Broadband advice please!

[Stevie Kirk]

So First World problem but here goes. 

I had fibre broadband installed by Openreach on behalf of my network provider Vodafone who I have been with for a number of years. It worked for about a week then went down so I have had no WiFi for two weeks.

Its becoming a real pain - aside from being stuck with council telly at night both myself and my missus work from home . We are having to commute over an hour each way or login at coffee shops - fine for a few days but I’m at the end of my tether.

Have of course reported this to Vodafone two weeks ago. They say they are aware of the outage in my area and have asked Openreach to investigate. I was told it would be fixed by last Friday but nothing was done. I’ve seen horror stories online of people being left with no broadband for weeks or even months so I’m getting a bit worried. 
 

So I’m trying to solve the problem myself rather than wait for Openreach so have had a couple of ideas.

1. change broadband provider to Sky ( they have some good deals currently) on the basis that they might have an engineer who could fix it on/ around date of switchover.

2. Buy a cellular router and stick a SIM card in it.

Im a bit of a Luddite but my thinking around option 1 is that maybe Sky can’t do anything without Openreach sorting the broadband . On the second option I have no idea how/ if  a cellular router would work. We would be running two laptops during the day and one smart TV at night . We don’t do any gaming so we are hardly Cape Canaveral. 

 

If there is anyone on here that could offer any advice or other ideas as to a temporary fix I would be much obliged cheers!

Edited February 5 by Stevie Kirk

[Molotov]

Have you been at the same property for a number of years?

if so do you still have access to the traditional copper lines. If do I would immediately revert to that as an interim solution. 

I would also check your T&Cs with your supplier as they should be financially compensating you or assisting. I’m surprised Vodafone have not suggested a temporary solution at their expense.

What speed can you get through your mobile provider at the property?

Run https://www.speedtest.net on your device. I have in the past been able to use 5G mobile to work and stream content when without broadband service. 

Fibre optic can prove troublesome if cables get damaged. 

Let me know if you need any assistance. 

 

[Molotov]

I’ve also heard of individuals who contact the CEO or operations director via email or social media and make public their dissatisfaction to the poor service.

That approach while uncommon often gets things moving. 

With any of these large companies and their old systems of governance and communication with 3rd parties it often requires you to take control and keep an audit of all calls, correspondence and call reference numbers. 

Next time you are on the call ask for a full disclosure of your service request and issues to be sent by email or post. 

 

 

[Molotov]

On P&B we will all look forward to seeing you and your wife on the “Compo faces” thread.  

 

[Stevie Kirk]

19 minutes ago, Molotov said:

Have you been at the same property for a number of years?

if so do you still have access to the traditional copper lines. If do I would immediately revert to that as an interim solution. 

I would also check your T&Cs with your supplier as they should be financially compensating you or assisting. I’m surprised Vodafone have not suggested a temporary solution at their expense.

What speed can you get through your mobile provider at the property?

Run https://www.speedtest.net on your device. I have in the past been able to use 5G mobile to work and stream content when without broadband service. 

Fibre optic can prove troublesome if cables get damaged. 

Let me know if you need any assistance. 

 

Cheers for the prompt reply mate, I’m at the old man yelling at cloud stage !

 So yeah I’ve lived here 20 odd years and never had an issue before. I wasn’t given a choice Vodafone just told me everyone is getting fibre broadband and the guy was here for a couple of hours about 3 weeks ago. And presumably f*cked something up. 

My neighbour’s broadbands are all ok , none of them have had fibre fitted recently mind , so it’s just our house I think so will be very low on the priority list. Vodafone not great tbh, no mechanism for speaking to a human it’s all automated calls and circular dialogue with chat bots so I ended up raising a complaint. They say I’m due £9.33 per day so £130 compo due so far. The replies I get are one- liners and they haven’t suggested any workarounds which is why I’m left to work it out myself. They give the impression that it’s not their problem and that they have no influence over Openreach.

I tried the speed test thingy on my iPad which is on 4g and I got download at 12.65 and upload at 2.86 - doesn’t look impressive at all but as I say I know very little about the subject.

