Saltaire, BD18 dropped packets, intermittent internet drop outs

[simoncw]

Hello.

I live in the postcode BD18. For 6-7 weeks I've had to restart our Hub 5 every day at least once, usually in the hope it will help things. Sometimes the internet access comes back, sometimes it's later on.

I've done some digging - created a BQM, looked at the logs for the Hub 5. The BQM is coming back with dropped packets every hour. My log for the past 3 days is showing errors like

• No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;
• DBC-REQ Mismatch Between Calculated Value for P1.6hi Compared to CCAP Provided Value
• US profile assignment change. US Chan ID: 6
• SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire QAM/QPSK symbol timing
• DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response

Every time I log into the Virgin service status checker I am made aware there is a known issue, there is a fix date. The date comes and another date is added. (This has happened to 6 dates so far, as much as I have been counting.)

Wondering if anyone else locally has this issue and - more importantly - if there is an understanding what the issue is.

Our confidence in our broadband access is so low we're tethering from our phones from long stretches (because we work from home most days of the week) and I have been renting a desk in an office for the last few weeks so I can have reliable broadband.

It's doubly frustrating because the dude across the street has EE broadband and his broadband is alright and the chap next door has Sky broadband and he's good too.

[Tudor]

Check with Area faults on 0800 561 0061 If you have a VM landline 150 this goes down to post code level. You could also try the web page status, but this is not recommended as it only covers issues that affect a very large number of customers.

VM will not dispatch any technicians while an area fault exists.

If no area faults found:

The primary place to report faults or for service requests is Customer Services on 0345 454 1111/150 if you have a VM landline or wait two or three days for a VM staff member to get to your post. This board is not a fault reporting system.

[simoncw]

Thanks for the reply.

I spoke to someone at Customer Services on Friday after a few weeks of the service status checker saying there is a known issue. CS said:

• there was a known area fault
• but didn't give me anything other than they know there's a fault (which the service status checker has been telling me)
• they won't send an engineer out while there's the area fault
• wait until the next date, "I am sure there be a positive outcome"
• if there isn't we'll take it from there

Being the corridor of uncertainty - no proactive feedback outside of "there is a fault" and the disheartening effect of the date coming, going and a new later date adde - eats away. :-D. Living off tethering (and the costs with that) while paying £50+ a month to Virgin for what is currently an unreliable/inconsistent service we both need to be reliable and consistent to work with isn't sustainable.

[Steven_L]

Hello simoncw,

Welcome to the community and thanks for taking the time to post here on the forums. I’m sorry to hear of the issues that you’re having with your connection at the moment. 

Having looked into this further, we can see that there is an SNR issue in your area, this is an issue within the network in your area and is to do with the signal to noise ratio in the connection. If the noise is too high this can cause interference and affect the strength and stability of your connection, I can assure you that the team are working on resolving this as soon as possibly but it can take more time to resolve these issues than other faults. The team would need to identify the location of the interference this could be at the distribution, street cabinet or even a customer in your area not using correct or approved cabling, this is the reason why SNR issues can take longer than other faults to resolve.

The current estimated fix time for this is 1pm tomorrow(Saturday 5th).

Kind Regards,

Steven_L