| Posted: Tuesday 17th February 2004 by
Sam |
Whilst today and yesterday seem to have been bumper days for registrations, many people are still wondering where their registrations have got to.
First and foremost, it is important to remember that registrations can take days to appear - they are not instant! The reason for this will be explained later. Secondly, telephone lines that would not be able to receive ADSL (i.e. have a "red" flag on BT's system) are not counted in the registration total. Thirdly, registrations for telephone lines which may be able to receive ADSL (i.e. have an "amber" status) only count 75% of the time. So if you submit 4 amber registrations, only 3 will count towards the total.
The subject of how registrations are validated has also come up quite often in questions. BT validate them based upon the telephone number and postcode they are sent from the ISP. The main test here is just to check that the postcode and telephone number refer to the same address. Further checks (such as looking for a continuous range of phone numbers, or an extremely large amount without any additional details) are also used to check for dodgy registrations.
The delay in registrations appearing can be caused by any of the above, but also by the following: I and most ISP's send registrations to BT Wholesale on a daily basis - this is done in a bulk format. Unlike individual registrations that are entered into BT's system, bulk ones are checked and then processed manually by a person at the other end. This, combined with ISP and validation errors, is almost always the cause of delayed registrations.
On a completely seperate note, participation in the faster broadband survey is going okay, but if you haven't seen it yet, check it out here. |