How would I find out how to connect or revert back to the copper wires? The Openreach guy seems to have run an extension off the original incoming phone connection socket then added a wee white box with three green lights behind the telly which is then cabled into the back of the router. Outside there is a new grey box exactly where the old one was.

Hope that makes sense! Cheers 

 

 

[Molotov]

Copper line will be independent from the fibre optic. It’s difficult to diagnose this fully without knowing more and unfortunately not very easy on a forum like this. 

The lights are all appearing online as “green” which would suggest that their is a live service to the property. Have you made sure the router is correctly configured and working correctly.

Your 4G service is poor and not what I’d expect. Have you tried plugging in your old router to the old copper socket? Sometimes there is still a live service available. You were successfully live for one week. What’s probably happened is that where you were connected at the openreach fibre optic distribution point is that the cable has either been disconnected physically or virtually as whatever forms of communications these companies use invariably fall down through miscommunication.

Unfortunately you need to get away from dealing with chat bots and escalate this. It really is so frustrating. I have had similar cluster fcuks by these companies before for something that should be simple to implement. 

If I was a betting man I’d say this is not a physical fibre optic issue but a miscommunication problem. Sorry I can’t be of further assistance.

All I can suggest is take a deep breath and keep escalating this issue. 

[Stevie Kirk]

1 minute ago, Molotov said:

Copper line will be independent from the fibre optic. It’s difficult to diagnose this fully without knowing more and unfortunately not very easy on a forum like this. 

The lights are all appearing online as “green” which would suggest that their is a live service to the property. Have you made sure the router is correctly configured and working correctly.

Your 4G service is poor and not what I’d expect. Have you tried plugging in your old router to the old copper socket? Sometimes there is still a live service available. You were successfully live for one week. What’s probably happened is that where you were connected at the openreach fibre optic distribution point is that the cable has either been disconnected physically or virtually as whatever forms of communications these companies use invariably fall down through miscommunication.

Unfortunately you need to get away from dealing with chat bots and escalate this. It really is so frustrating. I have had similar cluster fcuks by these companies before for something that should be simple to implement. 

If I was a betting man I’d say this is not a physical fibre optic issue but a miscommunication problem. Sorry I can’t be of further assistance.

All I can suggest is take a deep breath and keep escalating this issue. 

Cheers mate as I say I’m using an old IPad on 4g tonight I will get my daughter to check her 5g speed on her phone tomorrow as it could be much better than what I’m getting. 
 

I wasn’t given a new router so it’s still the original one I will have a fiddle around tomorrow and try to replicate how it was set up before.

 

Aye I might have to go nuclear on twitter or something- not my usual style at all but the effects at home is we are all knackered and crabbit with having to commute again and I don’t know if Costa will tell me to f*ck off shortly and stop stealing  their WiFi .

 

Cheers for listening meantime

[TxRover]

12 hours ago, Stevie Kirk said:

Aye I might have to go nuclear on twitter or something- not my usual style at all but the effects at home is we are all knackered and crabbit with having to commute again and I don’t know if Costa will tell me to f*ck off shortly and stop stealing  their WiFi .

If you can determine it isn’t your router, that’s the route. Major companies have entire departments watching their social media for possible problems, much as the press do. They’ll want to head off any issue if they’re clearly at fault, so a good attention drawing tweet or ‘gram can do it.

13 hours ago, Molotov said:

Copper line will be independent from the fibre optic. It’s difficult to diagnose this fully without knowing more and unfortunately not very easy on a forum like this…

If I was a betting man I’d say this is not a physical fibre optic issue but a miscommunication problem. Sorry I can’t be of further assistance.

With the scripts and uneducated first level support currently used, you’re spot on. When I lost my landline for two weeks while everything worked I kept calling, and they would insist I check my phone was plugged into my modem…but I was on a copper wire line and told them that. The technician that arrived two weeks later confirmed that a Level One Tech Support “Advisor” had failed to check a single box on a computer screen and the system had reconfigured my landline to VOIP. It took a physically on-site technician to convince their own Tech Support to reconfigure the system correctly.

