Over the course of May, BT have made a few improvements to the IPStream Max (Upto 8Mbps broadband) which will benefit both our customers as well as ourselves, if not just for the reduced number of faults raised, also for the additional reporting information that we are able to gain from BTs various systems.
These improvements consist of:
- Intelligent profiling on new provides
- Improved customer reporting
- Woosh capped profile names
- Woosh 15.2 deployment
Intelligent profiling on new provides (completed 22/05)
A number of our customers may have experienced some instability on their IPStream Max service within the first days of the service being provisioned. This was outlined as an expectation of the quality of service from the outset of IPStream Max being launched.
BT have now made an improvement to the service so that it assigns what they believe to be the optimal profiled speed and noise margin, giving what should hopefully be stability from the outset of the service. This should result in less “flapping” during the first ten days as the speeds assigned within the training phase should be that of which would have been calculated after the ten day period has elapsed.
From a customer perspective, this should result in an improved level of service quality and from our perspective, there should be less calls into the Customer Support Centre from customers who may have potentially seen an intermittent connection from the initial calculation of profile.
Improved customer reporting (completed 31/05)
BT have recently implemented a two fold change in the way that they show us how our customers are profiled in their system called “Actuate”.
Firstly they have changed the way in which they name their different profiles. These will now be visible to us as, for example, “adsl3500”. The final 4 digits in the profile name represent the maximum level of throughput that the customer will be able to attain, giving us a better understanding of the expected speed, of which we can inform the customer of.
The other change, which from my perspective, is considerably more useful, is that in Actuate, we are now able to see the last speed at which our customer gained synchronisation at with the exchange, which will have caused a profile change. Basically, the profiled speed that our customers see are a reflection of the last 15 speeds (within a 30 day period) at which they gained synchronisation. When a customer calls us to ask why their speeds are slower, we can now inform them easily, about which profile they are on and why this has happened.
Woosh capped profiles (Completed 31/05)
BT have also implemented some additional profile names which we are able to see in one of our line testing tools, referred to as “Woosh”. Occasionally, customers on the IPStream Max services may receive a capped service, which will be either automatically capped or if the line is a (amusingly named) chronic flapper, whereby the line profile is constantly changing owing to it being a long line, meaning that a capped profile will provide an improved level of speed and stability.
We are now easily able to see when a line has a capped speed profile assigned to it by running a quick test on Woosh, it will show the profile as, for example “Max 1M C” which means that it is a Max service that has been limited because of it being a chronic flapper
Woosh 15.2 launched (Completed 31/05)
BT have now released their latest version of the Woosh line testing tool. This includes a new tool called the DLM Data Tool which shows us a historic break down of various information to do with the max service. This again will allow us to gain a better understanding as to any service issues a customer may be experiencing and thus allow us to explain the results to our customer more effectively.
Hopefully this is a good sign of things to come from BT and that further changes to issues such as the 3 day recalculation time for profiles may also be looked into. More information as I get it!
