Openreach records have wrong postcode - how to fix it?

[Graham J]

Customer has postcode ending 0AL. Customer receives bills from BT for
landline - these bills show correct postcode. Royal Mail postcode
checking website confirms postcode matches house number.

Customer has ADSL from Zen. Have ordered upgrade to FTTC from Zen.

Confirmation from Zen shows correct phone number but different house
number, and postcode ending 0BZ. This location is about a kilometre
away from postcode ending 0AL.

Zen say their information comes from "BT BROADBAND Tags On The Line
Help". It shows the correct phone number, the correct exchange (EADNM),
and the fact that the line is served from "Cabinet 10". It also
suggests FTTC would achieve 80/20 performance.

Given the geography I suspect the number is not actually served from
Cabinet 10 at all. However, if it is, then the customer is unlikely to
get the speed that is suggested on the "Tags" page.

Is there any way to find out the exact location of "Cabinet 10", please?

What part of BT would understand the situation and be able to correct
the records?

TIA

--
Graham J

[Graham J]

To follow up my own post, the system from BT that Zen use to get Tag
information is called ORDI.

--
Graham J

[Davey]

This might help

https://community.bt.com/t5/Broadband/ct-p/BB

--
Davey.

[Martin Brown]

What does DSL checker say for their phone number?

http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/

In rural locations you can get bizarre postcoding due to individual
houses being historically lumped in with somewhere else. A single house
in our village has the misleading postcode 2LF for instance which binds
to a physical location about a mile down the (bendy) road.

It causes havoc with people driving on GPS systems since the real 2LF
code location is a destination that people expect to be able to see!

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Graham J]

Interesting - it confirms the line is wired to Cabinet 10 but does not
show the customer's postcode.

It is a subset of the data shown by ORDI.

--
Graham J

[Roderick Stewart]

On Wed, 24 Jun 2015 11:18:04 +0100, Graham J <gra...@invalid.com>
wrote:

I had a very similar problem when I transferred from another ISP to
Zen, in that my postcode happens to include a numeral 0 but BT had it
in their database as a letter O. In the end it was Zen who sorted it
out. I suspect their agent may have previously worked at BT and knew
their system so knew what to ask for. My suggestion would be that
you're likely to get more help from Zen than from BT.

The best way to find the exact location of a particular cabinet is to
start with Google Street View, then go for a stroll to take a closer
look. That's how I found where mine is.

Rod.

[Graham J]

Do the cabinets show the identification number somewhere? I'm going to
the site tomorrow so will have a walk round.

--
Graham J

[Roderick Stewart]

On Wed, 24 Jun 2015 16:28:57 +0100, Graham J <gra...@invalid.com>
wrote:

>> The best way to find the exact location of a particular cabinet is to
>> start with Google Street View, then go for a stroll to take a closer
>> look. That's how I found where mine is.
>>
>
>
>Do the cabinets show the identification number somewhere? I'm going to
>the site tomorrow so will have a walk round.

Yes. They should have numbers stencilled on them, probably no more
than two digits, and if there's a manhole cover nearby it will be
marked BT, or Openreach (or if it's very old, like the one in my road,
PO). The ones with long numbers and nearby manholes marked CATV are
for Virginmedia.

If you print out a map of the area nearby and mark on it any BT
cabinets you already know about, this may help find others, because
they tend to be placed at regular intervals along main roads or side
roads just off them. Presumably the main cable routes follow the road.

If there's a particular numbered cabinet you're interested in and you
don't know of any others, you can sometimes narrow down its position
using a kind of DF technique working from the speeds given by the BT
Availability Checker webpage. Choose a few locations near where you
think it is, and note in which directions on the map the estimated
speeds increase. Then try Google Street View and hope for the best.
The images on Google may be a few years out of date and may show an
old box though it's actually been updated to fibre, so it's worth
going to look at the box itself to make sure.

Rod.

[Davey]

On Wed, 24 Jun 2015 16:00:13 +0100
Roderick Stewart <rj...@escapetime.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

> My suggestion would be that
> you're likely to get more help from Zen than from BT.

That must be a contender for Understatement of the Year!

--
Davey.

[Michael R N Dolbear]

"Davey" wrote

But perhaps BT is like the sound of no hands clapping and Zen the sound of
one hand clapping ?


--
Mike D

[Graham J]

Found the cabinet labelled 10 less than 100 metres from my customer at
postcode ending 0AL. Curiously it is just the one cabinet and it looks
very old, quite unlike any that I've seen containing FTTC equipment.
But the stencilled number looks new!

