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

[#1]

Well I'm confused by several comments in this thread - the Title clearly refers to Outage, yet a number of links refer to Congestion - two different things.
Congestion seems to be covered here - http://community.plus.net/exchange-information/
MSO's appear to be covered  here - http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/mso.php ; but a casual look at a selection of those (at time of posting) suggests that they are 20CN only (an aspect mentioned above).
Yet when looking at some individual exchange detail (at time of posting) eg. Dronfield that appears to be 21CN information - also doesn't seem to be on the MSO page. (maybe because the list is only showing 20 incidents - can't we have a "more" clickable link to go back further)
But also looking at another individual exchange eg. Norwich City there is nothing showing, yet it has been the subject of an Outage according to the Zen list.
I certainly recall seeing references in the past to MSANs on some individual exchange outages (obviously 21CN?) but must admit I haven't used the checker that much in recent times due to the lack of updates and tend only to look when there is a more significant outage.
Anyway, I'm finding the current situation totally confusing, and the thrust of AndyH's post is that Plusnet Users to not have a reliable place to go to find this information. This has been the case for sometime and with the number of customers that Plusnet has and the high profile advertising that it employs, this really isn't good enough.

[#2]

When there is a severely degraded performance in an area, BTW will sometimes send it as a fault/outage notification.
Norwich City refers to 21CN congestion that has been on-going for some time. This is due to be fixed this morning as new fibre links were planned to be activated/users moved overnight.
Dronfield is 20CN (it affects 20CN-BRAS-ESR5-SHEFFIELD3).

[#3]

Well that just confuses things even more, whilst I should have perhaps used another example for an outage eg. Portsmouth North here's the Zen detail, there were planned outages for the fix of the congestion issue affecting Norwich 01603 that was the most recent.

Quote

There will be one service outage to End-Users of approximately 120 minutes. The work will take place within the period 00:01 - 06:00.

So not quite a straight forward as your response suggests.
Dronfield is a 21CN Market 3/B exchange as listed by SamKnows and the Exchange Status checker and according to the Zen report that clearly affects 21CN as well and there's nothing here that suggests it's 20CN only (quite the contrary)
......but in any event who cares. If tried (perhaps not too successfully) to give examples of -
1) How confusing the information is (as well as some points in this thread)
2) How there does appear to be some 21CN information in some places but not in others
3) How there clearly appeared to be 21CN outage information for individual exchanges some time ago
4) How the current situation just isn't good enough
Your last rather negative sounding reply has just undermined my post in the way you have phrased it.
You are either happy with the current level of information and the way it's presented, or you are Not!

[#4]

I'm a little confused as the 'Norwich' link you posted has nothing to do with Norwich City.
The two Dronfield issues don't seem to be related at first hand - the different dates/and the fact that the 20CN notice is for the 20CN BRAS in Sheffield. The Plusnet notification is definitely 20CN though and not 21CN.
I'm not sure where I've said I'm happy with the current level of information? I think it's clear that I'm not, no?

[#5]

Just to add my 2p to the ongoing debate.
I believe it true to say that all tech savvy Forum users;  The Usergroup and Plusnet technical staff are unhappy at the current status of Service Information availability.  The question is "How can we best resolve it?"
Plusnet has access to the core data ex BT, but is currently resource bound in so many other critical areas that there seems little optimism that any resource will be available in the near future.
Over many years, the Usergroup has developed and maintained a number of useful utilities with good co-operation and in collaboration with Plusnet.  But times and Data Protection / security limitations are now a major hurdle in getting timely access to the base data to progress any new development.  Our resources are are also finite (and dwindling) but there are a number of interesting challenges in making the available 'snapshots' into a valuable 'look up' resource for all to use?
I hope that we can clear the channels and make some progress.
Maurice

[#6]

I hope so too Maurice.
@Andy, the way I've interpreted the information is was more than just the Norwich City exchange affected, I just picked one example - I've edited my last link name to save any more hair splitting.