Over 6 months ago my phone line was moved from Blunsdon exchange to Haydon Wick exchange, the former being at capacity and a long way away, the former a brand new exchange about 500m from my house. I know I've been transferred to the new exchange (well, everybody around here has).

However, upon trying to get Be Broadband installed, the lady told me I was connected to Blunsdon which is only 4km away (both statements wrong). She blamed it on "BT's database", whatever that is - is that OpenReach, Wholesale, or what? She suggested I dial the international dialling code for India (ie 150) to which I suggested she might be a bit more specific about who and what to talk to rather than just being fobbed off. Put on hold and gave up after half an hour.

So who DO I contact to get the database corrected? Is there a proper name for this database? Is it Wholesale or OpenReach?

I do have an email address for the exchange (haydon.wick@btopenreach.com) but nobody's replied yet. The address was provided for stubborn gits like me who kept pestering them during the migration period due to the misinformation that was going on.

Cheers

Geoff M.

Send them an email and ask them to update their database! The info about my lines been changing since I moved from a fixed 1meg package to an up to 8meg package....

When BT transferred you did you get a new phone number or keep your old one? If you kept your old number then there are a couple of ways BT could get that to you.

They could set up an inter-exchange call forward. So calls to your number go into Blunsdon then come back out again to arrive at Haydon Wick then out on your line to you. If that is the case then you effectively have two phone numbers. One on Blunsdon and one on Haydon Wick. Obviously if you use your Blunsdon number any line checker will reveal quite correctly that it goes into Blunsdon exchange and may well miss the forwarding on to Haydon Wick.

Alternatively they could reprogram their systems so that calls to your number now go direct to Haydon Wick, bypassing Blunsdon altogether. In which case one would hope that the line checkers used by the ISPs would reflect that.

Of course it could be that the line checker isn't interrogating BT's systems at all. It may simply be assuming your line is still on Blunsdon because that is what the number is indicating. So they are basically saying that because the first digit or two of your number is 21 (plucking a randon pair of digits out of the air) then you are on Blunsdon. If it had been 31 then you would be on Haydon Wick.In which case they may be blaming BT when it is not really BT's problem!

But to send to WHO?!?!


In short we're connected directly to Haydon Wick - Blunsdon is not involved at all. We have kept the same number. (When I say we, I mean the neighborhood).

The long story is they took the cables from the roadside cabinets, temporarily re-routed them via the new exchange, then on to Blunsdon. That resulted in an extra km of wiring for me and the consequential lack of broadband (256kb at best). Then when they'd finished the work in HW they connected the wires straight into HW and dropped the Blunsdon cables. Apparently the biggest mass transfer of copper they've done for years. I now get 5Mbps so there is no doubt what I'm connected to! Actually the line checkers say I can get 8Mbps but the engineers at the exchange told me that there is an artificial cap whilst it was bedding down. That was over 6 months ago...

I'm on a 72xxxx number; I assume that all the 72xxxx numbers were transferred together. A few other number ranges were transferred as well.

Using Samknows, that does indeed report me as connected to Blunsdon. I am certain I am not - after all, I've had senior line test engineers out from BT OpenReach, been in the local rag complaining about the crap service from BT Partialsale. had the local MP send a letter to the CEO's office, so unless everybody's been lying and by some miracle 8km copper results in a 5Mbps...?!

I doubt anyone would have call forwarding from Blunsdon - the whole reason the new exchange was built was because Blunsdon physically ran out of space and capacity. There's a massive new housing estate and hundreds of people who moved in in late 2007 weren't able to get ANY landline phone service at all until HW was finished.

Cheers

Geoff M.

Call forwarding doesn't involve any line plant at an exchange, ie in the sense there are no outgoing customer lines involved. So there could be many more lines comming in than there are physical customer lines going out. Call forwarding would be done in the software of the exchange.

And all the in's and out's in that case would probably be on fibre. Have to say thought that the most likely scenario is that BT redirect the numbers at a higher level onto the fibre cable serving the Haydon Wick exchange. But the number checkers may still think they are on Blunsdon. That may be because only a sub-set of the 72xxxx numbers were transferred accross or because the data hasn't been updated if all 72 numbers have been transferred.

