Broadband virtually dead in BH area

[seasick]

Hmm... Is it just me or has broadband been up and down like er... something that goes up and down very quickly (?) in the Bournemouth area for the past four or five days?

If I get up the basic diags on my STB (page up, page down, blue) I'm getting error reports such as 'Periodic ranging fails' and 'Ranging fails', etc. I presume this means that a big chunk of upstream equipment is dead/dying and NTL simply haven't got around to sorting it out yet.

I phoned NTL last Thursday and they said there was a problem, but I'm just wondering if anyone else is affected / has any info.

[funkyhitman]

Hi there, I'm living in the BH9 area and have had intermittent broadband connection drops for the past week. It's been much worse the past few days mainly in the evening from around 5:30 - 10:30. I lose the connection every 5-10 mins for about 3-5 mins.

I spoke to tech support today and they informed me that a few other people in the area have reported similar issues, thus have now agreed to get a network engineer out to take a look at the setup. I guess he'll look at the green box thingy in the street. I don't know how many of these boxes there are and if you live near me but I was told the problem should be fixed in the next few days. I was told to ring back at the weekend if it is not fixed by then.

It seems that the network bandwidth is suffering from high internet usage and it makes sense in the evening as people are coming home from work and using the internet.

Regards,
Iain.

[Graham M]

Im in BH14 and ive found my broadband SPEED has been up and down a bit today, i dont think its dropped totally since noone has timed out on my IRC server.

[steve_smith]

Interesting to read this thread.

I'm in BH12 postcode. Recently got fed up with 5 months of total lack of action regarding packet loss and general upstream problems on my cable modem connection. Nobody treated the problem seriously, probably because it generally only affected upload. In fact, what made me decide to close the account was when I was more or less told that the quality of the connection I had was probably the best NTL could deliver. Quite ridiculous when for the first 12 months of being a customer, it worked perfectly with zero packet loss and good ping times. Some piece of equipment or cable had obviously degraded, or they had got greedy and shoved too many customers on to an overloaded network segment. I gave them enough information to suggest the problem was local to my street (since I know an NTL customer in the next road to us who had and still has no problems with their connection), but again I don't believe that was followed up.

What I did find out over the months of various NTL engineers calling to the house was that NTL's upstream is crap (I think that was more or less a quote) and that BH postcodes, and especially the particular segment of the network in which BH12 and some other BH postcodes lie has been plagued with problems.

Now on ADSL, which although on paper is slightly slower in the download department (512k as opposed to 750k), feels much faster and has thus far been 100% reliable. If I choose to, I can upgrade it to 1Mbit, but haven't felt the need yet.

Its very sad, because until May of this year, I was completely happy with NTL. I guess it goes to prove what people say about only being able to judge the true quality of a provider by the way they deal with a customers problem.

Can only advise those who are having problems in our area to consider switching to ADSL if you can get it. You might save yourselves 5 months of calling tech. support once or twice a week and paying for a service that doesn't work properly.

Steve.

[funkyhitman]

Crumbs. I'd love to switch to adsl but unfortunately I was told by BT that I would have to pay £75 to get my phone line connected! And the overall cost would be much higher than what NTL currently offer. I'm a student so when an NTL flier came through the door offering free connection and modem and £25 per month I was very happy. Of course like everything it is too good to be true. I really hope they do fix the problem in this area like the nice man on the phone said. But I have a bad feeling nothing is going to change. Oh well only time will tell!

Steve, you say you were on the phone to tech support constantly whilst you were with NTL, but did they ever say they would fix the problem?

Ah terrific, my connection has just dropped again whilst I've been writing this post! Ridiculous!! Gonna have to wait another 3 mins before I can send it.

Well, I wouldn't be surprised Steve, if the problem in this area is due to NTL being "greedy and shoved too many customers on to an overloaded network segment" because I lose my connection mostly when it is likely many people are returning home and logging on......and BAM it overloads until 10:30 when people start logging off and going to bed or whatever.

Well my connection is now back, godspeed everyone and I hope this problem is sorted!

Iain.

[steve_smith]

Originally Posted by funkyhitman

Crumbs. I'd love to switch to adsl but unfortunately I was told by BT that I would have to pay £75 to get my phone line connected!

If you already have a BT line box somewhere in your house, then they sometimes to the reconnection for free. We got ours reconnected for nothing. But I do take your point, it does initially cost more (paying activation fees, buying a modem/router).

Originally Posted by funkyhitman

Steve, you say you were on the phone to tech support constantly whilst you were with NTL, but did they ever say they would fix the problem?

Well no, not really. Most of the issues are supposed to be down to noise/interference on the network. This apparently can be down to a customer having a faulty set top box, or a bodged cable connection in their house (seems to be one of the problems with cable, one customer who tries to rewire their coax cable can cause problems for all the other customers in their area). However, they went over my area with a fine tooth comb and couldn't find anything wrong. My connecton was no better. The only time it worked perfectly in the last 5 months was when the engineer was sat two doors up the road playing in the green cabinet. However, they couldn't explain why that was, and to my knowledge didn't come back to try and work out why.

