Brand new line and no service!!!!

[#1]

I thought I'd write about and share my experience with moving to plusnet.
I signed up for plusnet because I used to have an account with them many years and was happy with their service. So I decided to move away from VirginMedia fibre broadband to their new fibre broadband.
On 3/7/13, I received a text message from plusnet telling me that an engineer would be visiting on 16/7/13, but the broadband would only be ready before midnight 17/7/13 (more than a day late) and I should not connect the router until plusnet has confirmed the service is up.
The Engineer came on 16/7/13 and did a good job as far as I could tell. He even connected up the plusnet router and we did a test to confirm that it was working. Remembering the text message from plusnet, I stupidly unplugged the router after the engineer left and waited for the OK from plusnet.
While I was waiting for the go-ahead from plusnet, I placed an order for a static IP.
But there was nothing from plusnet. So on the morning of 18/7/13, I plugged in my router and and laptops with ethernet cables, all the lights went up fine. But I could not go anywhere. I could see that machines are connected with local IPs 192.168.1.* but internet was not reachable. I could not even ping google.com. So I raised a ticket on plusnet's portal. I thought they might not have done their test and so I switched off the router and waited for the much delayed OK from them.
In the afternoon of 18/7/13, they did some tests and it seemed all the tests passed, so they could not find what is the matter. They questioned about cable connectivities and I told them the router was off and I then switched it on. Later in the evening, I signed in the router and did a test on the router by clicking on the test link and got the following:
Test Succeeded Ethernet
Test Succeeded PPP
Test Succeeded IP
Test Failed Internet
Enabled/OKConnectivity to Gateway (195.166.128.190)
Disabled/Not OKConnectivity to DNS Server 1 (212.159.6.9)
Disabled/Not OKConnectivity to DNS Server 2 (212.159.6.10)
So it looked like a DNS problem. However, when I pinged 62.253.3.103 (google.com), all packets were lost. So I reported my test to plusnet through their portal.
This afternoon (19/713), I phoned them having heard nothing from them and was told that a fault could take 48-72 hours to fix (according to their SLA). I kind of felt let down.
Anyway, I was told to play around with connecting a laptop directly to the modem, but the results were the same as before: no internet. The guy at the other end just gave up and decided to pass the problem on to someone else and I was told to wait for their resolution.
Now I have two questions:
1. Have anyone got similar technical problems before? If so, how was it resolved?
2. Is the 48-72 hour resolution period real? As this is a new line, even if that is true, should the period not be started with installation?
I shall update with any development.
Thank you!

[#2]

What IP address does the router report on its WAN port?
Leave the router plugged in and turned on.  Try using it after 15 mins. 
If it still doesn't work, contact PlusNet again and double check that they have actually activated your account.

[#3]

Thanks pwatson,
The IP on the WAN side is the static IP I have been assigned.
One thing I forgot to mention is that I can ping my WAN IP from anywhere (other broadband, office and so on), but not the other way round (I cannot ping internet from within my plusnet broadband home network).
It is likely that the account has been activated, because when the engineer plugged in the router, we went to speedtest.net and pingtest.net to try out things among other sites.
The router has been on continuously for over a day now.
I also did a traceroute on the WAN IP, the following is the output;
1  10.239.108.1 (10.239.108.1)  89.528 ms  95.759 ms  95.757 ms
2  brnt-core-2b-ae3-1660.network.virginmedia.net (80.2.147.29)  95.754 ms  96.980 ms  99.425 ms
3  brnt-bb-1c-ae12-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.174.57)  100.743 ms  106.353 ms  106.354 ms
4  popl-bb-1c-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.174.133)  106.346 ms  110.090 ms  108.756 ms
5  * * *
6  linx-gw2.plus.net (195.66.236.164)  115.651 ms  24.648 ms  40.973 ms
7  te-4-1.ptw-gw02.plus.net (212.159.1.43)  42.346 ms  43.586 ms  49.806 ms
8  link-b-central10.ptw-ag04.plus.net (212.159.2.159)  49.803 ms  51.001 ms  49.776 ms
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[#4]

What the heck - that is from a  Virgin Media cable connection - is that from another connection or yours
If yours -a very silly question
Is your router connected to the Virgin Media terminal or the BT one which should have been installed - note they should be totally separate wires and terminal boxes

[#5]

I think the OP is currently using his Virgin connection as it's still live and the PlusNet connection doesn't work  
The point of the traceroute was to show an attempt to get to the WAN address on the PN router from Virgin...

