Broadband and internet

[VERTEX]

Our company is trialing home working for staff based in the North of Scotland. If successful it will bring much needed employment opportunities to small communities in the area. It would also be additional business for BT.

We have 12 staff in the Trial. All using BT Business Broadband ADSL lines. One of the homeworkers has problems with variable line speed which basically impacts her productivity and is affecting the outcome of the trial.

The home has ADSL filters fitted, advice from the  BT website has been followed  to eliminate sources of interference. All the IT kit  in the home has been replaced\checked. I have spoken to various BT helpdesks who each do a point in time speedcheck and declare it it is fine. The problem seems to lie in the huge variation of speed that occurs. As fast as 7 MB some days to negligible the next. 

I cannot get any traction with any of the helpdesks and account staff I have spoken to. The home has a private BT ADSL line that is working fine. The  business line has displayed these issues since installation in Nov 2009.    

It would be shame for the pilot to fail because of this issue but I cannot get BT ( after approx 15 phone calls ) to raise a special fault.

Does anybody have any advice on how to engage BT at a higher technical level please ?

Thanks!     

[spank]

Hi there,

If you go to http://speedtester.bt.com and enter the telephone number you can check the line speed.  This will only work every 3 hours so I would suggest to run tests over a couple of days.  These tests are logged and can be used during the fault process.

However it really depends on what type of negligable speed you are talking about.  The speedtest will show you the range of speeds available for your connection and the minimum sopeed before wholesale will accept it as a fault, which is usually 600kbps.

An 8mb line can fluctuate from 8mb right down to 1mb during the course of the day, this is normal.  Some lines have better consistency, it really depends on who is sharing the line with you and what they are doing.  Bear in mind a broadband line is shared with 20 other users and if they are all heavy users then your line will display a very inconsistent speed.

Thanks

[VERTEX]

Good Morning!

Thanks very much for the response. Some very useful information in there.

We have a record of line speed checks using the Speedtest link. It actually gets below 600 KPBS at times.

I can accept that if the line has limitations then the trial would not be a success, but I would at least like to get a second level opinion or to be told officially that this is as good as it gets.  (As per your response). All we have been told so far is  'the line is fine'.

MOST of the  BT staff have I have spoken to are helpful but are unable to step outside the boundaries of the scripts that they have to use.

Regards

[spank]

Hi there,

If it's going below 600 then it is likely a fault.  Technical should be able to book this off to wholesale for you, they can run a test which shows all the speedtests you have done.

Once it is raised I would suggest you call in after an hour or so to make sure it has been successfull.  When tech can confirm there is a wholesale reference you can call in every day instead.  If you wait for tech to call you it can take 2 days but there is usually an update sooner.

After 48 hours the helpdesk has the ability to escalate the case for you.

Once you have a fault raised with tech you can use 0800 121 8951 instead, they can update you of it's progress.

Slow speed can be caused by a multitude of things on the line and since you are getting some form of service you may be in for a struggle getting it improved, but if you persavere it should pay off.

Thanks

[VERTEX]

Hi,

Will give this a try.

Thanks

Dave