Major phone line outage in Barnton (01606)?

[#1]

Ref ticket 87254057
Hi DCT,
Can you please chech the status of the above for me?  Phone line been down since 13:00 Wednesday. Expected repair today. Whilst stood at the bus stop today, I over heard neighbours complaining that their phone lines were down too, also since Wed PM. They have been told 10 days to fix. PN are expecting resolution sometime today.
Unfortunately by coincidence of Orange incompetence I do not have a mobile phone service either.  This post is coming from public wifi hot spot.
Any update / help would be most welcome please.
Thanks,
Kevin

[#2]

Interesting - the Zen status doesn't show it http://status.zen.co.uk/broadband/outages.aspx?number=01606

[#3]

We haven't been told that the fault is a wide-spread one perhaps affecting others in your area too but I can see updates telling us that the fault location has been identified and that's being worked on today.
If you speak to your neighbors about this again I'd advise them to report faults to their phone providers just to be on the safe side.

[#4]

Adam,
Thank you for the update / trying. It's 17:30, I'm still out and I've just tried dialing home from a frIends mobile. No answer from answer phone thus I conclude no repair from BTOR and I can look forward to a full weekend without service.
Once again BTOR have let down both PlusNET by not meeting the reasonable expectations of PlusNET and those PlusNET have given me.  BTOR's performance is completely unacceptable.  What is Andy Baker doing to fix the servic delivery issues / commitments / relationship between BTOR and PlusNET?
I understand that Pn's hands are largely tied, but BTOR's performance is not acceptable.
Kevin

[#5]

Yep ... The Villages of Barnton and Anderton are off.   Doesn't take much detective work to realise the main cables come under the River Weaver at Winnington Swing Bridge and whats that I see on the River .... A  DREDGER
Could be a long repair job....

[#6]

Discription of Damage has now changed ... Water Damage .... That will be the River then , as we have had no rain for a week

[#7]

Quote from: Townman

Once again BTOR have let down both PlusNET by not meeting the reasonable expectations of PlusNET and those PlusNET have given me.  BTOR's performance is completely unacceptable.  What is Andy Baker doing to fix the servic delivery issues / commitments / relationship between BTOR and PlusNET?

If the cause is as suggested by others I really do not agree that this is BTOR's fault in anyway whatsoever.
A cable theft/break is usually good for a 1 week to 10 days off service.
My experience of such things is that BTOR work all hours of daylight available including Saturdays to fix it

[#8]

X47c,
I think you've missed my point.  BTOR must have known that this was a wide spread issue well prior to my request for an update on Friday morning.  The cable break was 13:10 Wednesday.  A passing conversation with people living near the bus stop alerted my suspicions to something larger, however BTOR were still informing PN this was not the case.  On Friday the status available / reported by PN still did not indicate a widespread fault, the expectation being set was still a repair on Friday.
It was not until my chase late on Friday that new information was (apparently) provided by BTOR that there was a water / cable fault.  My dissatisfaction is not with the duration of the outage, rather the failure to be clear about the severity of the issue and delivering an expectation of a repair by Friday to PN, when clearly this was never going to be achieved.
Anyhow the service is now restored (10:25) synch is a little better than normal, I hope that the preferred failure intermittent disconnects (associated with phone calls) might also be resolved.
@Felix,
Thank you for your input - you sound local to the area?

@DCT,
Thank you for keeping me informed as best as BTOR have enabled you to do so.  Are there any lessons to be learnt here and applied to any new systems being developed?  Did you have to dig for Friday's status change?  If yes, then that needs fixing with BTOR - they should have automatically updated the status and dine it sooner than sometime Friday.  Did it / would it automatically flow into your systems from BTOR?  In the future is there any prospect that such status changes might be sent automatically to the end user?
Kevin

[#9]

Hi and Yes I am local and for my sins I am a retired BT engineer.
I know where the cables cross the river and when I realised the severity of the situation my suspicions immediately led me to suspect the river crossing and then the quick appearance of OR vans confirmed it.
I am going to be Devils advocate here. I searched high and low for information re the issue. The only source of any information was on the TALK TALK STATUS SITE. Now they must have been provided with that info by OR and I suspect all the other Service Providers would have the same information. But No updates info has been put out by any other SP.
Quite honestly I think the provision of information was poor. It's certainly an area for improvement from all concerned. Not often I congratulate TALK TALK but they were ahead of the game here.

[#10]

Hi Felix,
Thank you for the input.  Welcome to the forums by the way.  I see that you signed up on Saturday - was that just so you could contribute to this thread?
Yes I too saw the BTOR vans there on Friday after jumping on the Warrington bus from Barnton library.  There has been a lot of OR activity in the area for a while, I had thought it was fibre work.  On Saturday (same bus) I noticed that the white diamond "under water cable markers" and concluded then what the problem was - did not see the confirming updates until later in the day via a public hot spot.  I was somewhat disappointed to note that the issue was not being worked on double shift, given the severity of the issue, fine weather and long hours of daylight.
Given your experience, I hope you'll become a regular contributor to this forum; I'm sure that there is another side to the story and the challenges and frustrations perceived to emanate from BTOR service delivery.  Personal experience of engineer service on my Northwich residential line has been reasonably good.  The biggest foul up was when a stretch of cable was stolen in Winnington, after the repair I got the Stanley Arms pub's line connected to my home.  BT Retail (India) considered that to be a new fault and not a failed repair of the previous fault.
I hope PN are able time comment on access to / source of the fault status information.
Cheers,
Kevin

[#11]

@DCT,
When time permits, can someone explore why information apparently available to Talk Talk was not available to PN please?
Thanks,
Kevin

[#12]

It may be relevant but Zen doesn't show it either and I haven't managed to find it on A&A

[#13]

@DCT,
Ref: 87254057
Just had an update from the faults team which clearly reflects just how bad BTOR's information feed to PlusNET is totally screwed up!

Quote

Thank you for your continued patience and apologies for the delay in getting back to you. After checking for updates with BT, we can confirm their engineers are currently working on your fault. The estimated response time is by the end of the day. We aim to have further updates available to you within 24-72 hours.

The service was restored 49 hours ago!!!  

How can PlusNET even start to keep their users fully informed when BTOR don't even know what they've fixed / are woking on.  Thank you though for trying... I had been wondering why there was no update advising that the fault was fixed and you'd be sorting out bill adjustments.  No information from your suppliers is clearly the answer!

Kevin

[#14]

I've just replied to your PM with regards to this.

[#15]

Chris,
Thank you for the details of BTOR's reports.
From an end user perspective, initially PN had been fed stratus updates which suggested that my fault was a single line fault which would be fixed on Friday.  Locally acquired information identified that it was a major under water cable fault, which though visible to talk talk and published by them to their customers still appeared not to be visible to PN, until late on Friday afternoon.  At no time has this fault appeared in the usual places for a significant local outage.
Now that my line is fixed - and working better than ever - BTOR appear to be feeding generic status information to PN (saying that there is still work to be done on some circuits), which when passed on to me looks wrong.
Your job of keeping customers informed and up to date is hard enough without BTOR making things more difficult by delivering information inconsistent with my operational state. 
Cheers,
Kevin