BTbroadband Help

[coolTrader]

Hi,
I am having serious problems with my bt connections dropping. I have been down graded from 2mb to 512k still getting the same problems.

Annoying part is that it drops within certain hours. In the morning between 7am and 11am (Trading hours!) Then in the evening it is equally bad. Makes me wonder why I am paying for the service. I have had several engineers out , last one that came out came outside the appointment hence did not experience the disconnections.
The engineers went as far as saying "your connection speed, quality ... is very good" and I may have to pay for the call out! I was not to bothered as during the disconnections I have called bt and they have tested and seen several times that this is happening.

Question. Has anyone experienced this? To move to another broadband service provider, I am not sure if this will sort the problem, But if you have suggestions on this I will welcome them..

I use netgear.. It is not a problem with the modem as I also test it with the bt modem when this happens.

Thanks

 

[Lightning McQueen]

Hi coolTrader
I am no expert on this but it sounds like a problem with over subscribed lines. it used to happen a lot in the late nineties on dialup connections dropping many times if i recall correctly, more so after 6 pm as everyone piled online on cheaper rate phone charges.
changing provider may solve your problem but they may use the same BT infrastructure so not solving the issue.
have you a local cable operator my cable broadband although not fast (512k) is very reliable.
maybe somebody more techy will post better help for you

Don

 

[jimbo57]

Hi,

I had a 2Mb BT connection that kept dropping the evening (I traded US markets so this was a problem)- the engineer came out and told me the problem was to do with the moon and the length of the line (I didnt go any further!). We slowed the connection speed to 1MB and no problems since, and I run a seamless wireless network around the house and office..

Now heres the rub, I live in an isolated farmhouse, the nearest exchange is about 2 miles away. I note you are in London. so I cant imagine the line length is anything near what I use, therefore it sounds to me like the problem is something else. It may be a peoblem with the cable quality BT have used locally - you should ask them this question- I only found out about this aspect when I has the problem last year and BT said they were using their top grade cable which implies they don't always use this. Given the times you are having line drop, i.e peak hours, it may be that BT cable needs to be reinforced, ie there is not enough bandwith available at peak times

Sry can't help more, but I did find out that by being continually on their case, they do sort thibngs out eventually

 

[Bigbusiness]

BT are only required to provide a service that works at 28.8Kbps, Dialup. It is a shame but I know people who have been refused broadband because it would cost too much to sort out their line. From what I gather, BT are willing to spend up to £1,000 to fix problems but then refuse to do anything.

These sites might be of use:-

http://www.btsuck.org/
http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/

 

[newstart]

I had a problem with my bt broadband connection last year because an engineer had been working on a local terminal point in the street near me I know I watched him working, bt swore blind that he hadn't
It only gave me a connection when I picked up the phone, so I told bt this and used their freephone number to get a connection which I told them I was doing, they soon fixed it

 

[Charlton]

Hi,
I am having serious problems with my bt connections dropping. I have been down graded from 2mb to 512k still getting the same problems.

Annoying part is that it drops within certain hours. In the morning between 7am and 11am (Trading hours!) Then in the evening it is equally bad. Makes me wonder why I am paying for the service. I have had several engineers out , last one that came out came outside the appointment hence did not experience the disconnections.
The engineers went as far as saying "your connection speed, quality ... is very good" and I may have to pay for the call out! I was not to bothered as during the disconnections I have called bt and they have tested and seen several times that this is happening.

Question. Has anyone experienced this? To move to another broadband service provider, I am not sure if this will sort the problem, But if you have suggestions on this I will welcome them..

I use netgear.. It is not a problem with the modem as I also test it with the bt modem when this happens.

Thanks

I don't know if this will be of direct help to you, but it might help others with similar problems. I have BT HomeHub, thus a wireless modem and network. I was experiencing drop-out at times. It seemed that my wireless network was fine, I could see the modem and indeed connect ot it, but not the internet. Some calls to BT established there was nothing wrong with the line.

Every time I phoned BT they went through the usual checklist - I knew it by heart eventually ! BBC.CO.UK must have very false statistics for their site visit counts judging by the number of times I was asked to ping their site.

Anyway eventually a very helpful BT support person was given remote access to my pc by me. You can watch their every move and intervene if you do not like where they are going by the way. She eventually altered the settings using the BT Homehub manager

under Advanced > Home Network > Interfaces > Local Network (then click on your wireless LAN) then click on configure. She changed the channel number from 1 to 11 and this had the miraculous effect of putting everything right - something about signal strength

Now your problem may be totally different as it looks as if you don't have the faster broadband service and you might not have a wireless network.

However you might try asking BT if they can access your pc remotely if you are willing and also have the relevant software, which for BT Homehub comes as part of the package.

Some better techies than I am might be able to advise further.

Charlton