I really do hope they sort it out, because my limit on ADSL is 1Mbit (due to the distance from the exchange). In the future I guess the internet is going to demand more than 1Mbit (in the same way we used to think 56k was fast). NTL might be the only the provider in this area who can offer > 1Mbit. Seems they have a hell of a lot of hard work to do first though...

All the best,

Steve.

[Gooch]

Can't say I blame you Steve for switching over to ADSL. My connection is still up and down. I'm seriously thinking of doing the same. I've seen a fairly decent deal with PlusNet. 1mb, no cap, £29.99 a month.....Very tempting!

[timetraveller]

I've also been complaining of poor connections (BH8 area) both with the TV and BB. The TV channels are always disappearing on both my STBs and a reboot gets them up and running although I have now given up organising "My Favourites" as they are always lost and are so long winded to keep setting up continuously. However, the problem is made worse by the fact that I connct via STB and that means that when the TV goes down and the box needs rebooting the BB gets cut off and when the BB goes down if my son is in the middle of watching a footie match he makes me wait 'til half time.
The trouble in the Bournemouth area has been particularly bad for the last two weeks and sometimes a connection after 6pm will last 5 mins or so and then you might as well give up until 10.30 or so.
I have been on the 'phone to tech support and depending on who you get to speak to you might get three or four different answers to the same question.
I have to admit that I feel the support is generally getting better and if you persevere you might get a result.
After my last complaint I have an engineer calling on Monday and hopefully he will split my BB and TV services so I use a modem and that way when I next lose a connection, either TV or BB only one service will suffer.
Tony

ps. I did receive a 'phone call today at work from NTL saying that they were checking to see if my problems had been resolved as they had carried out repairs in the area and did I still need an engineer to call.
Full marks to them for that as if it had then my slot could have helped some other poor Joe to bee seen earlier. Sadly I had to reply in the negative so sorry if you are that poor Joe, you won't be bumped up this time.

[Plonking]

i'm in the BH12 area... and its been pretty lame for the past week or so.

up and down, back and forth, the connection has been very unstable. don't know what the deal is

good to see so many bournemouth locals on this site how about a mini-gathering next time the net dies for us? it won't be the same, but we could get our pcs together and have a lan, install ipb and chat on a mini-nthellworld?

P

[timetraveller]

Hi Plonking
Good idea, next time NTL goes down I'll send you an email. lol
You're right, it is good to see more BH NTLers on the site and without wanting to sound nasty it is also good to see that they have problems, it gives you a sense of cameraderie and also prevents you tearing your hair out
trying to solve a problem with your computer which isn't there. (Not very clear explanation but I hope you catch my drift).
ps. The picture isn't of me either.

[Plonking]

lol!

I've kinda got used to my connection being odd lately. It's werid becuase, once it goes slow, a simple power cycle on my modem will often get my connection back to dead quick again!

When this frist started to happen (I think it's all related to the problems they have in southampton) it would have been nice to be warned about it, but there you go! It took a phone call to tech support and their reading off a list of messed up areas before I realised there was essentially nothing I could do about the problems!

I'm finding that the connection totally dies every night around 11ish and doesn't come back til about 8 the next morning. I wonder what the chances are of demanding some of our money back, seeing as we haven't been getting internet access 24/7 ....... its more like 15/7 !

Anyways I agree its good others have the same trouble, as at least it means it's not my fault!

P

[funkyhitman]

Well on friday my connection was a lot better. It did not drop til 6:50pm and it came back on after about 2-3 mins and stayed on for aboout 20 mins each time and after about 10pm connection stayed on completely. I thought yay NTL are doing something! But then yesterday eve (saturday) it was much worse, back to how it used to be starting about 5:30pm and dropping every 5-10 mins blah blah.

It is just so infuriating. NTL told me to ring back if the problem still persists so I guess I will.

Plonking, you say that you think we are having these outages due to the ongoing Southampton issues...is this your theory or has NTL told you that it is likely?

Cheers,
Iain.

[Hunt0r]

i live in the BH6 area and the problem is just the same, what i hate is there has been a problem with southampton since april and nothing has been repaired and new customers have been allowed to sign up and create more problems http://www.ntl-isp.ntl.com/ServiceStatus/ god dont u just love NTL

[funkyhitman]

Originally Posted by Hunt0r

god dont u just love NTL

Yes it is crazy this Southampton issue has been going on for months...ahhh I just don't know what to do or say anymore.

[funkyhitman]

Posted by m0pey at http://forums.ntlhell.co.uk/index.ph...9&st=0&p=68234&

'I phoned them today about 3 and they said that there was an engineer at the box at the time, he'd been there since 9:20 this morning. I'm hoping this means that it'll be fixed later today. It has been better over the last few hours compared to normally at this time of day.
Fingers crossed...'