BT, Broadband and SEO
BTI didn't post a blog lat week, mainly because my
Internet connection just wasn't working. I could have written it, put it on a
USB stick, and sent it my carrier
pigeon.
The problem is despite the fact i had no speed, and the connection dropped every minute or so there was nothing wrong with the line. Well according to
BT when they eventually ran the test some 14 hours after reporting the error.
I
complained some more and eventually they booked a broadband engineer to come out first thing on Monday to essentially show me nothing was wrong and charge me the fee £100 odd. Problem was the engineer came out and found a fault. Now this is were I completely lost it with
BT! Broadband engineers
only get 2 hours of time
allotted to each job, run out of time and then it has to get booked on again.
It appears this got lost in a system and the next thing was the report from
BT to say no fault found, and so it was closed. I then Email Ian Livingston The Chief Executive of the
BT Group.
This means on
Wednesday and after a lot of heated emails with Ian another engineer turned up.
Apparently because I was side stepping the
ISP, who was doing what they had to do, but was missing some power behind them to kick
BT up the backside and resolve this fault which was rapidly coming to 50 weeks old. Mr Livingston didn't like and compared it to have an issue with some food and going directly to the farmer and not back to
Tesco. It isn't the same at all after all
Tesco don't own the farm, but
BT do own the part that is causing me a big headache.
Anyway back to our issue, the engineer came out, investigated the fault on the
Wong line and investigated the fault on the right line. No problems found, then he decided if I wasn't
having issues on the voice line, we could swap pairs, between the 2 lines. Which he did. OK it has been a couple of days since and things seem to be working OK, I have some of the speed back but not all of it.
The engineer was going to go
back and request a test hole be dug in the likely place the fault was, but this was turned down due to the fact my moving the pairs around this has solved the issue. Problem is this also proves there was an error on that line that
BT could not detect! And to frank and honest was
completely ignoring the repeated issues being raised.
It also means that should this pair get damaged they have nothing to replace it with. We can only hope that H2O get on with rolling out fibre to the premises in Plymouth.
SEOI have been playing around with some free tools to improve our Search Engine Rankings. We are already
creeping up the results,
and gaining new results. So it is worth while doing.
One tool is
http://www.woorank.com/ well worth all business owners having a look at this tools.
Labels: Broadband fault, BT, phone fault, SEO
1st post of the year
Well, our first post of the year. It has been a slow start with the weather. but it has left us with some time to tie up lose ends on some new products, which we will be releasing over the next month or so.
One thing that has been in demand is for people to work remotely. A number of our customers had this in place, the problem for them was in the main it wasn't designed to work for the entire work force.
Now is the time to start to think about this and perhaps even a little bit deeper into
full disaster recovery. If you are a
Small business, do you use Microsoft Small Business server? if so why not use the Remote Web Workplace?
A short 60 second presentation is
Available from MicrosoftAlso available is a short presentation about sharing a conference call and presentation using
Microsoft Office Live MeetingBoth
utilise technology that helps with travel budgets, or ease of access if we get snowed in again.
New this month is our Disaster Recovery Solution, a very cost effective method of providing Disaster Recovery for small
businesses details are
available from our website For a small cost you can purchase seats in bundles of 6 or 12. Contact us for details.
We are starting to have discussions with a lot of our clients about how we can best improve
their use of technology to help improve their business. Still carrying out IT Audits, and
discussions with possible new clients, if you want to know more then drop me an email
martin@limbtec.comLAPTOPSHowever you dress them up, they really
don't like drinks being spilt into them, and they don't like being stood on or having things thrown at them. Basically treat them like they will break, as they will if you do any of the following.
BTWell our
BT issues keep on going on and on and on. It now appears that the shiny copper cable going from here
to the street cabinet, may not be a shiny, or
indeed contain much copper anymore.
You would have thought the
simplest solution would be to
rerun fresh copper from end to end, but apparently patching every couple of weeks or so with bits of cable is far better.
Come on
BT get your act together and get this 11 month (actually 11 months and 1 day) issue resolved.
I am intending to post this
blog every Friday PM, but this is subject to change!
Thanks for reading and more next week.
Labels: BT, disaster recovery, laptop repair in plymouth, microsoft, phone issues, sbs, small business server
A review of the year
Well, just about Evonne does a review of the year, although this year most of the TV programmes are a review of the decade.
This time last year I sat down and wondered what on earth was going to happen through 2009, we had already been hit by a couple of Bad debts, and we needed to alter the way we work. The good thing for us was at the end of 2007, and moving in to 2008 we had sorted out our marketing, refreshed our log and branding. So the answer was all we could do was try our hardest, support our customers, try and reduce costs where possible, and offer to be flexible on payments should the need arise.
And so the year started, we were hit with another couple of customers going bust, but in the main our customers were surviving reasonably well. So we started looking for more customers, we have increased our Business to Business Support customer base by 25%, this has resulted in us keeping our income slightly above the previous year, as we had lost some customers and the others were not spending as much.
We saw rapid growth in our Home User market, particularly in our laptop repairs. Replacement Screens, and replacement power jacks accounting for most of the laptop repairs.
