VDSL outage unresolved for a week. Very frustrating.

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › VDSL outage unresolved for a week. Very frustrating.

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#2112574 23-Oct-2018 08:23

dan:

my record in the last 5 years or so is 5 visits from Chorus to fix a single dsl fault before the actual fault was found

Then there's the muppet techs that do come out, "fix" the fault, only for it to happen again because they didn't do it right the first time.

hio77

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#2112602 23-Oct-2018 09:52

Given the location i'm surprised it's not vectored.

Something seems weird about your line.

I'm seeing it at 65db snr, with an attainable of over 200mbit..... this is certainly the dslam missreporting and looks to be possibly a flapping port.

Quite high FEC rates and heavily variable line stats.

Often that indicates a clear fault.

Drilling down into fault history, your initial fault was an area fault.

Moisture damage in cabinet, All modules were replaced - this starts me certainly thinking down the loose connection path...

Your second fault, was also linked to an area fault, a cable fault requiring digging.
For some reason this was delinked, due to being too far for vdsl - this is the sort of response i was referencing earlier on....

Third fault went through the correct escalation path, except a box was missed so it went straight to the field. as the tech is currently on site my hands are slightly tied in terms of details i can see until he stops fiddling

All in all, to me, looks like a valid fault.

Your spectrum itself has a reasonable amount of ghost past 550 tones, so VDSL profile isn't the worse.

As there is no vectoring, you get 8b which works a bit nicer at distance than 17a for upstream so that's pretty nice.

Given your line has peaked at close on 20mbit, It's not too bad!

i know the area well... It's my back yard.. cable faults are pretty common unfortunately :/

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josephhinvest

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#2112614 23-Oct-2018 10:28

hio77:
Given the location i'm surprised it's not vectored.

Something seems weird about your line.

I'm seeing it at 65db snr, with an attainable of over 200mbit..... this is certainly the dslam missreporting and looks to be possibly a flapping port.

Quite high FEC rates and heavily variable line stats.

Often that indicates a clear fault.

Drilling down into fault history, your initial fault was an area fault.

Moisture damage in cabinet, All modules were replaced - this starts me certainly thinking down the loose connection path...

Your second fault, was also linked to an area fault, a cable fault requiring digging.
For some reason this was delinked, due to being too far for vdsl - this is the sort of response i was referencing earlier on....

Third fault went through the correct escalation path, except a box was missed so it went straight to the field. as the tech is currently on site my hands are slightly tied in terms of details i can see until he stops fiddling

All in all, to me, looks like a valid fault.

Your spectrum itself has a reasonable amount of ghost past 550 tones, so VDSL profile isn't the worse.

As there is no vectoring, you get 8b which works a bit nicer at distance than 17a for upstream so that's pretty nice.

Given your line has peaked at close on 20mbit, It's not too bad!

i know the area well... It's my back yard.. cable faults are pretty common unfortunately :/

Oh wow. This is much appreciated, thank you.
Very interesting indeed, and WAY more informative than shouting into the void of Spark support who don’t feed back any specifics.

I’ll update when there’s some progress.

Thanks again for your help digging that out

Cheers,
Joseph

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#2112629 23-Oct-2018 10:58

josephhinvest:

Oh wow. This is much appreciated, thank you.
Very interesting indeed, and WAY more informative than shouting into the void of Spark support who don’t feed back any specifics.

I’ll update when there’s some progress.

Thanks again for your help digging that out

Cheers,
Joseph

Reps often struggle to translate chorus speak to human speak... It gets more complicated when you have short text that means 4 different things depending on what product it is...

There are some details there that i'd love to expose but it just... when you get something like ...

ISL - 17/10/2018 11:21:06
Changed Commitment
Changed Commitment:Etonia Vave - 17 Oct 2018 11:02 - Am still stuck with a OP job at [-censored-],TGN.Please Reassign .Thanks.. - Reassign - 2874062 - 17/10/18 19:00:00

ISL - 16/10/2018 17:12:04
Changed Commitment
Changed Commitment ref op 16/10 d side...no dsl sync - 17/10/18 11:00:00

While your jobs doesn't have tooo much tech speak, as a customer getting that information may mean nothing to you.

You probably still would be calling up or chatting questioning a rescheduled job though...

It's also the question of, how much does a customer actually want to know?

Many just want to know yes we will fix your fault, tech will be there at X date, it's fixed. while the more techy of us want to know every little dripping detail.

Spark do expose a fair bit of detail over the fault tracker. as of yet i haven't seen any provider go that far (apart from very small ones that often pass along raw tech details)

There are some things chorus tell me they are working on improving, at which stage notes should be more easier to translate to a customer.

on the upside, i do note the tech has now confirmed he's done his bit.

