Cannot Order 900mbps Despite Showing Available on BT Wholesale

[BenHughesDS]

@yorkspark, @harrinp1, @Turco73, @c64z86 Might be worth trying this

Everyone, I have now resolved this issue.  The solution offered by the BT executive complaints team was to cease my current line and re-order internet, however this would 100% come with downtime.  As I WFH this was not acceptable, so I decided to order a second FTTP line with Aquiss (who by the way have been exemplary).

I now have gigabit internet.  Apparently I was connected to an old ECI headend at the exchange, however I was being offered better internet by BT/EE because the exchange had  been upgraded to what I now know is Nokia gear.  I, however, remained on the ECI gear, and seemingly the communication pathway between BT and OpenReach was incapable of simply switching my cable from ECI to Nokia at the exchange, providing a new ONT, and (I think) a port restart.

BT executive complaints have allowed me to cancel my contract with no exit fees, so I now sit on a gigabit connection with Aquiss.  What's better is that I have 6 months (of a 12 month contract) at half price, so I'm actually saving right now!

[Turco73]

Hey mate, glad you got the right resolution.

I just ended up moving my 330 limited ECI FTTP line to Wildanet, which was an easier option. 

In the end I didn't have the epic levels of patience required to deal with EE / BT to get a resolution.  I may try getting a new line as you suggest, but its not a priority for me right now.

Either way, am stoked for you to actually get a result, it show that it is possible - and now there's a repeatable route forward.

Thanks for letting us know, all to often threads like this just go dead with no update - so its appreciated.

[harrinp1]

I'm glad to hear you got this resolved.

I have already moved to Aquiss, who have been excellent, keeping my informed when BT mucked up the migration and left me with no internet for a week.  

I am still stuck on 300Mbit but at least there is hope!

The strange things is that the MAC address i am seeing from the remote end of my PPP connection is a Nokia device but I have an ECI ONT.   

[iniltous]

Although the issue resolved I’m not sure how the explanation given to the OP can be true ,the architecture of a an Openreach PON ( passive optical network ) is

 
Headend / OLT, CCJ , AGG Node , Splitter Node , CBT , ONT , the entire thing is passive , the splitter is where a single fibre from the headend is ‘optically’ split into 32 individual fibres ( but a max usage of 30 is OR policy) these individual fibres serve multiple CBT’s , so it’s impossible to transfer  a single  fibre from the ECI OLT to the Nokia OLT without effectively moving up to  30 customers served from various CBT’s at the same time , because single customers don’t have their own fibre on the OLT  ( that would be a point to point network not a PON ) .

Moving a splitter fibre between OLT would need each ONT ( upto 30 of them ) changing or at least re authentication onto the new OLT , the alternative ( and I’m pretty such this is not done ) would be to provide a new fibre from the Nokia OLT through the CCJ ( cable chamber joint ), through the  AGG node to a new splitter node associated with the Nokia , then put a duplicate CBT parented on the Nokia, in the same location as the existing ‘ECI’ CBT  and then individually move a single customer lead in fibre  from one CBT to the other CBT and then re authenticate the existing ECI ONT or replace the individual ECI ONT with a Nokia ONT , effectively moving it to the Nokia headend,  but providing a complete Nokia duplicate network makes no economic sense .


It’s much more likely that given all the ECI ONTs serial numbers are known , the fibre to the splitter from the ECI headend is moved to the Nokia headend , effectively transferring all the ECI ONT from the existing splitter at once , then running a ‘routine’ to re-enter the affected ECI ONT serial numbers into the Nokia OLT , so the customers are only out of service for a short time ( probably done overnight) upgrading the firmware in the ECI ONT to ‘talk’ to the Nokia headend.



I suspect the real problem and solution is the OP was ECI , the ECI headend was discarded and replaced with Nokia OLT and everything that existed that was on the ECI headend was connected on the Nokia headend overnight , the ECI ONTs remotely configured to work with Nokia  headends , but with a 300 Mb limit , possibly a physical limitation of the ECI ONT , any new work could get Gb , because they would get Nokia ONT fitted from the outset , but probably due to some data flow problems the limit from the original ECI was indelible, and the only way to upgrade to higher speeds was to cease the 300Mb service and reprovide as a new service with 900Mb  ( or whatever ) so there was no seamless upgrade path from 300 to 900 , it has to a cease and reprovide or as with the OP install a second service and cease the 300Mb original.

…the alternative as stated would be a duplicate CBT at every location, one CBT connected to ECI and the other CBT connected to Nokia and individually move the fibre lead in to the customer from one CBT to the other

[BenHughesDS]

I'll be honest, at this point in the day my brain is about fried, so while I attempt to digest your comment I will say that, at time of writing, I have two active FTTP connections (thought I have just cancelled with BT, giving my 30 days notice).  The BT line still currently works.  A cease and reprovide was offered by BT but as a WFH person I cannot tolerate even a day's downtime, and given it took a few weeks after placing the order with Aquiss for an OR engineer to come out I had little other choice.

Kelly communications came out a couple of weeks ago to do some work in preparation for the OR engineer today, it was they who alluded to it being a headend issue.  I may have it wrong, but as I understand it my old connection was ECI -> ECI, and my new one is Nokia -> Nokia.  This leads me to believe that when the exchange was upgraded with Nokia gear late last year, they left the ECI gear in place for people who were using it to avoid proactively changing them over, however sadly this resulted in all the ISPs seeing that I should  have been able to order gigabit, but running the check down my line resulted in a fail due to using the legacy ECI gear.

Whatever the case, it worked.  Next up is hoping CityFibre hit my area soon as I'd love those symmetrical speeds (plus cheaper pricing!).

[iniltous]

I suppose breaking it right down , both your services are both on currently on the Nokia headend , both the original service with the ECI ONT and the newer faster service with the Nokia ONT , optically they are identical , as explained otherwise there would be two Openreach ‘networks’ outside your home one that went back to the ECI headend and the other going back to Nokia headend ( that’s the economics of the madhouse )
At some point all ‘connections’ to the various splitters on the ECI headend were swapped over to the Nokia headend , and the ECI switched off , so Gb speeds became possible, and all the working ECI ONT’s  re flashed to authenticate on the Nokia headend, but the early adopters with ECI ONT had no upgrade path , because although the ECI ONT can be updated to remotely to ‘talk’ to the Nokia headend, the physical 300Mb ECI ONT limit still exists

The work around , order a new service, it automatically gets provided with a Nokia ONT , so no 300Mb limit , but for whatever reason there wasn’t a way to upgrade to 900Mb from 300 Mb by sending out an  engineer to swap the ECI ONT to a Nokia ONT , get the Nokia ONT authenticated ( initially as 300Mb ) then allow an upgrade order to progress to take the speed to 900Mb ( or whatever ) that was probably never built into an upgrade path process  , if it were there would be a small amount of downtime though.

With most things like this , it’s easy to envisage what’s needed ( that’s pretty simple ) it’s the process to automate that causes problems, and unfortunately if the ‘system’ says No , that usually is the end of the conversation , and outside of the box thinking is required.

[BenHughesDS]

You're probably right, it's a shame it wasn't as simple as just upgrading the ONT but every communication I've had with Martin at Aquiss (who took the case over as soon as I said there were "special considerations" to be made) very much handled the problem in a way that BT/EE are just too large (seemingly) to do.

Their executive complaints department that got in touch once I emailed Clive Selley of OpenReach were damn good, but getting to that point was very frustrating.  It was a total hail Mary that I'm glad eventually worked it out.