The biggest issue we have seen a rise in, for move businesses and consumers are issues with broadband. In the main and issue arising either with the router, or mainly issues with the actual connection and the ensuring battle with the ISP, but mainly due to BT.
We had a BT Install that had the filter int he wrong place, but the main issues have been with line issues, or other BT issues, I have to add most of these occurred after most of the exchanges in Plymouth were upgraded to BT's 21CN platform. We ourselves have had an ongoing fight for 10 months, other have faired better. But int he main if I had to award a technology villain of the year it would have to go to BT. Please BT in the new year will you take note that customers do have issues and mainly these issues are with your network and not their router or extension cable. And when you run one of your tests and it doesn't run due to a complete lack of bandwidth their is an issue, and the issue is with you.
Enough of that rant, the I-phone has grown in stature and with the host of apps is probably my recommendation for a smart phone for businesses.
Microsoft released Windows 7, and should have a raft of releases in 2010 scheduled. It was a pretty flat year for releases with manufacturers perhaps holding back until people have money to spend, but this has to change next year! (look for announcements by Google and Apple in January)
Looking forward, Plymouth has some major plans ahead this summer will see FIFA visit the city to select the venues for the 2018 World cup bid, I'm sure we will all blow them away. then we just have to wait til December for the announcement of who will get the World Cup. One unusual hero in technology in the city has been the chamber of commerce. Hopefully we will start to see the plans they have produced start to come true. We may well See H2O move into the city to provide fast (and i do mean fast, faster than we currently have) Broadband to the city, by laying fibre to premises using existing conduit (Mainly the sewer system). This will help move Plymouth ahead, and may help force BT to improve the plans for Fibre to the Cabinet in the City!
Well this is my last blog post of the year. Hopefully I will post even more next year, but you can follow the day to day ramblings on twitter -
www.twitter.com/limbtecLabels: 2018, apple, BT, cable, chamber of commerce, h20, microsoft, plymouth, Twitter, world cup
BT Update
Well, my customer is off line again, despite the promise this morning of someone calling before an engineer would turn up. The engineer turned up, and a massive surprise he can't get sync. Good job I diagnosed this on Monday.
Now he believes they have
misconfigured the line.
So many issues, and yet they can't seem to just sort it our
Labels: Broadband, BT, unusable
BT & the Internet
Just to follow on from the previous post.
So yesterday out of the blue the customers Broadband started working! Yes after 2 days
BT had indeed found a fault, and had carried out a tie pair modification to get things working again.
Today we visited the site to change the router back over to their router, from our spare one we carry just in case.
Nothing, no sync, no connection nothing, we tried the spare nothing, and just to make sure we tried a brand new router. Nothing, then we changed the filter and tried again, nothing.
The customer phoned
BT Broadband, and as soon as they gave their details the broadband suddenly connected (now
I'm sure this is a
coincidence?), The customer was told yet again, nothing is wrong with the line it mus be your equipment, at which point I managed to get in on the act. When pointing out that there is nothing else connected to the=is master socket other than an
ADSL Filter, and connected to that is a broadband router, of which we have tried 6 combinations and not 1 of them was a
winner. They finally
conceded we need to run more tests, at which point the broadband died and didn't return.
Now if you can take off the faceplate of the master socket and plug it into the test socket we can run more tests. To be fair this did spark a connection, and
Internet connectivity was re-established. Then I got the story if we send an engineer out and they find a fault with your equipment we will charge you- er hello
nothing wrong with the equipment, but there is with yours.
BT you need to start some good engineering in fault rectification, honestly, work done at the exchange fixed the issue, for some 20 hours, so it is logical that the fault is with the customer.
This is like have your exhaust replaced, and when you get in start the car up it rattles. It is so obviously the fault of the driver for starting the car. The
BT question in this case would be 'have you tried a
different key, or a different driver'
Then we got on to question of Broadband faults and engineers just turning up
un announced. This DOES NOT HAPPEN' Really I know of 2 cases in the past week alone, you even get a call when you have your shopping delivered by some supermarkets?
BT Broadband, and
BT Broadband
WholeSale, and of course
BT Openreach. You need to raise your game in customer service. If the customer is seeing a fault, and it was working fine, and they have tried a filter change and a different router
YOU have an issue. You need to get it resolved, if that customer is a business, specially a micro or small business this is likely to critical to that customer. They are likely to be
losing money.
Customer stay calm, and keep contacting them. It may take months, but they will eventually find the faults and fix them.
Labels: Broadband, BT, internet, router
All things Internet
It's been a shambles in Plymouth recently.
Yesterday there were massive issues for Virgin Telecom customers in the city. Apparently the power was being taken off of exchange, and was going to be supplied by a diesel generator. However when the power was taken off the generator packed in. I have to ask would you rely on 1 generator to provide the power. I wonder if that generator is their backup generator, just in case they have a power failure! If it is then I would worry about being a Virgin telecom customer!