[#6]

Understood 

[#7]

Deleted

[#8]

Thanks again pwatson,
You got it in one!
Not sure how useful traceroute is though as most admins turn the feature off and we get only ****

[#9]

I just ran a tracert to a Plusnet customer IP address and this is the result - I have changed the actual address to IP address

Tracing route to IP address plus.com [IP address]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  1    80 ms    99 ms    99 ms  192.168.1.254
  2    34 ms    32 ms    31 ms  lo0-central10.ptn-ag01.plus.net [195.166.128.190]
  3    32 ms    32 ms    32 ms  link-a-central10.ptn-gw01.plus.net [212.159.2.128]
  4    32 ms    32 ms    34 ms  xe-1-2-0.ptw-cr01.plus.net [212.159.1.28]
  5    32 ms    32 ms    32 ms  te2-3.ptw-gw01.plus.net [212.159.1.57]
  6    32 ms    32 ms    33 ms  link-a-central10.ptw-ag02.plus.net [212.159.2.149]
  7    40 ms    40 ms    40 ms  IP address.plus.com [IP address]
Trace complete.

[#10]

i've just tried a traceroute from pn-pn and a US connection to pn and neither worked past link-b-central10.ptn-ag01.plus.net (unless you've turned your router off oldjim )

[#11]

Interesting results you have got, Oldjim,
I am assuming you did that traceroute from a box on the plusnet network.

[#12]

I did

[#13]

So to recap...
Your router WAN is set to DHCP and the status shows 'Connected', and IP addresses for the WAN, Gateway, and DNS servers.  The mask is 255.255.255.255.255?
Your test PC is also set to DHCP, has the router LAN address as its gateway and a mask of 255.255.255.0?
Ignoring the router tests - From your test PC can you ping the gateway? Can you ping the DNS servers? Can you ping 8.8.8.8?
What response do you get for traceroutes from a machine on your LAN to:
Your WAN IP address
The gateway
PlusNet DNS server
8.8.8.8

[#14]

The router is indeed set to DHCP. All the lights are green. There seems to be some development because when I rebooted both boxes (modem and router), and did a test in the router, it showed green on the DNS connections. When I pinged google.com, it resolved to an IP, but then hanged.
I can also ping WAN IP, the gateway and Plusnet DNS. But not 8.8.8.8.
Traceroute to 8.8.8.8 hanged.
Traceroute to WAN IP returned a list of three stars, there were 30 steps;
Traceroute to gateway generated the following:
traceroute to 195.166.128.183 (195.166.128.183), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1  dsldevice.lan (192.168.1.254)  82.621 ms  82.490 ms  82.409 ms
2  lo0-central10.pcl-ag02.plus.net (195.166.128.183)  7.248 ms  14.534 ms  15.487 ms
Traceroute to DNS got:
traceroute to 212.159.6.9 (212.159.6.9), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1  dsldevice.lan (192.168.1.254)  98.233 ms  98.137 ms  98.079 ms
2  lo0-central10.pcl-ag02.plus.net (195.166.128.183)  10.040 ms  10.689 ms  11.049 ms
3  link-a-central10.pcl-gw01.plus.net (212.159.2.164)  9.944 ms  10.588 ms  10.580 ms
4  196.core.access.plus.net (212.159.0.196)  13.251 ms  13.276 ms  13.246 ms
5  po2.pcl-gw01.plus.net (195.166.129.41)  10.500 ms  10.886 ms  10.470 ms
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[#15]

Also I do not know if this is significant, when I connect my windows 8 box to the router via WIFI, the box displays "Limited" next to the WIFI signal strength bar. When the box is connected Virgin Broadband through WIFI, it displays "Connected".