British Telecom Pull the Plug on our Dreams

Today is almost over. We had dreamed of it being a big day, with several simultaneous launches. It has been a big day, as well as a long day, but not in quite the way we had planned.

LMAX were due to launch MultiCharts today. I blogged about it on our Trading Gurus website at 10:22 BST. Then I announced it on LinkedIn. Then I posted a link to our announcement on the Trading Gurus private Skype group, and then hit the return key on a further message to the same group . Skype said the time was 12:32 BST, but their little spinning circle kept on saying “Not delivered yet….”. Then the internet light on our BT2700HGV broadband router turned red.

Skype eventually started working again late in the afternoon, and a member of another group on there informed me that:

BT had a major outage in Birmingham which took out most of the country…..not me tho’ 🙂

BT’s outage certainly took out our particular portion of South West England. I’ve been phoning all the BT helpline numbers I have a record of regularly ever since that red light turned on, and I’ve finally managed to speak to a nice man called Andy. It is now well after 11 PM. Andy told me he thought it was a “backbone” issue. He also said that even after broadband connectivity was eventually restored many BT Business Broadband users with static IP addresses, like us here at Marketing Dreams, had been allocated the wrong one.

I told Andy that whatever the cause of the problem, it had cost my business a quantity of £ with several noughts in it. He said he would ask his supervisor, Pasquale McNamara, to call me back. I said OK, but it would need to be before half past eleven because I’d be heading for bed then. Andy said that if Pasquale was tied up until then they would hand matters over to the Day Team in the morning, and I should expect a call from them shortly after that.

Night night.

 

3 thoughts on “British Telecom Pull the Plug on our Dreams

  1. Here’s a slight variation on the same theme from the BT Business service status updates page. Note the password must be upper case according to this version:

    You will need your username and password.
    1. Switch off your PC
    2. Switch power off to Router for 3 minutes then switch back on
    3. Wait 5 minutes to allow Router time to stabilise
    4. Switch PC back on
    5. Open internet browser
    6. If still unable to access the internet follow steps below:
    7. Log into Router home page
    for BT Business supplied equipment type the following in the address line:
    BT Business Hub 192.168.1.254
    for non BT equipment please refer to your supplier
    8. Click on settings tab
    9. Click on Broadband
    10. Click on link configuration
    11. You will now be able to see your username and password fields
    12. Please change the username details that appear before the @ symbol as follows:
    bt_test_user @XXXXXXXXXX (you must insert underscore _ in the name as shown)
    13. Please leave password field blank unless prompted in which case enter ADSL (upper case)
    14. Scroll to bottom of page and click on save
    15. If prompted for Router password please input if not known click on “forgot password” link
    16. This will connect the router on test details and the internet light will change to green
    17. Repeat from step 7 above and change user name and password back to your own details.

  2. Pingback: Would Artificially Intelligent Agents Assist British Telecom? |Marketing Dreams

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