Mervyn - He.. Corroded pts at the as a cable - Rep..ltok..T/M..CD01VI50..cd01vj72 - Junction . - Joseph - Phone Call

This tells me, there was a corroded cable at play, ala a fault. I'm getting flags for line failure due to excessive error rates though, tells me there may just be another one up the path - Probably showing as disconnections for you.

I'll know more once my monitor is completed just before 12 anyway...

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josephhinvest

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#2113555 25-Oct-2018 00:14

Wednesday update.
Technician arrived when I was at work. SWMBO was home and granted access. I spoke to him on the phone and tried to explain how the previous tech had literally disconnected the house from the line from telephone pole and connected his modem directly. No luck, he was determined to test inside with his modem.
And he did, and he diagnosed our modem as faulty.

I have two modems that exhibit the same behaviour. And the two previous techs modems both replicated the issue.

Tomorrow is 10 days. No internet for SWMBO uni studies, kids school work is all google docs and similar. Home security system is not working. Even the doorbell doesn’t work! No tv as it’s all on demand/Netflix.

And I’m back to square one.
Very frustrating indeed.

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#2113556 25-Oct-2018 00:23

Didn't the tech bring their own modem to test it on, to rule out the possibility of faulty modem? The frustrating thing when this sort of thing occurs, is how many people you have to communicate with, communicating the same issue over and over again to each member, rather than one staff member managing it for you from start to finish. Think how much more efficient that would be and would save so much money and time, and frustration for the customer.

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#2113734 25-Oct-2018 11:47

Just purchased and set up new HG659b modem as instructed by Spark.
Fault remains unchanged. I’m so angry. 10 days!!!

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hio77

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#2113744 25-Oct-2018 11:57

josephhinvest: Just purchased and set up new HG659b modem as instructed by Spark.
Fault remains unchanged. I’m so angry. 10 days!!!

i feel your frustration here.

Details through the case has been very explicit, just not making it down to the field techs themselves it seems...

Continuing up through the path it needs to go. in this case you shouldn't have had to pay for that device as it was already proven to not be a modem fault.

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josephhinvest

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#2113793 25-Oct-2018 12:52

Escalated back to Chorus. Again.

BMarquis

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#2113838 25-Oct-2018 13:22

josephhinvest: Escalated back to Chorus. Again.

Not wanting to pass the buck, but this (field techs and fault resolution) isn't my area.
But I'm hoping one of my friendly colleagues @chorus can assist here as this sounds like a terrible experience based on the info in this thread.

hio77

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#2113842 25-Oct-2018 13:29

BMarquis:

josephhinvest: Escalated back to Chorus. Again.

Not wanting to pass the buck, but this (field techs and fault resolution) isn't my area.
But I'm hoping one of my friendly colleagues @chorus can assist here as this sounds like a terrible experience based on the info in this thread.

Mike has his own account here? or you mean @ChorusNZ?

Didn't you know brent, any vdsl fault is always your doing now. How could you break it with things like Vectoring and dddlm!

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BMarquis

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#2113847 25-Oct-2018 13:51

hio77:

Mike has his own account here? or you mean @ChorusNZ?

Didn't you know brent, any vdsl fault is always your doing now. How could you break it with things like Vectoring and dddlm!

Whoops, thanks for correcting the tag. I was doing a poor job of multitasking.
It sounds like this is probably a physical fault, so I don't think there is anything I can do here! Especially when you, @hio77 - the master of xDSL - are already on the case!

hio77

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#2113849 25-Oct-2018 13:57

BMarquis:

Whoops, thanks for correcting the tag. I was doing a poor job of multitasking.
It sounds like this is probably a physical fault, so I don't think there is anything I can do here! Especially when you, hio77 - the master of xDSL - are already on the case!

haha we all have that problem sometimes!

me more than most i swear! too many things to ram into a single day..

I'm the master though? gezz that's a high commendation from the you!

Joseph - still waiting on an update, the chorus folk are digging a bit deeper into the data.

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BMarquis

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#2113850 25-Oct-2018 14:00

hio77:

Joseph - still waiting on an update, the chorus folk are digging a bit deeper into the data.

And it goes without saying - but let me know if there is anything I can help with.

josephhinvest

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#2115057 27-Oct-2018 16:15

The saga continues.
Technician (very nice guy and helpful and competent) here for well over 4 hours.
Extensively tested the line. In the end has determined that no matter what the VDSL just drops out now due to changes made at the cabinet.

He temporarily changed me back to ADSL and this makes a rock solid connection.

However, can I be left on adsl and have a working connection? Of course not. His hands are tied, and I was changed back to not-working VDSL. He went above and beyond to try to get if left on but could not, no complaints with the tech.

So waiting for Spark to call me back so I can request to change to adsl.

The frustration continues! And overall pretty grumpy to be moving to a slower connection.

Cheers,
Joseph

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