Found the property at postcode ending 0BZ. Occupier reports several
people trying to deliver to that address when the real recipient is
elsewhere in the village.

--
Graham J

[Davey]

All my experiences with Zen are of the two-hand clapping type.

--
Davey.

[Martin Brown]

It might be worth their while checking to see which postcode database
has their postcode incorrectly. Or it could just be one of those crazy
anomolies that date back to the layout of farms and farmland.

Be worth the other guy putting his phone number into DSL checker too.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Graham J]

It is the ORDI database at:

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/updates/briefings/generalbriefings/generalbriefingsarticles/gen01714.do

... that is wrong. Zen put in the phone number and ORDI gives them
cabinet info, and postcode. The cabinet info is likely to be correct
per my site visit yesterday. The people at postcode ending 0BZ are a
kilometre away and if they are served from this cabinet they would
likely not get a usable VDSL signal.

The BT postcode checker gives the correct postcode for the house, which
matches the details shown on the customer's landline bill from BT.

--
Graham J

[R. Mark Clayton]

AIUI in most locations BT have installed new larger steel cabinets alongside or near older cast iron cabinets. There were a number of reasons for this: -

Old cabinets are often full.

Old cabinets are leaky and unsuitable for the mains AC required for FTTC.

Old cabinets are too small for new (500mm rack mounted?) equipment.

Old cabinets often contain fragile and corroded aluminium wiring prevalent in the 70's that does not like being disturbed too much.

Maybe in a remote village location the original cabinet was big enough and had enough room left for the equipment required.

By comparison early Nynex cabinets were huge ~2m(w)x1.5m(h)x30cm. One near me has had gas leaking out of it for over a decade and yes this has been reported several times.

[Jono]

Graham J has brought this to us :
> Graham J wrote:

<snip>

>
> To follow up my own post, the system from BT that Zen use to get Tag
> information is called ORDI.

ORDI isn't a system per se. It stands for OpenReach Data Integrity.

Zen's agents should have individually registered with and can send the
CLI to OR's Data Integrity Robot by email (ORDIRobot). This compares
all systems and raises corrective orders if it finds any discrepancies.

Zen could go a stage further than this and send the CLI plus the
correct address to the Robot which will flag the email for manual
intervention. If the ORDI Team can find an address match they will
manually raise corrective orders.

[Graham J]

Ah, I thought that somebody at Zen should be able to communicate with
the ORDI robot.

So for the moment:

1) I know the exact location of cabinet 10 - although I don't know
whether its number is unique!

2) My customer is less than 100 metres from the cabinet, which bodes
well for getting VDSL to work.

3) I have made friends with the people at the wrong postcode and house
name, and will leave a note on their door for the Openreach engineer to
call the landline number to gain access.

Will let you know more after Thursday afternoon ...

--
Graham J

[Kráftéé]

"R. Mark Clayton" wrote in message
news:f09cccd0-c214-4692...@googlegroups.com...

Wrong on most counts (if not all) the larger/extra cabs are being put
into place to contain the 240v powered FTTC equipment with
connections going to and from the original cab. Openreach engineers
are not (as a whole) trained to deal with high voltages (240v AC is
classed as high) so are not allowed to enter any CAB with a mains
supply in it. Even if the old/original box is full all that happens
is another box is placed next to it and a route put in place between
the 2 (I've seen both above ground pipe and below ground link
cables).

The time has not come for it all to be contained in one cab and I
expect that it will never happen for the present FTTC product. Now as
for the next generation and higher speeds things appear to be working
out differently with the possibility of having (much smaller) boxes
even at the top of poles (if not in the box at the bottom).

[Graham J]

wrote:

Given that the cabinet labelled 10 stands by itself, with no adjacent
cabinet, is this consistent with the "Tags" report obtained by Zen from
BT that confirms the phone line will support FTTC?

Or does this mean that there is another cabinet also marked 10 at
another location?

Or is the possibility of having smaller boxes on poles or in the
existing cabinet now here?

--
Graham J

[Andy Burns]

Graham J wrote:

> Given that the cabinet labelled 10 stands by itself, with no adjacent
> cabinet, is this consistent with the "Tags" report obtained by Zen from
> BT that confirms the phone line will support FTTC?
>
> Or does this mean that there is another cabinet also marked 10 at
> another location?

I wouldn't expect duplicate cab numbers on the same exchange, if they're
on the border of two exchange areas you'd *hope* the person assigning
the numbers would keep identical numbers away from each other.