Edited February 6 by TxRover

[Stevie Kirk]

56 minutes ago, TxRover said:

If you can determine it isn’t your router, that’s the route. Major companies have entire departments watching their social media for possible problems, much as the press do. They’ll want to head off any issue if they’re clearly at fault, so a good attention drawing tweet or ‘gram can do it.

With the scripts and uneducated first level support currently used, you’re spot on. When I lost my landline for two weeks while everything worked I kept calling, and they would insist I check my phone was plugged into my modem…but I was on a copper wire line and told them that. The technician that arrived two weeks later confirmed that a Level One Tech Support “Advisor” had failed to check a single box on a computer screen and the system had reconfigured my landline to VOIP. It took a physically on-site technician to convince their own Tech Support to reconfigure the system correctly.

Cheers I’ve been working on the basis that it isn’t the router because when I log onto the Vodafone outage checker and stick my postcode in it comes up Alert - there is a known outage in my area- am I right to assume not the router then?
 

cheers 

[Molotov]

1 hour ago, Stevie Kirk said:

Cheers I’ve been working on the basis that it isn’t the router because when I log onto the Vodafone outage checker and stick my postcode in it comes up Alert - there is a known outage in my area- am I right to assume not the router then?
 

cheers 

Just because there is an alert on a website doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a specific issue with you. Again it could be any number of things. 

Whenever I upgraded to fibre to the home from copper I received a new router. Now it might be that your router is ok. It might be something else. I appreciate that you are not tech savvy but if it were me I’d want to eliminate that as a possibility by trying out an alternative (neighbours) router. 
Invariably you require specific login details to perform the credentials “handshake”. 
I have to assume that this has all been tripled checked. 
I’d also be powering off everything and performing a hard reset as you said it was working successfully before for a week. I can only take your word on that in terms of validating you had the anticipated data throughputs, etc.

My gut feel is that your Vodafone installation has been plugged in and was operational - but somehow your activation on Vodafone has not been retained on Openreach or Vodafone systems and your connection is possibly being used for another customer so you are receiving no service.

Request a Customer Service Record number for Vodafone and the corresponding problem records for Openreach.

Keep audits of everything and escalate this as much as you can. 

Good luck. 

[TxRover]

1 hour ago, Stevie Kirk said:

Cheers I’ve been working on the basis that it isn’t the router because when I log onto the Vodafone outage checker and stick my postcode in it comes up Alert - there is a known outage in my area- am I right to assume not the router then?
 

cheers 

10 minutes ago, Molotov said:

Just because there is an alert on a website doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a specific issue with you. Again it could be any number of things. 

Whenever I upgraded to fibre to the home from copper I received a new router. Now it might be that your router is ok. It might be something else. I appreciate that you are not tech savvy but if it were me I’d want to eliminate that as a possibility by trying out an alternative (neighbours) router.

Even just verifying with any neighbours having Vodaphone that they do indeed have an outage would be an excellent check.

Amusing note, Vodaphone was suggested to autocorrect to “Vodka Phone”, which explains a lot.

[Homer Thompson]

17 hours ago, Stevie Kirk said:

So First World problem but here goes. 

I had fibre broadband installed by Openreach on behalf of my network provider Vodafone who I have been with for a number of years. It worked for about a week then went down so I have had no WiFi for two weeks.

Its becoming a real pain - aside from being stuck with council telly at night both myself and my missus work from home . We are having to commute over an hour each way or login at coffee shops - fine for a few days but I’m at the end of my tether.

Have of course reported this to Vodafone two weeks ago. They say they are aware of the outage in my area and have asked Openreach to investigate. I was told it would be fixed by last Friday but nothing was done. I’ve seen horror stories online of people being left with no broadband for weeks or even months so I’m getting a bit worried. 
 

So I’m trying to solve the problem myself rather than wait for Openreach so have had a couple of ideas.

1. change broadband provider to Sky ( they have some good deals currently) on the basis that they might have an engineer who could fix it on/ around date of switchover.

