Known fault in Ipswich area - can anyone help?

[Rich153]

I am in Ipswich , I used to live in ip3 now living in ip2 and have been with ntl/virgin for 18 month's + on 4mb and apart from the outage on the 12th march have never had a speed problem apart from a couple of times I've been stm's.
In fact the speed test's I have run since the 12th have shown speed's above 4mb.

[mrk2y]

isnt this the upgrade, from 4mb to 10mb ?
looking at the speed, you are getting faster speeds than I am (currenty on BT Broadband) - contracts ends soon
(upto 8MB)


I have been watching this thread, to decide if I should wait, and get cable or go to another ADSL+ provider, I think I will take the pludge !

[Rich153]

the 4-10mb upgrade is still TBC for Ipswich. http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html.../schedule.html

[BeckyD]

OK, the engineer has just been and spent over half an hour with us. Basically, he believes there is definitely a network fault as he has attended several calls this morning in our area (IP1) with exactly the same problem. However, the people he reports to are still blaming the individual users and refusing to take responsibility!

While he was here, he did witness the cutouts and intermittent speeds, so it appears the problem isn't exclusive to evenings and nights (I and my husband work late/night shifts, so usually have no idea what performance is like in the morning). We ran the computer in safe mode, and the engineer tried downloading a 500Mb file from VM's servers which varied wildly between speeds of 40k and 600k.

The only thing he was allowed to do for us was swap out the modem and power adaptor, which he felt was pointless but had no choice. He told us he would be placing a note on our account stating that, in his opinion, there is an area fault and that we should contact TS as soon as it happens again. That will probably be this afternoon, as it's already cut out once more already.

It's pretty appalling that even the engineer's own advice is being ignored. Unfortunately, that leaves myself and other customers having issues between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to turn. tt1 - I wish you better luck tomorrow.

Rich - glad to hear you're having a more reliable service. Interesting that you're getting higher than expected speeds, does the modem say you're on the 4Mb tier?

[BeckyD]

Update: Called TS again, during the phone call the connection went up and down like a yo-yo as usual. Eventually, the chap decided he was going to speak to a superior and call us back.

About 20 mins later, another engineer arrived. Apparantly, this was one of the guys who dealt with the original fault and he was still investigating problems in the area. It seems that the incident on the 12th was caused by a power outage to VM equipment (Tesco Copdock area). Although power was restored later that night, it led to a configuration issue which took nearly a fortnight to resolve.

Around that time, VM engineers installed a piece of hardware which it turns out is clashing with existing hardware. This is apparantly what's been causing the cutouts and varying speeds. The conflicting hardware was being removed while our engineer was doing tests on our line and so far *touch wood* I'm getting about 10Mb pretty consistently.

Here's something funny - as my husband was answering the door to the engineer, a neighbour walked by and asked "Are you here to sort out the internet? It's been all over the place lately." So looks like our immediate neighbours have noticed the abysmal service too!

[tt1]

Thanks and well done LadyM!

Armed with this info I will be sure to give the guy some s*** tomorrow if he tries a fob-off

Unless there is a miracle and they do remove and fix it today

I'd love an update tonight LadyM if you can - I will do the same

If all goes well I may be able to cancel the visit tomorrow

---------- Post added at 18:10 ---------- Previous post was at 16:22 ----------

An update - as at 6:09pm the service is absolutely unusable

That engineer had better have earplugs tomorrow....

[mrk2y]

I hope all the problems get resolved, I am having XL BB installed next thursday! I am in IP4 so HOPEFULLY no such problems, but hope you get the issues resolved soon.

[sollp]

Originally Posted by tt1

Thanks and well done LadyM!

Armed with this info I will be sure to give the guy some s*** tomorrow if he tries a fob-off

Unless there is a miracle and they do remove and fix it today

I'd love an update tonight LadyM if you can - I will do the same

If all goes well I may be able to cancel the visit tomorrow

---------- Post added at 18:10 ---------- Previous post was at 16:22 ----------

An update - as at 6:09pm the service is absolutely unusable

That engineer had better have earplugs tomorrow....

