Innefective Support

[#1]

My FTTP connection went down this morning, I called, got the text message, replied with "FAULT". After 1 hour, I hadn't heard anything (missing the PN SLA promises) soi called PN support. They told me there was an outage in the area and it was being worked on. Should be back this evening!
My question is, does/should PN tell you about outages affecting you? If not, is there a web site/ link I can use in the future to determine if there is a problem, and when it should be fixed?
Thanks

[#2]

Hi @gsw5700 

A warm welcome to the forums.

May be a more perinate question might be "Should BT Openreach and BT Wholesale tell their customers (the ISPs) that there is a major outage and make that information readily available?".

There is then the consideration of how long an outage is expected to last ... by the time the information has been disseminated, the issue might well be resolved.  If the outage is expected to be protracted, it will take time to assess that.  Further how "big" does an outage need to be to "qualify" for such notifications.

There are downsides too - if it is known that there is an outage in an area, there is a real risk that reports of issues nearby might be presumed to be associated with the same issue, rather than verifying such to be the case.  That verification requires an individual fault report to be raised.

Where the suppliers have made formal announcements, Zen does kindly publish them - see here - Zen Broadband Status 

Note carefully that the BT Supplied information for current faults DOES NOT include the area codes impacted!

Looks as though BT Openreach's world has imploded today ... with that many users impacted, doing that which you expect (calling users)  might result in no resources available to answer the phones...

[#3]

Thanks for that, so basically, BT are having issues but don't bother to tell anyone?
BTW... I've found the following status map which indicates BT issues in Lincoln.
https://istheservicedown.co.uk/status/bt-british-telecom/map

[#4]

In broad terms - yes.  As can be seen from the Zen report, what is provided does not have enough information to be informative.  You can find resolved incidents by STD code, but not active ones.

I would take that with a fair pinch of salt.  It is only populated by Joe Public reporting that they are experiencing difficulty of some kind.  It does not have the refinement of where the cause of the problem is as opposed to where people having problems are.

For example, if Netflix were down, you'd see problem reports from all over the country.

[#5]

Hmmm, looking at https://downdetector.co.uk/status/bt-british-telecom/
Reports...
User reports indicate no current problems at BT
BT (British Telecom) offers broadband internet, home phone and television service. Internet connections are available through ADSL or BT Infinity branded fibre technology. BT Mobile operates as a MVNO using the EE network. BT Mobile mostly serves professional clients.
Last problem: 13 Jun 2023 at 7:24 a.m

So guess I have an isolated fault, although PN stated there were outages in my area...

[#6]

Not necessarily so - your fault might impact a good few users - for example a 50-pair cable might be damaged, but that would not be enough for a BT Openreach incident report.

[#7]

So broadband should have been back online yesterday evening, i
Its a known outage, and it's still down. I called PN who stated the supplier (BT?) are not obliged to provide an update until it's been down for 2 days.
Strange, as I can't find the outage reported on any website, sigh

[#8]

As above, it depends on how big an outage.

The articulation of the "2 days" is not overly fair - it is not so much obligation as a reasonable meaningful back off period.  When BT accept a fault, they will give an estimated resolution or update forecast.  Until that forecast date / time is reached, BT will not update it there is no change AND they will NOT ENTERTAIN further enquiries from their customers, the CP / ISP.

Therefore Plusnet has no more information than when is the next update milestone and no amount of chasing is going to alter that.  One can imagine that some folk will think that as unreasonable, but that is how a quasi-nationalised monopoly organisation treats its customers.  That said things are much better than the many weeks of the old nationalised GPO telephone service!!