2. Buy a cellular router and stick a SIM card in it.

Im a bit of a Luddite but my thinking around option 1 is that maybe Sky can’t do anything without Openreach sorting the broadband . On the second option I have no idea how/ if  a cellular router would work. We would be running two laptops during the day and one smart TV at night . We don’t do any gaming so we are hardly Cape Canaveral. 

 

If there is anyone on here that could offer any advice or other ideas as to a temporary fix I would be much obliged cheers!

Some good advice from others.

I've recently switched to fibre and I was told the old copper landline was being removed, so that might not be a fall back option. When you said the engineer that installed it ran an extension off your old phone socket, are you saying he didnt run new cable from the nearest pole/box to your house? If not, did you have fibre to the house before?

Also, the answer to question 1 in your original post is no. If its an Openreach issue then changing providers wont make any difference. 

[Stevie Kirk]

1 hour ago, Homer Thompson said:

Some good advice from others.

I've recently switched to fibre and I was told the old copper landline was being removed, so that might not be a fall back option. When you said the engineer that installed it ran an extension off your old phone socket, are you saying he didnt run new cable from the nearest pole/box to your house? If not, did you have fibre to the house before?

Also, the answer to question 1 in your original post is no. If its an Openreach issue then changing providers wont make any difference. 

I wish I had spent more time watching the guy when he was here but I was snowed under with work.
 

I think the extension thing is because I have a corner sofa against the window wall where the first phone point comes in. The extension cable goes under the carpet and pops up behind the tv where my router is. He was outside most of the time so yes he did run fibre into the house as we didn’t have it before. Yes I won’t bother swopping providers until it’s sorted - don’t want to give Vodafone an excuse to leave me floundering.

I will get hold of another router this week and see if it makes any difference and will post the results! 

As a plan B - If I can get decent 5G signal would a mobile router/ SIM card combo give me enough “ bandwidth” to run a couple of laptops during the day? 
 

cheers for all replies thanks .

Edited February 6 by Stevie Kirk

[TxRover]

7 hours ago, Stevie Kirk said:

I wish I had spent more time watching the guy when he was here but I was snowed under with work.
 

I think the extension thing is because I have a corner sofa against the window wall where the first phone point comes in. The extension cable goes under the carpet and pops up behind the tv where my router is. He was outside most of the time so yes he did run fibre into the house as we didn’t have it before. Yes I won’t bother swopping providers until it’s sorted - don’t want to give Vodafone an excuse to leave me floundering.

I will get hold of another router this week and see if it makes any difference and will post the results! 

As a plan B - If I can get decent 5G signal would a mobile router/ SIM card combo give me enough “ bandwidth” to run a couple of laptops during the day? 
 

cheers for all replies thanks .

Standard answer for working remotely is at least 10 down and 1 up per laptop (and that’s an absolute minimum)…so your 4G might sustain one of you, what did the 5G speeds show?

If you press Vodaphone, they’ll likely just try provide a 4G modem until they can resolve the service issue, which won’t help you much, so keep the high press on them. Seems that OpenReach and Vodaphone have priors for this sort of f**k-up, often related to incorrect entries….go figure.

[Soapy FFC]

From the Openreach side of things try this link

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/AddressHome

Put your postcode in, then select your address. Down the bottom of the page should be something like this
 

Quote

 

Our records show the following FTTP network service information for these premises:-Single Dwelling Unit Residential UG premises served by 2.5 Inch plastic duct 56.

ONT exists with active service. No spare ports are available. A new ONT may be ordered.

 

To me the important bit is the highlighted bit, I think that shows if you have a working Openreach connection or not.

[eindhovendee]

On 05/02/2024 at 22:22, Stevie Kirk said:

So First World problem but here goes. 

I had fibre broadband installed by Openreach on behalf of my network provider Vodafone who I have been with for a number of years. It worked for about a week then went down so I have had no WiFi for two weeks.

Its becoming a real pain - aside from being stuck with council telly at night both myself and my missus work from home . We are having to commute over an hour each way or login at coffee shops - fine for a few days but I’m at the end of my tether.