Send an email to this dude:

haydon.wick@btopenreach.com

Or go and knock and your exchange door and ask them if your numbers on the patch panel on the ADSL side of the MDF.

What does it say if you put your phone number in here:

http://www.adslchecker.bt.com/pls/ad...hecker.welcome

Ok.


So why would the copper cables go from my house, to the roadside cabinet, on to HW, and then trunked en-masse to Blunsdon, only to be forwarded back again? It doesn't make sense! Yes, the copper did go all the way to Blunsdon during the transition period which was when I virtually lost all broadband due to total line length (etc), but as I say I'm now at 5Mbps with an 8Mbps synch speed - and if "Be" are to be believed, I'm over 4km from Blunsdon. Surely 8Mbps is not possible over 4km of cable?

Geoff M.

I already did - see my first post.


That I might do.

What does it say if you put your phone number in here:


"For Telephone Number 0179372xxxx on Exchange BLUNSDON

Your exchange is ADSL enabled, and our initial test on your line indicates that your line should be able to have an ADSL broadband service that provides a line rate up to 2Mbps."

Geoff M.

Post your line stats m8. That'll tell us if you're on the exchange 4km away.

I think this is it:

DSL Status: UP
DSL Modulation Mode: GDMT
DSL Path Mode: FAST
Downstream Rate: 8128 Kbps
Upstream Rate: 448 Kbps
Downstream Margin: 9 db
Upstream Margin: 28 db
Downstream Line Attenuation: 31
Upstream Line Attenuation: 16
Downstream Transmit Power: 0
Upstream Transmit Power: 0

Before all the palava of switching over - when I was *definitely* on Blunsdon - I was getting about 1.5Mbps max IIRC. Certainly wasn't great and it was when the speed dropped to under 200kbps that I started asking questions and found out about this routing malarky. BT senior test engineers etc did some tests, switched me to a different core pair, and explained what was going on at the exchange. They managed to get the speed up to averaging 256kbps. Initially it would synch slightly higher, say 384, and then settle back down at 256 or lower within a day of overnight disconnection. Finally, in the week that the migrations happened, my D/L speed went to nearly 5Mbps and synch to 8128kbps.

BTW - just got a reply from CEO office with apology and asking for account number and daytime contact number. No reply from haydon.wick yet - I don't know whether the mailbox is still attended to as it was set up for the migration which finished a few months ago.

Next steps are a John Small and a Dan Moss who I dealt with in the past. I'll see if anything comes out the cceo address first though.

Geoff M.

Those are some good stats, you should SYNC at about 16meg should you join Be with FastPath. Looks like your not connected to an exchange over 4km away after all, that downstream attenuation of 31db proves it, your actual line length is more of around 2km.

Your missing the point. I'm not talking about calls YOU make but calls other people make to your number. It's how these calls end up on the bit of copper wire entering your home that could involve a divert. Calls you make will very likely go out via Haydon Wick and not involve Blunsdon at all. Don't assume that calls outgoing from your number follow the same path (in reverse obviously) as those incoming to you.

BT could program their system such that all numbers starting 72 go to Blunsdon. Inside the electronics of the exchange is effectively a look-up table that tells the switching where to send calls to each specific number.

In the case of 7212324 it could send calls to a copper pair wired onto the equipment in Blunsdon. Calls to 722345 however get fed back out of the exchange and out to Haydon Wick where they land up on the pair connected to your house.

It is also quite possible that all 72 numbers eventually land up in Haydon Wick. And it is not beyond the realms of possibility that they go via Blunsdon. ie a number of channels on a fibre going into Blunsdon is split off and lands up on a cable out to Haydon Wick.

Who knows with BT? With this modern digital technology you never know how a call gets from A to B, and one sometimes wonders if BT do either.

However if ALL 72 numbers terminate eventually at Haydon Wick then that should be the serving exchange identified by the line checkers.

Er... ok. I've learnt a lot over the last year but I'm no expert. I think I understand the explanation though - thx!


Just found my original source - yes, it's all the 72s. See http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/news...gs/gen01407.do for the original briefing note. [the disruption quoted lasted for a couple of hours for some people and a couple of weeks for others who had no phones during migration!]

Geoff M.

