Too far from exchange Lie?

People have been told by BT that they are too far from the exchange to
receive 512K or 1M ADSL. Most have understood this to mean that if
the service was enabled on their line, and a modem plugged in, either
it would not work, or the service would be seriously impaired.

Am I to understand from the extended reach discussion, that for the
majority of people who have been told this, the service would have
worked without impairment, and that for most of the rest, would have
been impaired only by reduced upload speeds?

--

Mark W. Lewis, Broadband for Long Ashton & Failand

www.failand.org.uk

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 06:39:36 +0100, "Mark Lewis"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Am I to understand from the extended reach discussion, that for the
>majority of people who have been told this, the service would have
>worked without impairment, and that for most of the rest, would have
>been impaired only by reduced upload speeds?

BT set a limit for its 512k RADSL service initially at 55 dB loss then
revised it up to 60 dB after trials. Since then they have run some
automated trials on even higher loss (longer) lines which have been
encouraging so they are now running consumer tests on lines with
losses beyond 60 dB with a view to setting a new prequalifcation
regime or a different limit.

Some users with a loss over 60 found the servce to be unreliable and
disconnect frequently. There is also a risk that a user on a high loss
line will intefere with others in the same cable bundle and affect
their service. So yes, some may have been turned down when it would
have worked happily but others will have been saved from a bad
experience or from screwing up their neighbours conneciton.

BT's approach thus far has been to provide a service that works well
and is reliable needing little support. Some US Telco's adopted a "try
it and see" model which resulted in a lot of customer dissatisfaction
re reliability and achieved speeds. Part of the trials is to determine
how to sort the wood from the trees and decide which line is really
going to work to everyone's satisfaction.

Phil

"Phil Thompson" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> yes, some may have been turned down when it would have worked
> happily

The wording from BT should at least have been formulated to make this
clear eg "We are unwilling to provide a service", rather than "It is
not possible to provide a service".

By "some" do you actually mean a majority?

> Some US Telco's adopted a "try it and see" model which resulted in a
> lot of customer dissatisfaction re reliability and achieved speeds.

Consumers are familiar with products such as 56K modems with
performance that depends on distance from the exchange. Provided this
is made clear, it is not a problem.

> There is also a risk that a user on a high loss line will interfere
> with others in the same cable bundle

This is the only good reason you give for the policy. If this is the
reason, then BT should tell people that.

--

Mark W. Lewis, Broadband for Long Ashton & Failand

www.failand.org.uk

"Mark Lewis" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:408b4f97$0$19422$(E-Mail Removed)...
> People have been told by BT that they are too far from the exchange to
> receive 512K or 1M ADSL. Most have understood this to mean that if
> the service was enabled on their line, and a modem plugged in, either
> it would not work, or the service would be seriously impaired.
>
> Am I to understand from the extended reach discussion, that for the
> majority of people who have been told this, the service would have
> worked without impairment, and that for most of the rest, would have
> been impaired only by reduced upload speeds?
>

As a member of staff working for BT I was on the extended range trial. My
reading was 63dB even though BT were looking only to increase the range from
55dB to 60dB as they wanted to see how far they could push the signal. I
had no problems for 6 months but when the trial ended BT wanted to remove my
ADSL as I was outside the new limit. After much pleading I was allowed to
keep it but was told that if I had any problems with it then I would have to
have it removed.

My problem was that the trial was on my official second line and I wanted
it on my main home line. Feeding my home line phone number into the
broadband availability predictor it said I could have a 2 meg ADSL which was
clearly wrong but then to get by official line on the trial BT had to "fix"
the records. I applied for ADSL on my home number and got a 512K service.
Straight away I had major problems as I would loose sync every hour or so
and always if someone rung us up. To get a more stable service I had to
move my master socket to the computer room and re-feed my other 3 sockets
from that room. It was the case that the computer room was the last socket
out of 4 so went through 4 joints. I used CAT 5 cable and soldered the
wire to the lead-in. In fact I did everything I could think of to help
boost the signal.

This improved matters greatly as I was now only loosing sync on average once
every few days for a few minutes at a time. After a few months I reported
the line as noisy so BT changed the pair of wires used from my house the
green cabinet and from the cabinet to the exchange. This made no difference
so I reported it again. Once again BT changed the pair from the cabinet to
the exchange.

Problem solved, now I have no drop outs but BT man did stick his laptop on
my line to do a test which has reset my records. Now when I do an ADSL
predictor test I am told that I am out of area and can't have it even though
I have it.

It is clear to me that there are major maintenance issues if BT push out the
limit any further than 60dB's While some people will be fine there will be
others that would be reporting ADSL faults that would have a major impact on
the company.

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 08:11:57 +0100, "Mark Lewis"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>The wording from BT should at least have been formulated to make this
>clear eg "We are unwilling to provide a service", rather than "It is
>not possible to provide a service".
>
>By "some" do you actually mean a majority?

neither of us know the answer to that. Nor do BT, hence the trials. BT
are taking ADSL out to limits beyond the norm ie beyond the range
originally envisaged or tested in development. I guess there are
people in BT who already see this as a bad thing.

>> Some US Telco's adopted a "try it and see" model which resulted in a
>> lot of customer dissatisfaction re reliability and achieved speeds.
>
>Consumers are familiar with products such as 56K modems with
>performance that depends on distance from the exchange. Provided this
>is made clear, it is not a problem.

if you look at the US DSL forums you will see if its a problem or not.
I can just see "Watchdog" now ..." Mark Lewis is paying £25 a month
for Broadband from BT but he never gets more than 256k and it fails
one day in three especially if it rains".

