Upgrade from ADSL to VDSL didn't happen on the indicated day - how to chase

[#1]

Hi, I'm in an area with restricted vdsl capacity which is usually indicated as waiting list.

I managed to put an order in last Monday when it became "available" and order an upgrade to vdsl which was due to take place this Monday. It doesn't appear to have happened. Will Plusnet look at this automatically or can I chase somehow?

The e-mail indicating the date doesn't receive replies, and it appears that these days I can't raise a support ticket as a residential customer. I don't particularly want to hang on the telephone but could do that if necessary.

Frankly I'm most concerned that the order has been messed up and I've lost the ability to reorder, as it is showing waiting list again!

Two of us working from home hanging off ADSL really isn't a good option... We have a fantastic line, which syncs at full ADSL 2+ speeds, with SNR to spare, but the upstream speeds are rather inadequate these days 🙄.  As you might imagine, this is a rural location and 4G is barely available, and 5G is a very distant dream... So I'm stuck with ADSL...

[#2]

Moderators Note

This topic has been moved from Broadband to My Order

[#3]

@albany It is quickest to phone Plusnet and wait on the line. Forum help from staff is taking 2 days (on average currently) to respond to the initial query.

[#4]

Thanks.  As suggested, I found a moment to call up and actually didn't have to wait very long.  The CS Team were very good and polite, and indeed reassuring.

It seems that the re-grade has been put back from Monday to this Saturday. I'm still crossing my fingers and paranoid that I shall lose the re-grade - the cabinet is showing back on "waiting list..."  A bird in the hand etc... 😁  But shall just have to wait...

[#5]

Hi there!

Well I have good news that your fibre order's actually due to complete tomorrow so not long to go

Let us know how it goes. 

[#6]

That's great news!  Thanks for the update.

[#7]

No problem at all  

[#8]

So there is bad news and then hopefully some good news.

When the Openreach engineer arrived on Friday, it turned out that the job had been built incorrectly. My line was shown on the job as connected to a different cabinet to the real situation on the ground. So the bad news is that nothing happened on Friday and the job needs rebooking.

The good news is that chatting to the Openreach engineer there is no sign that there are capacity limitations locally and thus my “waiting list” status may well have just been an artefact of the line being incorrectly recorded on the system.  Also, the cabinet to which my line is connected is about half the distance to the one recorded on the system, which ties in with my nice SNR stats on my current ADSL connection. So I am hopeful that I will have a very nice VDSL line in due course.

The engineer took away enough detail to get the line correctly recorded and the job rebooked. So now back to Plusnet to get that going. He commented that how quickly that happens depends on your service provider. So I'm crossing my fingers that Plusnet can be one of the quick ones😁

[#9]

And looking just now on the Openreach checker, my line is now indeed showing as FTTC available and has moved from cabinet 1 to cabinet 3. So it looks like the database has been updated.

[#10]

Cheers for the detailed update! 

@albany wrote:

The engineer took away enough detail to get the line correctly recorded and the job rebooked. So now back to Plusnet to get that going. He commented that how quickly that happens depends on your service provider. So I'm crossing my fingers that Plusnet can be one of the quick ones‌ 😁

Now that sounds like a challenge! Although, our suppliers (BT Wholesale) have already beat us to it proactively picked this up. They're arranging another engineer to go out tomorrow. There's a possibility we may have to cancel the fibre order and replace it now the routing's been updated, but let's see what the next engineer says first. 

[#11]

Great news. 😁

[#12]

Yup indeed, let me know what the engineer says (if they visit you)

[#13]

I assume the engineer visited on Tuesday but I didn't have any contact.  No sign of a re-sync to VDSL yet as far as I can tell.

[#14]

Yeah an engineer hasn't been out.

I've been in touch with our suppliers helpdesk and I'm advised that the requested engineer slot wasn't passed to the engineering allocation system, because the updated routing hadn't been applied onto the order. 

When our suppliers tried to rebuild the order with the correct record, the order basically got stuck and the system then automatically cancelled it from one of Openreach's applications. The agent I've discussed this with has raised a request to a backend team to fully cancel the order so we can replace it onto the correct and updated routing.

Should hopefully be cancelled by close of play tomorrow so I'll check back on Saturday for you.

[#15]

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@albany wrote:

Also, the cabinet to which my line is connected is about half the distance to the one recorded on the system, which ties in with my nice SNR stats on my current ADSL connection. So I am hopeful that I will have a very nice VDSL line in due course.

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In the case of ADSL, the actual cabinet you are connected to is unlikely to markedly influence the quality of the line - ADSL performance and metrics are all predicated on the full length of the copper circuit, between the exchange and the house.

In the case of VDSL, it is indeed the cabinet to house distance which is paramount.  Being half the distance will make a marked difference.  There have been a few cases where the performance of ADSL and VDSL have been comparable, because the distance between the cabinet and the house is a substantial portion of the full copper circuit back to the exchange.

If you wanted to assess these metrics, it is the line attenuation which is critical, not the SNRM - one way or another, that will always be 6dB (or if you are lucky 3dB) and whatever speed can be attained at that margin.  In short, a lower attenuated line will deliver more speed at the same SNRM which is typically "targeted" to be 6dB.