Fibre Outage

[Wickle]

Our fibre went out on the 29/01, originally the service checker said it should be fixed the following evening, alls fine no big deal. 

Then it was moved to the 31st, followed by the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th, then when I checked on Tuesday evening it said the 13th, I used the online chat to try and see what was going on, not very helpful at all.  Ive seen the engineers pulling up the grates, sending probes down and such twice since it went out.  I know brsk are working on installing fibre in our area currently and have seen then up and down a few times. 

Fast forward to today, openreach where out pulling out cables this morning, but where there for maybe 30 mins, and when I checked the service status it now says the 20th of Feb, currently at my wits end, I was sent one of the 4g hubs, but its all but useless, took me 15 minutes just to get an email to send this morning due to how slow and unreliable it is.  I'm an IT engineer that works from home and have basically not been able to get any work done for a week, and looks like I wont be able to get any done for atleast another 2.  

Support said there was an MSO in my area, but wouldn't give any details.  There is a rumor going about that people in unmarked vans are "stealing" the wires, but I know fibre cable isn't like copper and i highly doubt theres any real market for it so no idea why anyone would steal it. 

Is there anything I can actually do other than complain? I know how hard it is to get compensation from BT, but this is driving me mad, I need to work and I'm really struggling to get much of anything done on this 4g hub... I doubt I'll be staying with BT at this rate, £50 a month is ridiculous if they're going to take 3 weeks to fix an issue effecting my entire postcode. 

[pippincp]

Support wouldn't have any details of an MSO, that is only Openreach. As regards cable stealers they normally don't differentiate between cable types. They just pull out bundles and then find out about which is copper or fibre.

As your job seems to depend on having a connection it us up to you to have a back-up in place.

[36ULW]

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The majority of cable theft is done by organised criminal gangs and from past experience they’re quite good at knowing which cables are Copper and which are Fibre as 99% of the time they’ll leave the Fibre knowing it has no resale value whatsoever.

Fibre Cable is also easily distinguishable from Copper as COF215 and the Sub Duct Openreach use has yellow stripes on it. Only COF600, which doesn’t have to go in Sub Duct doesn’t come with a yellow stripe but Openreach Engineers put bands of yellow tape on that. 

Also Cable thieves don’t tend to go for smaller diameter cables anyway as chances are they’re Greased Filled D-Side Cables and getting that stuff off is laborious and costly washing process.

They tend to only go for the larger E-Side Pressurised Cables as they aren’t greased filled and easier to strip down to the bare Copper for resale.

[36ULW]

Chances are these guys in an unbranded van aren't Cable Thieves.

There are now over 100 Alt Nets Building in the U.K.

Most will Sub Contract out, who themselves Sub Contract out.

A lot of these Sub Contractors change Company names on an almost monthly basis, usually for Tax Purposes.

[Christopher_G]

Hi @Wickle 

I definitely recommend having a chat with our Customer Support team so that they can look into this. They'll be able to open a complaint on your account.

Hopefully they can get to the bottom of this and help get your service back up and running soon.

Chris