Most if not all telcos now have a line prequal regime "is it available
on your line" and if its outside their limits you don't get it.

56k modems which never run at 56k ever were an upwards evolution that
occurred incrementally and took people along with them. They also have
the ability to fall back to 2400 bps or less and will therefore
*always* work on a phone line, even in rural Russia.

ADSL is a step change supposed to deliver a high speed service, it is
being sold as high speed and not "64k because your line is crap and
you bodged the extension wring."

>> There is also a risk that a user on a high loss line will interfere
>> with others in the same cable bundle
>
>This is the only good reason you give for the policy. If this is the
>reason, then BT should tell people that.

whatever. I'm not trying to justify their policy. Giving customer
service agents (in Mumbai ?) a script that says "it is not available
on your line because it is too long" is a more realistic proposition
than "due to an excessive dB loss on your line there is a high
probability that your modem would not receive an adeqaute SNR margin
to reliably synchronize with our DSLAM in the exchange. Even if it did
there is a possibility that it would operate outside the spectral
power distribution mask dictated by the ANFP which could affect other
services on yours or other phone lines in your vicinity".

Doing what you say just invites a protracted discussion with someone
in no position to change the policy.

BT's policy appears to be to offer a reliable service where they feel
confident in doing so. This avoids engineer visits to fix things which
would wipe out the income and create bad customer relations. ISPs can
place manual orders to determine the actual loss in marginal cases but
for step changes we have to wait for BT to revise its comfort zone.

Phil

> People have been told by BT that they are too far from the exchange to
> receive 512K or 1M ADSL. Most have understood this to mean that if
> the service was enabled on their line, and a modem plugged in, either
> it would not work, or the service would be seriously impaired.

BT ran extensive developement tests that indicated that a loss of 55dB was
one that they could offer a reliable service for a very large majority of
lines. Obviously there had to be a safety margin becuase the measured line
loss is just a snapshot of a value that can vary over time. The 55dB level
was subsequently raised to 60dB after field expereince showed that it was
viable in the majority of cases.
>
> Am I to understand from the extended reach discussion, that for the
> majority of people who have been told this, the service would have
> worked without impairment, and that for most of the rest, would have
> been impaired only by reduced upload speeds?

The extended reach trial is intended to provide a real world evaluation of
the sort of service that it might be possible to offer where the line loss
is higher than the present allowable figure. Far from lying about this BT
have been quite open and are trying to make broadband available to a larger
percentage of the potential customers than at present. It is simply not
commercially realistic for BT to start selling a product that does not
actually work in the vast majority of cases. Try googling to see the sort of
mess that has occurred in the USA where telcos offered the service and then
could not deliver.

Just for the record I am not involved with BT in any way except as a
customer and am certainly very critical of some aspects of their business
but this is not one of them.

"Peter Crosland" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> It is simply not commercially realistic for BT to start selling a
> product that does not actually work in the vast majority of cases.

I was forming the impression that it would only be unusable in a small
minority of cases. Is that incorrect?

What happens if a 1M service is enabled to someone who can get a full
512K service but is nominally out of range for 1M?

> BT have been quite open

People should have been told something like "your distance from the
exchange means that we cannot confidently provide you with a reliable
service" rather that "it is not possible to provide you with a
service", which is quite different, and in view of the 55dB to 60dB
rise, was evidently untrue for most of the people in that margin.

--

Mark W. Lewis, Broadband for Long Ashton & Failand

www.failand.org.uk

> > It is simply not commercially realistic for BT to start selling a
> > product that does not actually work in the vast majority of cases.
>
> I was forming the impression that it would only be unusable in a small
> minority of cases. Is that incorrect?

That is what the trial is intended to establish!

>
> What happens if a 1M service is enabled to someone who can get a full
> 512K service but is nominally out of range for 1M?

I don't understand what you are trying to get at.

>
> > BT have been quite open
>
> People should have been told something like "your distance from the
> exchange means that we cannot confidently provide you with a reliable
> service" rather that "it is not possible to provide you with a
> service", which is quite different, and in view of the 55dB to 60dB
> rise, was evidently untrue for most of the people in that margin.

You really don't understand the commercial realities do you?

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 12:44:30 +0100, "Mark Lewis"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>People should have been told something like "your distance from the
>exchange means that we cannot confidently provide you with a reliable
>service" rather that "it is not possible to provide you with a
>service", which is quite different

depends what your definition of is is. What difference does it make -
you can't have it either way, until they change the rules.

Phil

Peter Crosland wrote:

>> People should have been told something like "your distance from the
>> exchange means that we cannot confidently provide you with a reliable
>> service" rather that "it is not possible to provide you with a
>> service", which is quite different, and in view of the 55dB to 60dB
>> rise, was evidently untrue for most of the people in that margin.
>
> You really don't understand the commercial realities do you?

I think Mark's point is that if a customer was prepared to accept an
imperfect service, then it would be good if BT was prepared to give them
it. As someone living a few klicks out of range, I'd happily accept a
service that was well below ideal ADSL specs. The problem is that BT
knows these same customers would then pester them for service
improvement, engineer calls etc, because it's human nature to be greedy
& irrational.

The solution might perhaps have been a 'best endeavours, take it or
leave it' contract under a separate 'testing' arm, to insulate BT from
the hassle (or is that BTOpenworld......? hehe )