BT and Broadband, now this is the BT Broadband Wholesale and BT Openreach people. In February this year my Broadband was moved from the old 20CN system to the new 21CN system. With a pile of issues, I have Broadband since 2000, was 1 of the first to connect to it on my Exchange, and have a rock solid connection at ever increasing speeds. Finaaly reaching between 6 - 7.5Mbs. Then it was all moved, and ever since I have endless outages, and speed issues, resulting in my best speed last week of about 2 Mbs.
BT Broadband Wholesale couldn't find a problem on my line, it was working and because it had been connected for over 7 days there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with it? However as i pointed out, it is pointless being connected if you have no throughput, which actually happened more times than I could handle. Eventually, they ran some test and found I had an high voltage on my line, and a cross connection with someone else.
I have spent 10 months trying to get this resolved, I am now up to a blistering fast 5 Mbs still slower than I had, but at least for the last 3 days I have had a useable connection.
Yesterday I had a call from a customer who had lost there broadband, they described the lights on the router, and it obvious they didn't have an ADSL Sync light. It transpired they were moving their telephone lines back to BT, and as a thank you BT have cut their Broadband off! That was 20 hours ago, they still have no broadband this is going to cost the customer thousands of pounds their whole business is based on the internet. This sort of issue is just NOT acceptable.
A couple of weeks ago, I went ot a presentation given by the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, about connectivity. They have come up with a wonderful plan, and I personall hope the H20 (A company who run fast internet connectivity through the sewer system) do actually invest in Plymouth.
It would give another option to businesses in the city, and would enable customers to have a fail over system.
What we will be recommending to all customers, whose business is reliant on the internet is to have multiple providers and to utalise that, with a router, able to both bond the connections to give faster speed, and also able to failover to a single broadband connection.
Labels: Broadband, BT, plymouth, Virgin trouble
Pirates everywhere
Pirated softwareWe as a business loss £1000's of income every year because people use pirated software.
Now apart from it being illegal, there are reasons why you may want to spend a little.
With Pirated software you don't get any support, when it goes wrong you have to sort it out yourself. If you aren't able to or get it wrong you could end up with a box of bits, and some software on it!
We had a call recently from someone who had got hold of a Windows 7 Disc, and installed it. However he had lost everything. During the discussion about what had happened, he stated he had been passed the disc by someone, and theirs had all gone through OK!
Now we have only done 1 job for the customer and his PC is about 5-7 years old. And from memory not that powerfully equipped.
He tried to do an in place upgrade, that having failed, and phoning his Friends he then did a fresh install, reformatted the drive, and then lost all of his data. When I said he was looking at a data recovery job, and that I couldn't say how much of his data we could recover, he decided he would go away and try to reinstall the software again.
Even ignored the warning this would destroy more data??
So you can advise customers, about what they should do, but you can't make them take the advice. This has been a constant theme recently. For us it means eventually the customer will realise they are wrong and then we have to sort the issue out. But if you want advice, actually take the advice and do something about it.
Labels: Pirates, windows 7
Busy day
Another busy day
Been to lots of customers this morning, I always enjoy spending time with customers and understanding where they are going with their businesses.
This afternoon was fun, or should that be funny. I went to a seminar about the changes to Company Law that came into effect on the 1st October. You have to stay up to date.
Finished that and now supporting a customer in Portugal, technology is wonderful, if used properly.
Windows 7
So it is here!Windows 7 is here and yesterday we had endless emails regarding should I upgrade, what will I get?
So the marketing machine of Microsoft has finally got it self together and has produced a good marketing campaign for the Launch of Windows 7.
Some people, who shunned Vista, not because it wasn't any good or it didn't work, but because it was different to XP are going to concerned. The User Interface (UI) is obviously been tweaked from Vista, we would recommend that you get to grips with this UI as it isn't going to go back to the XP interface, which lets face it is the same as it was in Windows 95, and well past a make over. It works better with newer hardware in particular with the search functionality and the use of Hard Drives which may well be a terabyte or larger in size.
Our Recommendation is to get some training in how to use it.One comment we have heard from people who did make the move to Vista is "We found nothing wrong with Vista as such – but absolutely nothing beneficial about it either" Please remember Windows is the Operating System it's job is to allow you to use the programs and access features to allow you to actually do the work.
Under the HoodOK there are some good features under the hood, with the above now published, some of these new features just won't be found the home group could be a very good feature if you take your laptop home from work, it is a feature that has been mentioned to me from a customer who got his hands on a Release Candidate version of 7
All being well, and software running on it , our recommendation will be the same as it was to Vista, the changes from XP to Vista will only be built on. Likewise the changes from Vista to 7 will only be built on, keep on saying XP is the platform for me, will mean you end up with something to old to repair, and use effectively.
From the real worldFor those who followed our experience of using 7 in the real world when Microsoft released it to partners, was far from inspiring. For the first week the systems would crash 2-3 times a day.
During the weekend, and just as we were going to uninstall it we had a whole stack of Windows Updates.
I took the decision to run it for another week, and it has been running ever since (Literally, I think I have turned it off once).
It works, it hasn't altered anything really we were running Vista before.
The last word is a warning don't forget if you are administering a WSUS installation then go and add Windows 7 to the products so you have the updates.
Labels: windows 7
