Damnit.

[baratron]

We should have ADSL, but we do not.

Our ISP has upgraded our account to ADSL. BT have (allegedly) upgraded our phone line to ADSL. We have bought and installed an ADSL modem (which looks like a ray!). But we do not have ADSL connectivity, damnit.

wuzzie is blaming BT - he thinks that the line quality is not good enough for the connection to succeed. And in the meantime I have lost two days' of email.

Comments

[barakta]

yay stingray!!!!

My Nildram ADSL got activated the other day - we'll soon be up north to take advantage of it.... Nice Nildram ADSL.... Nildram scream at BT when they're shit (which is often)

Hope ur ADSL gets sorted soon

Broadband rules, I'll never go back to Dialup!

Hugs
Natalya

[meirion.livejournal.com]

shouldn't bt have checked the line quality before attempting to upgrade it to adsl ? (i believe this to be a two-stage process: the initial check can be done by you from their web-site, and this is able to say definitively "no", "very likely" or "marginal". then if you go ahead with the order for adsl, a bt engineer carries out a more thorough check before actually implementing the switch-over to adsl).

we're classed as "marginal" (close to the limit of distance from the exchange). we'll need to order a second (analog) line anyway, as our current one is isdn and i do *not* want to downgrade that back to analog only to find that we then can't upgrade it to adsl anyway (at that point the bt engineer apparently departs, and it takes about a fortnight to get an appointment to have it re-upgraded back to isdn. nightmare scenario ;-))

hope it gets sorted, anyway (i would have said "soon" but nothing involving telcos ever happens soon, so there's no point wishing for that :-/)

-m-

[baratron.livejournal.com]

It would appear that BT were simply lying when they told PlusNet that our phone line had been upgraded. Tonight we managed to get the connection working almost immediately (Richard had made a small error in a config file, ie. he left out a closing "!).

[lovingboth]

The perils of going with the new 'DIY' ADSL? How do they test the line quality before selling you all this?

When we had the VDSL that HomeChoice use - effectively the old 'we do it' ADSL - we had the full "BT engineer turns up, fits it, discovers the 'whoosh test' (the definitive line quality test) isn't working at the exchange, unfits it and goes away.. comes back, fits it, whooshes it, goes 'it's marginal, but it works', and leaves.." job. Cost either £40 or £80, including modem and HC box.

The upside of which is that it does work, and when it began to have some trouble last year, they had to do well over a thousand quids worth of work in replacing cables outside and rerouting them to get it working again.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I actually have no idea how they test the line quality, but it takes about a week in total from when you first order it until the connection is active. PlusNet recommend that you don't order an ADSL modem until you have the final confirmation that the connection is there. Even then, it was three days after we had received that confirmation until the line actually worked - so BT clearly lie.