NTL is still the same despite the name change

[mmm]

Power cut in area this afternoon.

Broadband down (and still down) - telephone was also down for a while (no dial tone) - now back.

A neighbour a couple of hundred yards away (same road name, different post code, different green box) has called to report. There is no network fault must your wireless router, eventually has to book a technician.

I call (when ntl phone returns) manage to get someone to actually understand that no need to do anything to my PCs or wireless router - the ntl 250 sync light is just flashing. At least I don't use my Terayon TJ210 any more they never understood the same with "cable light".

There are apparently no known faults in the area (= we haven't got a clue our monitoring systems are rubbish?), no record of my neighbour also calling have to book a technician. Maybe the technician will put 2 and 2 together and report it to the network team... Maybe its still my old fault of having an address which also exists in a different postcode 15 miles away...

This has happened many times before - there's a network box somewhere needing resetting - also happens after lightning/ electrical storms).

[BenMcr]

It's not the frontline agents that identify area faults

They do diagnostics and book as appropriate. The system they have will advise them when an area fault has been found.

Until then they are doing their jobs correctly by following the diagonostics

Oh, and giving out any information about someone else's account without their permission breaks the Data Protection Act

[mmm]

The trouble is ntl used to have engineers (with welsh accents) with access to systems that worked, the poor guy the other side of the world clearly didn't - and either I had to say no problem or book a technician - crazy!. There is no data protection issue - I told him my neighbour has same problem - he claimed no record of any similar problem, so he either lied or more likely crap systems!. We both have a technician booked for the same time slot this morning so he'll probably phone up, as before, and say he has referred it back to "networks" as clearly not a customer install issue. Based on history quite likely ex-ntl systems do not know our houses are on same street...

Note this has happened a couple of times a year for the past 8 years - there's probably only a couple of us left with cable (which is fine when it works - nightmare when you have to contact customer services).

Following other threads - it is clear the boxes we are connected through are not UPS protected and need to be manually reset on power supply glitches!

---------- Post added at 12:02 ---------- Previous post was at 10:19 ----------

Update:

Technician did not show - why not use the ntl phone or the mobile number I had to give? Neighbour was told the technician cancelled because fault was fixed (joke?). I had another 15 minutes explaining the problem - this one not as smart as the last one - I am not going to power cycle my computer when the modem is not synching, and pulling out the power and unscrewing the white coax is really going to help isn't it!. Apparently there is now an accepted network fault and I have to call back if not fixed by the evening. So does it appear on ...

http://status-cable.virginmedia.com/vmstatus/summary.do

No! Where is the Telewest version that actually looked useful...

[mmm]

Tue Mar 17 14:43:38 2009 Tue Mar 17 14:43:38 2009 Information (7) CableModem SNMP configure complete
Time Not Established Time Not Established Information (7) IP init completed ok

Finally came back after a day - see that 4 letter acronym SNMP, that's a technology yo can use to monitor all your devices on the network!