Hi, can you PM me the road you are in, don't have to give a number. Also the Service Tech who will visit you tommorow is there to fix the fault within his limits/boundary's, So giving him an earful is totally unfair and unescesary and will not help. Give him the information, without exagerating either, and hopefully you might have a fault within your installlation in the house that is specific to you and he will be able to fix it there an then.

Ladyminion, how is the Broadband now?

[BeckyD]

tt1 and sollp - I'm afraid it's bad news from me as well. Speed is intermittent once again and the cutouts are still occuring. To top it off, the modem itself failed to boot about 20 mins ago and has only just started working again. Unfortunately, I have a busy evening planned and can't keep phoning TS, but I will do so later if I can.

One thing I will say is please don't give the engineer any grief, I've actually found them to be stellar guys. They agreed with me all the way that the problem is within the network, but nobody wants to listen to them either. I'm sure when yours visits tomorrow, he/she won't make any attempt to fob you off. I can only hope that enough people contact TS and whoever is in charge starts taking things seriously because this really is getting beyond a joke.

I will update later if I have any news, if not then good luck tomorrow tt1.

[tt1]

- Re Engineer
I'll go easy on him as I agree in the past they are OK guys whose hands are tied
Why those muppets in India are sending him anyway is a mystery but I suppose
they need to build up a picture of problem calls and investigate them


As for "might have a fault within your installlation in the house that is specific to you" ???
I'll pass on a comment on that one - I think the thread speaks for itself though

Also tonight is def the worst so far given the glimmer of hope today with the update from those engineers earlier.If they have changed something again - they've made it worse!

Ah well early night as a result - will update tomorrow evening following my engineer visit

[Rich153]

Ladyminion modem con fig is what it has always been for 4mb but this extra speed I am getting might be something to-do with the area fault.

[peanut]

The IP2 area was a bit off yesterday but seemed fine today. I'm on 20mb, and it's pretty much like the graph shows attached 24/7.

[BeckyD]

I spoke to TS again after getting home about 4am. I'm afraid this time the chap was quite argumentative and insisted that it was either my (non-existant!) firewall or that I must have malware on my system. I explained the events of the day and the opinion of the engineers I had spoken to over and over until I was blue in the face, but he would not listen.

When I told him the problem is evident on all 3 of my PCs, he then asked me to connect one of the others to the modem and go through the usual checks with him. Unfortunately, I cannot do this as the other two machines are in a different room and can only connect through my wireless router, which will obviously get blamed instead. I really feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall, TS are doing all their utmost to avoid taking any responsibility for this problem.

I will try again tomorrow. Failing that, I really am thinking of throwing in the towel and paying BT to fit me a line so I can switch ISPs.

[tt1]

Originally Posted by LadyMinion

I will try again tomorrow. Failing that, I really am thinking of throwing in the towel and paying BT to fit me a line so I can switch ISPs.

At the very least if nothing seems to improve or get done in the next week I will firstly switch to 4M as I refuse to pay a premium for a service thats not up to it (20M) until such a time that I am confident that its worth switching back to 20M

As for another ISP - well I have no BT lines at present so it would be hassle and I believe BT may be no better (significantly slower for sure)


Actually today I am working from home (due to the planned engineer visit later today). I will be seeing if the service is better during the day as a result

Report back tonight when engineer has called although everything that you have reported back LadyM doesnt fill me with too much hope

---------- Post added at 08:45 ---------- Previous post was at 08:42 ----------

The other thing I will add to a couple of people who have commented on this thread - its not a case of getting 20M its the fact that the service is slow, hangs, stops and is all over the place. Whilst I could run a speed test and get a good speed - that speed test is only as good as the 30seconds it takes to run it

Its no indication of the problem here - a continuous ping would be more accurate

I should know I work in IT !!

[tt1]

Update
Its just as bad during the day it seems