As of 11.30 am (1st April 2010) there appears to be a problem with broadband in the Corfe Castle and Worth Matravers area.
We are awaiting a response from our ISP and will update this post with any news/info.
Unfortunately, this is not an April Fools, and we would be interested to know if anybody else is having similar problems (please leave comment below).
Note: if you are having problems, please report it to your own ISP so that the problem will ‘hopefully’ be fixed ASAP.
Update – 12.33 pm Service has returned to normal (whatever that means). There is no explanation yet, hopefully our ISP will be able to inform us of the reason.
Update – 13.05 pm BT acknowledged a fault in the Corfe Castle area, but were unclear as what was causing the problem!
Update – 13.31 pm BT have said there is an Internet problem in the Dorset Area affecting 01929 and 01305 dialling codes:
Dialling codes affected: 01929, 01305
Estimated time to resolve: 2hrs
We are aware of a temporary problem in the Dorset area that may be causing some users difficulties accessing the Internet. Our engineers are working to resolve this problem and we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Update – 14.37 pm – Looks like the fault has been fixed, but latest update suggests it affected most of south Dorset – area codes affected: 0130, 01300, 01305, 01308, 01929!
Update – 16.30 pm – BT have said this mornings outage was due to a “power issue” in the Salisbury area (see comments below for details).
All,
I can only reiterate David’s comments:
Please contact your ISP as soon as you start having any problems.
I arrived home this morning and found no internet. Upon contacting my ISP got told to change my filters etc etc to which I replied “NO WAY!”
(My ISP have arranged for a BT engineer to visit and explore the problems next Tuesday – I told them it is a waste of time as it is at the exchange but if they want to waste their time and money so be it!)
The problems are firmly in BT’s court. The service that we are getting is totally intolerable currently.
Can I suggest a public meeting in Corfe for the residents to air their views to their MP and a representative of BT?
Hi Nick –
I live in Worth Matravers and help David run this site. We share the same ISP (http://www.fast.co.uk/) but are on different local exchanges (we believe the Worth exchange “piggy-backs” on to the Corfe exchange). We have been having problems with our broadband connections – mainly inconsistent download speed – for about five months now. Fast.co.uk have been great but they seem to have reached the point where there is little else they can do. BT also want to send an engineer to our homes but we’re refusing because there is nothing wrong with our lines. As you say, the problem is definitely BT/exchange related.
It’s the inconsistency that is driving me mad – as I type this my download speed is anything from 2.5 – 6.5 Mbps – throughput is yo-yoing all over the place. It makes using the web, particularly video, unbearable.
We need to draw as much attention to this issue as possible – and to this website. It seems to be the only way we’re going to get BT to do something about it.
All,
I have just heard from BT – todays problem was due to a “power issue” in the Salisbury area which was out of their control. (The problem was “not specific” to the 01929 area but all across Dorset and classed as a “major power outage”.)
I can only reiterate to everyone, please contact your ISP as soon as you see problems – the situations are monitored by the number of calls ISP’s get.
Hi Nick, thanks for the update – sounds like most of Dorset was out for about an hour.
This is the 3rd time in some 6 weeks that we’ve lost Internet access for a number of hours. I agree with the comment re. inconsistency. Despite multiple reports of problems it appears that BT engineers are dispatched to houses to check the local link when there’s whole villages without access. A terrible waste of time and money.
I’d support requesting a meeting with BT if nothing more than to show the impact these problems are having across the area.
The amazing thing is that they are supposedly planning to improve access to the Weymouth area in time for 2012 but my guess would be that this will not include our part of Dorset !
Hi Tony, thanks for your comment – unfortunately in this instance I think the fault was out of BT’s hands as it appears to have been a “power issue” (power-cut) in the Salisbury area which knocked out broadband for most of Dorset. The frustrating thing is that we couldn’t find out what the problem was till after it was fixed again!
We are thinking of having an informal meeting to discuss the underlying issues in the Isle of Purbeck – possible meeting in a Pub in Corfe to start with? More info on this will be posted here soon.
Regarding the Olympics upgrades in the Weymouth/Portland area – we are somehow linked to this, as the Major Service Outage (MSO) that caused problems across Purbeck on the 22nd February, was caused by a problem at the Portland exchange. But I suspect you are right, we probably wont see any real benefit from the upgrades here.
I’m completely fed up with the inconsistency of my download speed, which is currently fluctuating between 1 and 4 Mbps every few seconds. The quality of broadband in Purbeck is unacceptable. There’s only one word to describe BT and their refusal to acknowledge that something fundamental is wrong: incompetent.