Wanadoo punter still without broadband

Other users victim of LLU migration too

A Wanadoo UK customer who has been left without broadband for more than seven weeks after his line was migrated to LLU has now complained to industry trade group ISPA.

The Manchester man (name withheld) was told he was being shunted to Wanadoo's local loop unbundling (LLU) platform in January. Ever since then, though, his broadband connection has been dead and the ISP has failed to stay in touch.

And despite promises by Wanadoo that the France Telecom-owned ISP is "fully equipped to deal with these [problems] and is working closely with BT Openreach to resolve any problems as soon as they are brought to our attention" he is still without broadband.

"Thought I would give you an update on the on going saga with Wanadoo," he told us. "Well, it's been seven weeks and a day and still no connection. Wanadoo again promised to call me back last Friday but still nothing. I have now contacted the ISPA with my complaint. I will see what happens."

Indeed, since El Reg first ran this story we've received a dozen or so emails pretty much saying the same thing. Such as this one: "My service fell over at the end of January as Wanadoo attempted LLU upgrade. Since then, I've made at least at least 40 calls and been on the phone for at least 20 hours being given conflicting stories by Wanadoo support, and having to constantly re-explain the issues to a huge variety of techies."

And this one: "Since Wanadoo tried to upgrade me to LLU in London in January I have received intermittent service. Promises made by tech support to call back have failed and vague promises of compensation have not materialised. Wanadoo has written to me to assure me that my problems have been escalated, yet there is no progress on diagnosing or solving the issues. There have been several failed call backs."

And this one: "My line got upgraded in mid December, from when I have had intermittent connection issues. Then over the past week I have had no service at all. I finally managed to get a line test from Wanadoo this week, and lo and behold there's a problem at the exchange."

Asked to comment, a spokeswoman for Wanadoo told us: "LLU is a new and complex technology and in common with other operators, we know that from time to time some faults will arise. We have already successfully migrated tens of thousands of customers to the new Wanadoo network and only a very small number of customers have experienced any problems.

"We deal with each case on an individual basis and therefore can not give you any further information to do with timing, but of course we are working to resolve any problems as quickly as we can," she said. ®