Over a month of issues

[LeoTroy92]

I had Sky ultrafast activated by an Openreach engineer on 13th September resulting in an intermittent connection. An engineer came out to fix this on 18th September - he said the port was loose. After he left, the issue improved for a bit but persisted and then connection went down completely. After a lengthy call involving numerous customer service reps, another Openreach engineer came out on 26th September to have a thorough look at the line and said the whole thing was clean, but it might be a bit long for Ultrafast. He said I might want to downgrade and contact Sky to do this. So I called Sky again the following day and explained the issue. The CS rep stated they would ask some in-house experts and call back. They called back suggesting that I need to switch from Ultrafast to Superfast and said the easiest way to do this is to cancel the Ultrafast and set up a whole new account to order Superfast. So I did this, cancelled Ultrafast and ordered Superfast on a new account. My Ultrafast was due to be deactivated on the same day as the Superfast was remotely activated (11th October) but on 12th there was no connection. My Ultrafast actually still had a connection (despite some continued intermittency) until last weekend - 19th-20th Oct but has since deactivated. I was sent the following message from Sky on 17th 

'Hi Leo, just a quick update on your order. Openreach have told us they are currently experiencing an issue with their systems, which is preventing your order from progressing. We are working with them to make sure it is fixed as soon as possible. You will receive a text with an update on your order on 23/10/2024.'

So I waited until today and received the following message:

'Hi Leo, just a quick update on your order. Openreach have told us they are currently experiencing an issue with their systems, which is preventing your order from progressing. We are working with them to make sure it is fixed as soon as possible. You will receive a text with an update on your order on 29/10/2024.'

I called customer service for more context but did not receive any - the CS rep could only really reiterate the above, although I did manage to get an official complaint raised.

This is - without a doubt - among the worst experiences I've ever had with a company.

Can anyone shed some light on exactly why this remote activation is delayed for so long? I can understand a system issue but would really like some further context on why activation would be pushed 12 days and then a further 6. I am currently in a position where it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for me to wait until 29th and then get another text explaining it's pushed another 6 days. I'm completely in the dark here. At least with Ultrafast they had engineers visit, with Superfast I've been given no context and almost no information. Can anyone help?

[TimmyBGood]

@LeoTroy92 

Difficult to understand what's going on there: typically it's not possible to revert to a copper broadband service once fibre is in place at an address (no matter what technical issues the optical circuit might be having) because the whole point of the FTTP rollout is to render copper cabling obsolete.

[LeoTroy92]

@TimmyBGood this is interesting. I don't really understand the technical specifics of what you've said, but can confirm the engineers exact advice was that I needed an 80/20 circuit (which I relayed to the Customer Service team, who then consulted 'experts' and confirmed this meant I needed Superfast). Is this not the case to your knowledge?

[TimmyBGood]

@LeoTroy92 

80/20 strongly implies copper broadband because that's the maximum speed of FTTC.

However the intention of the national optical fibre rollout is to render FTTC obsolete, and it's now very unusual to be able to order service over copper.

[LeoTroy92]

@TimmyBGood I wish I had some more knowledge on how my initial ultrafast was set up (I have no working knowledge of this so any info you might have would be useful)

I live in a basement flat near the bottom of a square where (as referenced by the engineer) he was following a cable up to a cabinet which is located at the top of a square. He said my Ultrafast intermittency was likely caused by the cable to the cabinet being too long and that I needed an 80/20 circuit to make sure the connection was smooth with no interruptions. 

The Ultrafast setup was sold as Full Fibre so surely I must have fibre and not a copper cable? (Again I don't know technical stuff so if this sounds dumb I apologise)

is Superfast able to be set up with a full fibre cable? 

[TimmyBGood]

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@LeoTroy92 wrote:

The Ultrafast setup was sold as Full Fibre so surely I must have fibre and not a copper cable? 

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Not if it was Ultrafast 1 (150Mbs) using G.fast technology: that's copper into the property.  That actually makes more sense because reverting from G.fast to FTTC is possible (albeit with an unpleasant delay, as you've discovered)

Did the Hub connection come from a passive wall socket or an Openreach ONT (powered wall box)?