Have of course reported this to Vodafone two weeks ago. They say they are aware of the outage in my area and have asked Openreach to investigate. I was told it would be fixed by last Friday but nothing was done. I’ve seen horror stories online of people being left with no broadband for weeks or even months so I’m getting a bit worried. 
 

So I’m trying to solve the problem myself rather than wait for Openreach so have had a couple of ideas.

1. change broadband provider to Sky ( they have some good deals currently) on the basis that they might have an engineer who could fix it on/ around date of switchover.

2. Buy a cellular router and stick a SIM card in it.

Im a bit of a Luddite but my thinking around option 1 is that maybe Sky can’t do anything without Openreach sorting the broadband . On the second option I have no idea how/ if  a cellular router would work. We would be running two laptops during the day and one smart TV at night . We don’t do any gaming so we are hardly Cape Canaveral. 

 

If there is anyone on here that could offer any advice or other ideas as to a temporary fix I would be much obliged cheers!

 

On 05/02/2024 at 22:49, Molotov said:

I’ve also heard of individuals who contact the CEO or operations director via email or social media and make public their dissatisfaction to the poor service.

That approach while uncommon often gets things moving. 

With any of these large companies and their old systems of governance and communication with 3rd parties it often requires you to take control and keep an audit of all calls, correspondence and call reference numbers. 

Next time you are on the call ask for a full disclosure of your service request and issues to be sent by email or post. 

 

 

There is quite a bit that can have gone wrong here.

Firstly why did Vodafone install fibre to the property (FTTP), did you ask for this as it is not normally upgraded unless you ask as it will put you into a new contract?

Do you use your landline? If so can you make any calls, even if you don't have a phone you would definitely had a phone number with your old fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and then copper from cabinet to house, has the number been ported over?

If your neighbours don't have any problems is this because they haven't upgraded to FTTP? If they have and it is only you then its most likely a line fault on your line rather than an outage to the area.

There would be no point in trying to go to Sky or any other OR provider at the moment as the same problem will exist until OR come out and fix the problem.

Most times when you change from one OR provider to another they do an active line takeover so if you go from BT to Plusnet you just put an order in with Plusnet who arrange with OR who tell BT etc. this only works when you are keeping the same technology eg FTTC - FTTC or FTTP - FTTP, this will automatically cut off your existing BB as it is basically unplugging and plugging back in with another provider. In your case as they have put a new line in there is every chance that the reason your broadband worked is that it was still on the old broadband which is now been switched off, that (FTTC) will now be unavailable to your address due to FTTP been installed.

I would definitely email Vodafone and open a formal complaint. You can do that here. 

https://complaints.vodafone.co.uk/resource?id=11306244&db=vodafone

Make sure that you are aware that your cooling off period does not start until the service works as you can end up being contracted with something that is giving you a headache every other week. Also let them know that you are having to make other arrangements and that you want them to pay for this. 

Compensation starts two full working days after it is reported, eg report the fault on Friday your first day's compensation will be Wednesday, weekends are not working days. Normally is is paid automatically so you should not get billed for your monthly payments.

As an alternative, and if you don't need a landline the the best available wireless Broadband is usually with EE but not usually cheap.

https://ee.co.uk/broadband/pay-monthly-mobile-broadband-gallery

I work for Sky.
 

[Stevie Kirk]

2 hours ago, eindhovendee said:

 

There is quite a bit that can have gone wrong here.

Firstly why did Vodafone install fibre to the property (FTTP), did you ask for this as it is not normally upgraded unless you ask as it will put you into a new contract?

Do you use your landline? If so can you make any calls, even if you don't have a phone you would definitely had a phone number with your old fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and then copper from cabinet to house, has the number been ported over?

If your neighbours don't have any problems is this because they haven't upgraded to FTTP? If they have and it is only you then its most likely a line fault on your line rather than an outage to the area.

There would be no point in trying to go to Sky or any other OR provider at the moment as the same problem will exist until OR come out and fix the problem.

