]

"The methodology of cutting off the copper and installing fibre is an 'eggs all in one basket' thing...."
You would think that the Openreach operatives (I hesitate to call them "engineers") would at least wait until the signal at the pole had been checked before cutting the copper line, wouldn't you?

[36ULW]

It sounds like something has gone wrong with the Build, although they should’ve done the LLR’s after it was built. 

Then again if Contractors Built it they probably just made up the LLR’s and uploaded pics from a different PON Build. 

[naylor2006]

@36ULW 😂

@chrisjp indeed you would hope, with my install it was only once they performed a line test that they realised there was a ‘build’ issue somewhere, MJ Quinn f’d off quick as they could after telling me that and said it’ll be solved by Mumbai, literally they said that.

My copper line was gone however I maintained my virgin cable and only gave notice on that once I had BT up and running. Thankfully not one issue since it eventually gone live, it’s been up for months without fail. The copper line was never used anyway but for a lot of families it’s their lifeline.

I guess some faults aren’t discovered until the ONT is installed or what? You’d hope they could do a test on the CBT and check if all was okay before continuing.

@Steve_C definitely go with the alt net, go live with them, let BT solve the fault, accept the compensation then cancel during the cooling off period. You can just go live with them once the alt net wants you to renew and doesn’t give you new customer prices. Then you can go back to them as a new customer again once the BT contract is up.

Beauty of having two separate infrastructures is you can get new customer prices forever.

[Steve_C]

I rang BT again today and the latest is that yesterday an Openreach engineer investigated the fault and determined it was 470m away from the local cabinet towards the exchange. Another team would need to fix the fault. The next review date is on 12 August. Being an optimist, I am hopeful they will have fixed it by then.

[naylor2006]

Didn’t think FTTP used cabinets, just fibre all the way to the exchange, so that’s an odd update.

[iniltous]

Assuming the light loss readings  were  taken  when the CBT serving your address was provided ( proving at least ‘light’ was being received, something that now is ‘missing’ , then something subsequently has caused a failure , perhaps a dodgy splice 470 metres away from the splitter node or aggregation node , or perhaps , given that the OP sates BRSK started working in the area soon afterwards, perhaps some BRSK employees, stopping around in Openreach infrastructure , have damaged the Openreach equipment that the OP’s service is reliant on , it’s ( obviously ) only speculation on my part, but it’s definitely not beyond the scope of possibility

[Steve_C]

For cabinet read splitter node - sorry for my lack of knowledge!