BT Broadband Issues around Gabriel St (Oct ‘21)

Is anyone else experiencing issues with Wi-Fi today (lack of?)? I’m near Gabriel street and haven’t had any Wi-Fi since around 2 pm

Same issue here. We live nearby. We had the problem since 5pm yesterday. We have BT fibre and scheduled an engineer to check, but not until Friday morning.

I contacted our provider and they said they’ll contact BT to send an engineer, so it sounds like this might take a while (sob!)

Can your devices see your wifi SSID? If so can they connect to it but there is no internet? Is this issue confined to BT Internet?

Have you tried to plug into your router to check whether it is a wifi issue or an issue between the router and the internet?

Some more information may be able to get you some help.

I’m on Sunderland Road and only have standard TalkTalk broadband but it is normally pretty reliable. However unusually over the last couple of weeks I have been having quite a lot of dropouts, although most of the time it usually comes back straight away before I’ve finished running a line test. A few times the line test has identified a track fault but it has then come straight back .Yesterday around 1.25pm the line dropped and didn’t come back straight away. When I ran a line test it showed a track fault again and opened a case for further investigation but then came back shortly after. I then received a text message from Talk Talk advising they had tested my line and it looked like it was working as it should be but to contact them if that wasn’t the case. But so far since then it’s been fine!

Chris - can you confirm your problem was the line and not your wifi. And if it was wifi which frequency range. Some use 5G which shouldn’t be affected by any network deploying mobile 5G - but we do need to identify which side of the router is causing the problem.

Did it effect any device directly connected to the router by cable, not wirelessly.

The first couple of posts appear to be about a cabinet or connection issue around Gabriel St and later ones about something more general in Perry Vale. I’ve updated the thread title in line with the first couple of posts. The later one might be worth a topic split.

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for you comments. I assumed it was my line dropping (the internet light on the router turns red) but all my devices (laptop, mobile phone and Amazon Fire stick) connect to the router wirelessly as the position of the master phone socket which limits where I can put the router means it’s not practical to connect any of them by cable on a permanent basis! But next time it happens I’ll connect one by cable to see if it make’s any difference.

I’ve checked my current network properties and it’s showing Protocol Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Network band 5 GHz.

It does sound like a broadband issue and not a wifi one.

However, with the proliferation of competing wifi networks from your neighbours sharing the same frequencies and all watching Netflix simultaneously can lead to some congestion and lower throughput. The 5G frequency range was introduced to add capacity. 5G is great if you have a one room flat with paper walls but is less good at penetrating thick walls than the old range. Your device maybe silently switching between bands and even between IPv4 & IPv6. If you don’t know the difference, don’t ask. PCs and phones as wll as network engineers can sometimes get very confused. Switching the device wifi off and on is usually the solution to that.

Nothing beats a wired connection to the router and you can get flat cables that go under carpets without a bulge. Best way to diagnose broadband faults and the true speed of your broadband connection. So much faster and smoother than wifi though without the flexibility.

The other thing to watch for is correlating line drops with the weather. After heavy rain does indicate it’s between you and the exchange. I know folks with that problem. My mum had an issue in high wet winds with a tree branch scraping the telephone line to her bungalow.

Not trying to be a pedant, but it might be confusing to some readers to refer to 5GHz as 5G (which usually refers to the 5th generation mobile data network).

Ours went down on Wyleu St yesterday afternoon and only came back this afternoon. Still keeping appointment with engineer though, who is coming tomorrow. Apparently he ‘might charge us’. Any advice if he tries this? The service round here has been terrible recently- he needs to check it out for the neighbourhood, not just us. So any other examples in the surrounding area, please let me know and we’ll use it in any argument. Thanks

Thanks Stuart. Very helpful information.

Has anyone had BT fibre problems today? The LOS light has come on our fibre box, meaning loss of service. Last time it came back on within the day but it’s still out and was out this morning. We’re on Devonshire Road. Thanks!

Hi all,

Has this resolved for anyone? For the past week on Gabriel Street we’ve had no internet due to LOS Openreach issue. Have spoken to Sky, who say Openreach are aware, but OR are uncontactable about it… difficult when working from home! I haven’t seen any engineers around fixing anything.

Wondered whether others are still affected or if this is separate to the outage reported here?