Any recent looking trench or manhole near the old cab?

[Graham J]

An update for you:

The due date (yesterday) I went to the site arriving about 12:40.
Openreach (actually Kelly) engineer already at cabinet 10, just about to
open its doors.

Pointed out the house he should go to, about 100 metres away. He wasn't
worried that the postcode information he had been given was wrong.

As he opened the cabinet I noticed it only contained joints, no DSLAM or
similar electronic equipment.

Once the VDSL modem was installed I ran a speed test - measured about
26Mbits/sec download fairly consistently. The product is Zen Fibre 1,
so capped at 38 Mbits/sec - but the measurement suggests the green
cabinet containing the DSLAM is about 1 km away.

The exchange is Downham Market (code EADNM) poscode PE389NN which is
5.3km by road to my customer. Historic measurements of ADSL shows
3.6Mbits/sec at its best - often lower because of intermittent noise on
the line - this suggests at least 4km - and it is possible that the
cable route is more direct than the road route.

I drove the most obvious road route from cabinet 10 and saw no evidence
of a green cabinet at about 1km distance - so I've no idea where the
DSLAM cabinet is actually situated.

--
Graham J

[Andy Burns]

Graham J wrote:

> As he opened the cabinet I noticed it only contained joints, no DSLAM or
> similar electronic equipment.

If you owned expensive MSANs, would *you* let kelly at them? BT's own
engineers seem to handle the installation of tie cables between the old
cabinet and the fibre cabinet, kelly just jumper your line over and back
to the new cabinet from within the old cabinet.

[Andy Burns]

Graham J wrote:

> I drove the most obvious road route from cabinet 10 and saw no evidence
> of a green cabinet at about 1km distance

There's nothing that says the fibre cabinet has to be *nearer* to the
exchange than the POTS cabinet ...

[Graham J]

Fair comment, but to expand on that:

From cabinet 10 to the exchange there is a road (Lady Drove), going
roughly east. At about 1.5km it crosses quite a large river (The Great
Ouse) and its associated relief channel, then a railway. This is the
route I travelled looking for the fibre cabinet; and it would be the
most obvious route along which to bring cables and fibres.

From cabinet 10 roughly south-west at about 1km there is a very small
community of about a dozen houses. At this point the road (Barroway
Drove) joins the A1122. I also travelled this route (it is the location
of the "wrong" postcode) and there is no green cabinet there at all.

From cabinet 10 roughly north-east the road (Barroway Drove) continues
for perhaps 500m then changes direction - several times - eventually
leading to a river crossing (The Causeway) some 3km north of Downham
Market. The fibre could arrive via this route, but I can see no
geographic justification for it.

There are no roads in any other direction from cabinet 10.

--
Graham J

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo <mmpg1j$16u$1...@news.datemas.de>, Kráftéé
<kráftéé@notathometoday.com> escribió:

>"R. Mark Clayton" wrote in message

>Wrong on most counts (if not all) the larger/extra cabs are being put
>into place to contain the 240v powered FTTC equipment with
>connections going to and from the original cab. Openreach engineers
>are not (as a whole) trained to deal with high voltages (240v AC is
>classed as high) so are not allowed to enter any CAB with a mains
>supply in it.

I've seen open FTTC cabs (the newer steel type with the vents and the
"Fibre broadband is here" stickers). The mains/HV stuff seems to be in
a separate partition of the cabinet with its own door, presumably to
allow OR engineers to work safely on the LV side.

Personally, I wouldn't class mains as HV, but there you go.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

[Michael R N Dolbear]

"Mike Tomlinson" wrote

> Kráftéé <kráftéé@notathometoday.com> escribió:

>>Wrong on most counts (if not all) the larger/extra cabs are being put
>>into place to contain the 240v powered FTTC equipment with
>>connections going to and from the original cab. Openreach engineers
>>are not (as a whole) trained to deal with high voltages (240v AC is
>>classed as high) so are not allowed to enter any CAB with a mains
>>supply in it.

>I've seen open FTTC cabs (the newer steel type with the vents and the
"Fibre broadband is here" stickers). The mains/HV stuff seems to be in
a separate partition of the cabinet with its own door, presumably to
allow OR engineers to work safely on the LV side.

>Personally, I wouldn't class mains as HV, but there you go.

In legalese or at rather in EU-speak mains is low voltage being is between
50 and 1000 volts for alternating current (AC) or between 75 and 1500 volts
for direct current (DC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Voltage_Directive



-- --
Mike D