Most times when you change from one OR provider to another they do an active line takeover so if you go from BT to Plusnet you just put an order in with Plusnet who arrange with OR who tell BT etc. this only works when you are keeping the same technology eg FTTC - FTTC or FTTP - FTTP, this will automatically cut off your existing BB as it is basically unplugging and plugging back in with another provider. In your case as they have put a new line in there is every chance that the reason your broadband worked is that it was still on the old broadband which is now been switched off, that (FTTC) will now be unavailable to your address due to FTTP been installed.

I would definitely email Vodafone and open a formal complaint. You can do that here. 

https://complaints.vodafone.co.uk/resource?id=11306244&db=vodafone

Make sure that you are aware that your cooling off period does not start until the service works as you can end up being contracted with something that is giving you a headache every other week. Also let them know that you are having to make other arrangements and that you want them to pay for this. 

Compensation starts two full working days after it is reported, eg report the fault on Friday your first day's compensation will be Wednesday, weekends are not working days. Normally is is paid automatically so you should not get billed for your monthly payments.

As an alternative, and if you don't need a landline the the best available wireless Broadband is usually with EE but not usually cheap.

https://ee.co.uk/broadband/pay-monthly-mobile-broadband-gallery

I work for Sky.
 

Thanks very much mate for your detailed response. 
 

Yep didn’t ask for fibre upgrade I just got an email and text saying it was happening and to be home that day for an Openreach engineer . 
 

I don’t have a landline just Broadband .  I did make a formal complaint and they say I’m due about £180 in compo.
 

As of an hour ago I am back online. Got a call from Vodafone saying fault was “ fixed” and that they had reconfigured my router(?) They asked me to to a factory reset on it which worked at the third time of asking . I have no idea if Openreach did anything at their end though Vodafone maintain they did.

Its all witchcraft to me to be honest

[eindhovendee]

5 minutes ago, Stevie Kirk said:

Thanks very much mate for your detailed response. 
 

Yep didn’t ask for fibre upgrade I just got an email and text saying it was happening and to be home that day for an Openreach engineer . 
 

I don’t have a landline just Broadband .  I did make a formal complaint and they say I’m due about £180 in compo.
 

As of an hour ago I am back online. Got a call from Vodafone saying fault was “ fixed” and that they had reconfigured my router(?) They asked me to to a factory reset on it which worked at the third time of asking . I have no idea if Openreach did anything at their end though Vodafone maintain they did.

Its all witchcraft to me to be honest

Pleased for you, nothing worse than when your provider doesn't seem to be giving you all the information. 

Just as a heads up to everybody regarding their broadband. 

It's coming to the time of year where broadband providers put their prices up. Sky is April the first, others are usually around the same time.

Ofcom regulations are that if your provider puts up their price mid contract (if you have a discounted rate) then they must notify you and give you a "right to exit" the contract without penalty.

Normally you have from notification date to your next bill after increase date to cancel or renegotiate, after this it's assumed that you are happy to carry on in the contract.

Our rules do not prohibit prices may vary terms, but providers are required to give customers at least one month's notice of the price increase and the right to exit their contract without penalty, as they constitute contractual modifications

 

[Molotov]

1 hour ago, Stevie Kirk said:

Thanks very much mate for your detailed response. 
 

Yep didn’t ask for fibre upgrade I just got an email and text saying it was happening and to be home that day for an Openreach engineer . 
 

I don’t have a landline just Broadband .  I did make a formal complaint and they say I’m due about £180 in compo.
 

As of an hour ago I am back online. Got a call from Vodafone saying fault was “ fixed” and that they had reconfigured my router(?) They asked me to to a factory reset on it which worked at the third time of asking . I have no idea if Openreach did anything at their end though Vodafone maintain they did.

Its all witchcraft to me to be honest

We now expect to see you now in the Compo faces thread with an old router, a fibre optic cable and a paper cheque! Make it happen!  

Glad you are sorted. 

[Stevie Kirk]

2 hours ago, Molotov said:

We now expect to see you now in the Compo faces thread with an old router, a fibre optic cable and a paper cheque! Make it happen!  

Glad you are sorted. 

Cheers mate . If it hadn’t worked I would have stuck the router in a pothole and did the pointy picture thing