Sponsored Links

Help needed with Openreach Issue

What does the Openreach fibre checker say?

Says it is available.

Great news. Superfast Fibre (FTTC) is available at your address.

Download speeds of up to 80Mbps

FTTC or Fibre to the Cabinet is available to millions of UK homes and businesses. Your speed will depend on things like how close you are to the cabinet. Your broadband provider will tell you what speed you can expect to receive when you place an order.
 
I'll give Openreach a nudge and see if we can get something moving.

Thanks, it's frustrating, after the update last week when they said a routing issue was found it has pretty much ground to a halt again and that order since closed down by OR.
 
Openreach's response.

We’ve had another look into this one. From a recent engineering visit it was advised that the line didn’t physically go into the cabinet (PCP1) so we couldn’t complete the installation of FTTC.

We’ve checked our records and there shouldn’t be any reason why Sky can’t place an order. As soon as the order is placed, we will need to arrange an engineering visit to check whether it is possible to divert the pair into the PCP to get the customer up and running on FTTC.

As soon as we get the order from Sky – we’ll get an engineer on site to divert a pair into the PCP.

So it sounds like Sky's front-line support are a bit inept.
 
So effectively they're saying it's an exchange only line?

I'm actually not dealing with the front end team any more, the customer priority team who apparently are a high level complaints team are dealing with it because I got fed up with the uselessness of the first line guys.

Apparently they then need to liaise with a order recovery team that are not customer facing, who actually make the orders who can do call backs but cannot be contacted myself.

I must have called Sky about 15 times in the last couple of weeks but it looks like they need to be called again and for me not to agree to a call back because it's not getting anywhere.

Does anyone know of any other escalation buttons to press at Sky?
 
Sky are still unable to place an order and now it seems that the information on the Sky database has gone missing or become corrupted and they normally use such system rather than directly placing the order on Openreach system so that has to be escalated to another part of Sky.

Sky have said they cannot place the order because their system does not allow them to place orders for products which are not yet available at the address

Chicken and egg situation.
 
Last edited:
I'll bump that back to Openreach, but both sides seem to be doing a pretty poor job of resolving this.
 
Sponsored Links
That's my frustration, this is being handled badly by everyone, nobody is focused on a solution, just passing the issue backwards and forwards with each other and the communication between the parties seems pretty terrible.

High level complaints at Openreach have now been looped into this but they have not been especially helpful either thus far. Their first response was essentially that there is no service because no order was placed and that is all there is to it, avoiding discussing anything about why the previous orders failed and why constantly things have to be re-ordered rather than resolved.

What frustrates me is the update I had last week from OR was that they were working on a routing issue. This week it's that they need another order to work on the routing issue.. Why did they say they were working on it and then stop and say they needed another order to start working on it.
 
Sky have updated me following an investigation and an extensive internal meeting about the situation which reviewed all orders and communication between all parts of Sky and Openreach.

I has been confirmed that Openreach have very recently changed the line status on the live system to Exchange Only and this is a result of a failed network rearrangement which missed out the lines in question which has prevented Sky from placing a new order for the service which resulted in the database being incorrect. This update has not yet been pushed to the Openreach and BT Wholesale checkers as it was very recent which is why they still show Cabinet 1.

Sky have also stated that the communications from Openreach's high level complaints department have left a lot to be desired and have reported that they have been both evasive and unhelpful and there has been a high level of contradiction from Openreach the whole way through. He also read some of the communications that they had received from Openreach out to me which I will not post here, but suffice to say it paints OR in a very poor light.

The Sky position is currently that they are unable to progress this further until Openreach connect the line to the cabinet and fix their mistakes from all those years ago. Until then they are snookered. He said he's come across this before andthere's no way they're going to dig the road up for one person, but since they said they would do it, then I need to make sure I do everything in my power to force them to follow through on that.

It's also highly likely that the line status was changed around the same time that the previous order was closed down for a reason that is still not clear. I'm sure having an open order with a routing problem gives the ISP more leverage than an ISP not being able to place an order because FTTC is not available, so you can make your own minds up about why it happened that way.

The only avenue now is to go back through Openreach high level complaints and since they offered to do the work, force them to do it no matter what it takes, because this is the only way things will progress.
 