Confirmed as Haydon Wick by openreachpeeps (thanks), with line length of around 1.9km which is about right. Odd wiring apparently though - presumably to do with the way they did the migration.

Also had a call and an email from a lady called Alison in the CEO's office who would "personally look after my case until it is closed". She wasn't sure who to talk to but would get back to me when she did. And I'm not the first HW customer to complain, she said. Escalated to high level complaints.

Amazing what the right email address will do for you. You'd expect a mailbox like that to be bombed by thousands of customers a day but it seems they really do look through them and deal with them.

Geoff M.

I have spent numerous phone calls to BT trying to sort out the same issue - I thought I was mad and perhaps we were still on Blunsdon but like Geoff after my slow speed dropped to an appalling 256kbps it has finally gone up to 2MBps, which is faster than it used to be! I live about 1.2km from the exchange (by road). Our telephone number has a 70 prefix

I had heard that speeds were capped at 2MBps while the exchange beds down - is this true? Is my speed likely to increase?

Do you have the e-mail for the big chief at BT to sort this out?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Andy

Andy, try the emails:
haydon.wick@btopenreach.com (though I've not yet had a reply from them)
cceo@bt.com (reply within 3 hours)

I'm surprised you're still having problems. The migration was finished back in, oh, March I think. I also heard about the cap but the figure quoted to me was 5Mbps - and I get over 4Mbps.

Try switching your router off overnight (not every night, just once). When it comes back up, it should start re-synching and you *might* get a better speed.

What area do you live in?

Geoff M.

Success! Well, sort of. Alison phoned back and said that the database is due to be updated on the 6th September. Looks like I'll have to stick with BT Broadband for another month.

Still no idea why it's taken BT so long to update their databases.

Geoff M.

Can you post your line stats please from your router.

I think this is it:

Uptime: 0 days, 0:51:00
Modulation: G.992.1 Annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 8.128
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/MB]: 2,67 / 18,53
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11,5 / 19,5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 12,5 / 21,0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 26,0 / 9,5
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / TSTC
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 2 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 2
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 2

Speed seems to have settled down at 1.8MBps.

Geoff: We live in the bottom corner of Oakhurst. Still much closer to Haydon exchange rather than Blunsdon

The Haydon Wick e-mailed bounced so I guess nobody is looking at this now!

Andy

You nutter! you'll get over 18meg SYNC with that line with Be or o2 Broadband with a 3db SNR margin! I recommend Be*, because you'll have the added benefit of FastPath as well so your latency will be lower.

EDIT: Have you got your wiring up to scratch, are you using the master socket, have you followed this guide:

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/socket.php

Thanks - I think!

This is the problem - Be/02 wont connect me because the BT wholesale info states that I am still on Blunsdon which I'm not and Be/02 haven't got LLU at this exchange so I cannot even do an order so that they work it out.

I know I should be plugged into the master socket but my house has a wireless blackspot in my study/bedroom so I currently use a secondary socket. I have a speedtouch wireless router v585 if you have any suggestions.

Actually you do have Be Broadband enabled at your exchange, you an the OP are both connected to the same exchange, it's just that BT's database is wrong and needs to be sorted out. What does it say if you put your phone number in here:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php

You could buy a long twisted, shielded RJ11 cable to trail from your master socket up to your router in your Study from here:

http://www.adslnation.com/phpapps/ca...roducts_id=109

Or you could leave your router downstairs and buy a long Ethernet cable up to your PC. Ethernet is recommended really.

Blunsdon, to which UncleRoo presumably was referring when he said "this exchange", does not have "Be" enabled. "Be" won't allow you to register for an exchange that isn't "Be" enabled (though you can sign up for updates), and as "Be" think we're on Blunsdon, they won't process an order.

September 6th it will be sorted, or so I'm told. I don't know whether that's the whole area, just 72xxxx numbers, my particular cabinet number, or what.

I wonder whether "Be" have been surprised at the low take-up of their Haydon Wick services?

Geoff M.

It's got to be done manually, I used to work for them.

So was the migration - and that is much more intensive work than updating a field in a database! Remember, the migration was finished months ago (March was the last IIRC) and it started in December, so 3 months to do the manual work of re-wiring cabinets and exchanges..... and SIX months to update the database.

Geoff M.