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BT Wholesale UK Broadband Checker Gets New Lick of Paint
Monday, Apr 20th, 2020 (7:31 am) - Score 10,311
The BTWholesale Broadband Checker service, which is really intended for network operators and ISPs but has always been used by savvy consumers to check the capability of Openreach based broadband lines, has been given a new lick of paint and is now mobile friendly.
The change appears to be mostly cosmetic (see example result below) and also applies to their BTW Performance Tester (broadband speedtest) tool, although we like that the ‘FTTP on Demand’ entry has now been shifted as that often caused confusion with native FTTP deployments. Otherwise we recommend using a UPRN or the Full Address Check if your phone number was supplied by an unbundled provider like TalkTalk, Sky Broadband or Vodafone (BTW may not carry details for those).
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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How do I find out my URPN?
You don’t need it for the checker as a postcode and a house number/name looks up the UPRN behind the scenes anyway. Sometimes there are situations where a UPRN will be required to confirm a property but this is rare.
Hmm.. My browser flags the site as an unsecure web resource!
“We are sorry but the checker is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.”
🙂
Working ok for me.
Ok So I get that message on FF but it works on IE!
I get the error on firefox on one of my machines but not on firefox on another or in any other browser. Very strange.
Get the “unavailable” message on both FF and Edge
Perhaps how heavily we’ve locked down our browsers. My IE is default my FF nailed down for a hurricane.
This is BT’s problem. When you connect to a SSL/TLS server it is supposed to present all certificates needed to get back to a trusted root certificate but they aren’t doing that. They have configured it to only present their certificate. This will result in cryptographic errors on any browser installation that doesn’t know of the intermediary certificate “GeoTrust EV RSA CA 2018”.
The certificate chain is as follows…
1. “DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA” (the root certificate that you should already have)
2. “GeoTrust EV RSA CA 2018” (the intermediary certificate that actually signed the BT certificate)
3. “CN=www.dslchecker.bt.com” (the actual certificate they are using and the only certificate they are presenting to connecting clients)
They need to concatenate the intermediary certificate and their certificate so that clients that are unaware of the intermediate certificate can establish a chain of trust to the root.
For more have a look at the report https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com
@1rY
Good catch
Interestingly the new one returns a json object containing the postcode in response to a line number enquiry. The client-side captcha is an interesting choice too. It’s also now a complete pain if you want to poll every few days to check for when new services become available to order (e.g. if you’re waiting for FTTP or g.fast!)
“curl | jq” FTW, if the captcha is just in JavaScript!
This is a waste of time – we have FTTP via Zen, based on Openreach and BT Wholesale, but I can’t look up details as I don’t have a phone line or a UPRN or an Access Line ID other than filling in address details.
What is the default ID for an FTTP connection and should Zen have given that to me?
You do a check on the full address (Gold Address KEY/ NAD) instead.
You don’t need a telephone number.
Everyone has a UPRN (probably) – that’s sorted by Ordnance Survey. However, I believe the UPRN database is under license from OS so you can’t find this easily.
So do a check on your postcode, then select your address, and then you should see your results.
“we like that the ‘FTTP on Demand’ entry has now been shifted”
As far as I can see, it appears to be in the same place as before:
Featured Products
VDSL Range A (Clean)
VDSL Range B (Impacted)
Featured Products
FTTP on Demand
ADSL Products
…
Underneath the table it still says “FTTP is not available.”
Sounds like they tweaked it to only show in the FTTC but not native FTTP areas in order to avoid confusion.
Do you have any idea what reason codes Z and G mean on the checker?
Doesn’t work for me.
The connection has timed out
The server at http://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com is taking too long to respond.
The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer’s network connection.
If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.
Orders on the line for example migration from ADSL to FTTC change of ISP are no longer shown on that site
Does the checker use actual line length or does it as as the crow flies when giving speed estimates? My line is given estimated speeds of up to 43mbps but the BT speed checker indicates my maximum speed is 20.6mbps. My actual line length is 1.1km but as the crow flies the distance is 0.4km.