I've expressed that we may write an article about this, so keeping a close eye on things. Openreach told me they're currently trying to find a better solution, but that was a few hours before your 6:40pm update above.
 
Thanks Mark, grateful for your help with this!

The funny thing is a check has been done on all of my neighbours and they are still all showing as connected to Cabinet 1 on the live system (not the public one) it's just my own line that has changed to exchange only.

I've also had the distances from exchange looked at for the next 5 houses down from mine and there's something weird there, they all show 1km, even next door as part of this semi-detached house, whilst here, on my side of the wall, shows 700m which clearly is not right

You would imagine 300m extra distance for the house next door would probably be explained by a diversion to the cabinet., which would show the distance records are right, if not the cabinet ones, but that itself should be a red flag for Openreach that something isn't right.
 
It shouldn’t need the road digging up, just access to box that feeds the cables to the cabinets. It may need traffic management which may cause you a few delays whilst that gets authorised by your local council/highways.
 
Sponsored Links
The copper box is literally the other side of the single lane each direction road road to the fibre box, and you can even see where the cables run underground.


Just a question now of getting OR to do it which is the current stumbling block but hopefully Mark's helpful intervention will bear some fruit in this regard.
 
Currently your circuit doesn't have a network addressing key, which is why Sky can't place an order. Openreach say they have an engineer going out early this week to confirm the correct routing for the line, which will hopefully resolve it.
 
There's a couple of engineers down the cabinet for the last 45 minutes or so, so I wonder if they are doing something.

By network addressing key are we talking about a NAD key? I have one for the address as Sky have confirmed they have one. Will PM you it.
 
My address is a gold address, I believe they come from Openreach's own records and the silver ones come from Royal Mail?

However whilst the address is right, the Royal Mail postcode checker is pointing to the wrong place, it's pointing to the other side of an intersection from what it actually is.

Doesn't seem any easy way to point that out on the form though, ad the address itself is correct. You can't plot it in right place and say confirm etc
 
Openreach have had three vans here for the last three hours or so and have had the panel in the ground open for a good while and sync has been coming and going a lot for periods of up to 45 minutes at a time.

Hopefully they are doing something, but I've had no contact from them to suggest what is happening so I had to log a line fault, just in case since supposed to be taking part in an important meeting via videocall.
 
Well there's been engineers going backwards and forwards since 9.00am and as of 4.00pm once again they're opening the box up down my road for the third time of the day. It seems they are doing something, but I have no idea what as no communication from Openreach to anyone else.

In the last 7 hours I've had about 45 minutes sync on my ADSL2 and a working phone line and the rest of the time no sync and a completely dead phone line. I've had the connection drop out over 30 times from anywhere between a few minutes to over an hour and it's exceptionally frustrating and impossible to work from home.

They haven't told Sky what they are doing and haven't told me despite trying to find out. I'll be glad if they are fixing it, but some communication would be really nice so I could have planned around it with my boss. So in the absence of anything else, Sky have logged a PSTN fault in the hope it might provide some answers.

The saga continues....
 
Update.

Engineer has now come to the door and said they've spent the entire day sorting out the circuits, routing and everything else for that matter and line now goes through the cabinet following a fair bit of work.

Sky are unable to place an order still though, because of the PSTN fault that was logged earlier, so now we have to get that closed down and hopefully a new order can be placed.

I've also heard back from High Level Complaints, who have assigned my case to a new case manager who has apologies for today's issues and has said an update is being issued to Sky shortly.

Now lets see how things move....
 
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £24.00
132Mbps
Gift: None
Shell Energy UK ISP Logo
Shell Energy £26.99
109Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £27.99
145Mbps
Gift: None
Zen Internet UK ISP Logo
Zen Internet £28.00 - 35.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £15.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
YouFibre UK ISP Logo
YouFibre £19.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £21.00
150Mbps
Gift: £25 Love2Shop Card
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All

Helpful ISP Guides and Tips

Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (5473)
  2. BT (3505)
  3. Politics (2525)
  4. Openreach (2291)
  5. Business (2251)
  6. Building Digital UK (2234)
  7. FTTC (2041)
  8. Mobile Broadband (1961)
  9. Statistics (1780)
  10. 4G (1654)
  11. Virgin Media (1608)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1451)
  13. Fibre Optic (1392)
  14. Wireless Internet (1386)
  15. FTTH (1381)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules