It appears that this is the week of ADSL positivity. First, Andrew reports that PlusNet are sucking less than they once did. And now, I can exclusively reveal that there is progress on my broadband, too.
After taking 54 hours to update a "flag" on my record to allow my ISP to book an appointment, BT finally decided that sending an engineer round might be a reasonable way to determine where the error on my line was located.
There is, of course, a problem when a problem is intermittent... what do you do if it isn't actually happening when the engineer comes to visit?
This is the dilemma I faced yesterday: my connection had been rock-solid for hours by the time the engineer arrived and was performing pretty well.
Typical...
He plugged in his equipment and got on his mobile to the exchange. The opening conversation wasn't promising... general comments about the lack of any visible problem. Just as I thought I would be hit with a £50 charge for claiming a fault when none existed, the noise on the line kicked in and the engineer saw what I have been seeing for weeks: the signal to noise ratio collapsed, the router lost its sync and he agreed that something was wrong.
He called me up a few hours later to say that he had gone to the exchange and run the same test there - and had seen the same problem so he believes the problem is with a piece of equipment in the exchange (a "line card"). He has opened a ticket to get it replaced, he says.
So, who knows... perhaps I'll get a stable broadband connection soon...
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