![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Great Broadband Outage of 2023
Jun. 28th, 2023 08:38 pmIn mid-May, mid-morning, we were both on Teams calls, and then... everything stopped. It wasn't particularly clear what had stopped: some lights on the router were on, but not the Internet light. As it was just about lunch time, we left it alone in the hope that something out there had crashed and would restart itself.
But no. So we called our ISP, PlusNet. At some point of plugging in and unplugging, I also found we lost the dial tone on the phone line, so we also called BT. From this two things emerged: I could not find any route in the BT IVR that led to the ability to speak to a human being; and PlusNet preferred to deal with the fault by text - they were clearly using the same basic system as BT with a little rewording. However, at least PlusNet could be brought to answer the phone. A fault was diagnosed, an OpenReach engineer was booked.
( The OpenReach saga )
( The router saga )
More calls to PlusNet; more difficulty booking an OpenReach engineer visit. Finally, OpenReach offered a Saturday appointment after rejecting one a couple of days later. The engineer came, tested the line and found it was working very well: finally, after some hours and apparently tricky calls to back-office support, it was diagnosed that an "exchange upgrade" had left a system misconfigured with our port number, resulting in no connection. Once that was addressed, everything was working. It took three weeks to get to this point.
( The lesser broadband outage )
It is fair to say tempers were frayed at various points during all of this. Working from home is now our regular mode, with occasional trips to the office. Costs mount up significantly if you're travelling in to London at peak times - and if you know you will be doing this several times, it saves money to buy a season ticket, compared to buying day by day. Phone tethering is all very well but it's quite limited if you need to do something data-intensive.
Although PlusNet were always pleasant to speak to, they were frequently not effective. The integration with OpenReach seemed to be abysmal. That's one part of BT talking to another. Unfortunately, like many parts of the country, we have no choice about the OpenReach end of that arrangement.
( Bewildering alternatives and the PSTN switch-off )
But no. So we called our ISP, PlusNet. At some point of plugging in and unplugging, I also found we lost the dial tone on the phone line, so we also called BT. From this two things emerged: I could not find any route in the BT IVR that led to the ability to speak to a human being; and PlusNet preferred to deal with the fault by text - they were clearly using the same basic system as BT with a little rewording. However, at least PlusNet could be brought to answer the phone. A fault was diagnosed, an OpenReach engineer was booked.
( The OpenReach saga )
( The router saga )
More calls to PlusNet; more difficulty booking an OpenReach engineer visit. Finally, OpenReach offered a Saturday appointment after rejecting one a couple of days later. The engineer came, tested the line and found it was working very well: finally, after some hours and apparently tricky calls to back-office support, it was diagnosed that an "exchange upgrade" had left a system misconfigured with our port number, resulting in no connection. Once that was addressed, everything was working. It took three weeks to get to this point.
( The lesser broadband outage )
It is fair to say tempers were frayed at various points during all of this. Working from home is now our regular mode, with occasional trips to the office. Costs mount up significantly if you're travelling in to London at peak times - and if you know you will be doing this several times, it saves money to buy a season ticket, compared to buying day by day. Phone tethering is all very well but it's quite limited if you need to do something data-intensive.
Although PlusNet were always pleasant to speak to, they were frequently not effective. The integration with OpenReach seemed to be abysmal. That's one part of BT talking to another. Unfortunately, like many parts of the country, we have no choice about the OpenReach end of that arrangement.
( Bewildering alternatives and the PSTN switch-off )