cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

AndyH
Grafter
Posts: 6,824
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎27-10-2012

21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

Quick and simple question: If there is an outage in an area or exchange affecting 21CN customers, where do Plusnet publish this information for customers to see?
Other ISPs - BT Retail/TalkTalk/Sky/Zen/AAISP etc. have this information on their service status pages.
This page http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/mso.php relates to only 20CN - so it's of no use to the majority of Plusnet's customers.
20 REPLIES 20
jelv
Seasoned Hero
Posts: 26,785
Thanks: 965
Fixes: 10
Registered: ‎10-04-2007

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

Are you sure that that refers to 20CN only? I thought it was only the VP information (which has recently been removed) was 20CN only.
jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
   Why I have left Plusnet (warning: long post!)   
Broadband: Andrews & Arnold Home::1 (FTTC 80/20)
Line rental: Pulse 8 Home Line Rental (£14.40/month)
Mobile: iD mobile (£4/month)
AndyH
Grafter
Posts: 6,824
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎27-10-2012

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

I'm 90% sure.
Take for example Wrexham. There has been an on-going issue here for some time.
BT Retail have the following service status:
Quote
Tue 13/01/2015 at 07:47 Ongoing BT Broadband problem in the Wrexham area
Dialling codes affected: 01978
Estimated time to resolve: 12:03
Dialling codes affected: 01978
Impacting service since 05/01/2015 15:19
Update 3: Due to the complexity of this incident, a specialist engineer is required and this is delaying the resolution of the fault.
Update 2: The issue remains ongoing however, full focus remains on restoration
Update 1: Investigations are continuing in to the cause of this outage.
We're really sorry but we've got a problem at the moment in the Wrexham area, which means that some of our customers will be having trouble getting online. We're trying to fix the problem as quickly as we can.
Please revisit this page for further updates.

Plusnet have now (finally) added it to this page - http://community.plus.net/exchange-information/
90% of customers in the South Wales area is quite a lot of customers I would imagine. But where is this published for Plusnet customers to see? It's not on the Usertools site and it's not on Plusnet's service status page.
Carl has been waiting patiently for some time for an update - http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,134900.0.html What about customers that do not know about the Exchange Information site and those who've not seen Carl's thread?
Edit: What about phone service outages? Where can customers find details about that?
Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 741
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

Pardon my confusion
Where does it refer to the Wrexham outage on that page
Referring to the 90% of customers - that isn't a loss of service just a major contention problem
Just to add - that BT outage isn't reported on Zen either so is it BT specific
AndyH
Grafter
Posts: 6,824
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎27-10-2012

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

I think the BT Retail page is badly worded as it relates to this - http://status.zen.co.uk/broadband/fault-outage-details.aspx?reference=401
It's not an outage issue but a capacity one.
Edit: It is on the Zen page, but there is a bit of a flaw that once something passes an anticipated clear date, it falls off the Current Issues page unless it's updated.
Here is the thread on the BT Infinity page - https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity-Speed-Connection/BT-Infinity-issues-again/td-p/1430104
MattyC
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 3,201
Fixes: 46
Registered: ‎10-04-2014

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

We don't have the facility for automated posting of service statuses. Which means we have to update them ourselves whenever there are problems with an exchange.
Because of this, we generally endeavour to post the outages likely to have more of a significant effect on our customers.
Quote from: AndyH
I'm 90% sure.

I've checked the first few pages. Pretty sure this is correct.
ex-Plusnet staffer. Any posts after 28/07/2017 aren't on behalf of Plusnet
spraxyt
Resting Legend
Posts: 10,063
Thanks: 671
Fixes: 75
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

As far as I'm aware the MSO reports in the Exchange Checker should cover both 20CN and 21CN outages. The information comes from BTW emails sent to the Exchange Checker listener. Only messages reported as MSOs are collected, others are dropped. The South Wales issue seems to be capacity related rather than an MSO.
David
AndyH
Grafter
Posts: 6,824
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎27-10-2012

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

@ spraxyt - Can you check the inbox of the exchange checker to see if any emails have the subject 21CN WBC/NGA/FTTC? That list looks solely 20CN to me.
spraxyt
Resting Legend
Posts: 10,063
Thanks: 671
Fixes: 75
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

Thanks, will do. I'm going through the code to check what is picked up. Recording of new incidents seems not to be happening at the moment though updates to existing ones are being added to the detail.
David
spraxyt
Resting Legend
Posts: 10,063
Thanks: 671
Fixes: 75
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

I fixed the problem causing new reports not to be added last night. Recording seems OK now.
I've checked back through mails-received logs and there is no mention of 21CN, WBC or FTTC. So you are right, the reports are 20CN only.
David
AndyH
Grafter
Posts: 6,824
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎27-10-2012

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

Thanks for the update.
Do you have the ability to subscribe to the 21CN updates? It should just require an email.
It would be useful though if Plusnet could build something like this - http://status.zen.co.uk/broadband Plusnet customers should not have to rely on information sources from other ISPs.
chrcoluk
Grafter
Posts: 1,990
Thanks: 5
Registered: ‎11-12-2013

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

yeah, it probably take a day or so to code something to grab data from BT's API and put on a website.  I can only assume its something plusnet want to withold.
spraxyt
Resting Legend
Posts: 10,063
Thanks: 671
Fixes: 75
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

I think 21CN status information is restricted to staff only.
David
AndyH
Grafter
Posts: 6,824
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎27-10-2012

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

Ok - it would be good to get some staff input here.
I am assuming that quite a large percentage of Plusnet customers are on 21CN and I do not think it's acceptable for there to be no Service Status page where they can check if there is an issue/outage/fault/PEW for their exchange and area.
I appreciate what Matty said about not having the ability to automatically post statuses at the moment, but this should be something that is important and should be changed. The only statuses I can recall seeing manually inputted were more about MBORCs from Openreach.
MattyC
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 3,201
Fixes: 46
Registered: ‎10-04-2014

Re: 21CN - How do Plusnet customers know if there is an outage in their exchange?

I'll give it a mention to see if we can add any further resource/priority to the issue.
ex-Plusnet staffer. Any posts after 28/07/2017 aren't on behalf of Plusnet