Broadband. How much room is left ?

[Shayne]

The copper works they just throttle it down welcome to globalization with its forced sell ethics .

 

[Dave2000]

Broadband was not that bad here until the satellite for SKY was moved or replaced, internet was just for email, sat signal dropped and satellite dish suppliers found themselves lightening peoples pockets by over a THOUSAND euro's for a huge sat dish!! Then the signal was 'tuned' again the huge dishes now not that good, so many ISP's found themselves inundated for people using Android boxes, for broadband so they could watch 'free' channels like BBC1 ect. A year later and the new Android boxes need a better signal, so a different box is needed, people were happy for another year and then 'Filmon' stopped broadcasting unless you pay, you do see a pattern here right?

My new home (moving into tommorow ) has a medium sized dish, I don't really want the roof terrace looking like Jodrell Bank just to get a signal, be interesting what my options are once settled in.

Regards

Dave

 

[Dave2000]

I get 165mps average download and 12mps average upload so can't really complain

165 down? Jeez that's going some or typo?

Regards

Dave

 

[LC80tim]

165 down? Jeez that's going some or typo?

Regards

Dave

My Speed test Result - Download 163.28 Mbps - Upload 10.59 Mbps - Ping 10 Ms. What's yours? #SpeedSmart

Just did a test and a little down on norm lol and no not a typo

 

[Dave2000]

Impressive,

Download around 10mb but can be as low as..........well 0!

Depends on:

Time of day.
Day of week.
Holidays versus non holidays.
Someone up the road leaving their garage door open...........you get the idea.

Regards

Dave

 

[LC80tim]

That test is on wifi to my iPad Air for reference

 

[frank rabbets]

When I do a speed test it often just says"connection error". Zero download speed.

 

[Chris]

Already said this but the cabinet to copper to house bit is capable of carrying very high capacity- it's not a limiting factor. Copper straight from the exchange over several miles certainly is. But the fibre to cabinet offer is not a cheap cop out. Effectively your exchange is now as near as your closest cabinet. Whether it gets throttled back or not is a different argument. If you think about it the cables from your modem to the master socket are probably the thinnest in the whole system but no one is suggesting that you need to upgrade those. The cables to your house are positively huge compared to those

 

[Shayne]

I agree with that Chris i reckon they just want to do away with the maintenance cost of the copper network and when they have forced enough people over to fibre at a very tidy profit they will cut the copper flow and switch everyone over free of charge .

Squeezing a profit out of a long overdue network overhaul is all it is . It's just a shame its being done at cost to user frustration and pocket .

 

[frank rabbets]

An Openreach broadband engineer has just been and has seen my broadband drop out. He has tested all the equipment in the house and exchange and cannot find a fault. He suspects it must be Talk Talk equipment that they keep in the exchange but cannot prove it so no progress has been made. If I put my post code into the Openreach question "Is there Fibre in my area" it says good news yes but in fact they will not connect me to it as the cabinet is not far from the exchange !!

 

[Shayne]

We were without internet for about 2 weeks while moving from talktalk to plusnet Frank i'm glad i did .

 

[frank rabbets]

As I understand it the Broadband providers all have their own equipment in the exchange and I think openreach only do connections and cables. If I change provider I assume they will be swapping over equipment and therefore I might solve the problem. Is that what you found Shayne ?

 

[Shayne]

Talktalk simply refused to accept there was a problem . Plusnet despite my having to go through the whole rigmarole of pretending to check computer settings and making sure the router is plugged in were determined to fix the problem .
The first engineer fixed the telegraph pole at the end of the street and it was a hallelujah moment for me . But once i got used to having better internet hanging pages and resetting the router after just a few weeks good service became irritating .
2 more engineers said no fault found and so it was fixed at the exchange ...... for a couple of weeks despite promises to lock in my settings their end .

They fixed it every time though .

As i said i have now surrendered to whichever German company that owns BT and opted to upgrade to fibre on the understanding that it takes 10 days to settle in leaving me 4 days to quit Plusnet with a full refund .

It's my last ditch effort before having Virgin installed

 

[Dave2000]

@Shayne, I thought Telefonica (Spain) purchased the controlling share of BT?

Regards

Dave

 

[Shayne]

I'm happy to take your word for it Dave i mean it's not like Adolf EU might own Telephonica as well ...... is it

 

[Rob Cowell]

@Shayne, I thought Telefonica (Spain) purchased the controlling share of BT?

Regards

Dave

Telefonica bought O2. A few years after BT had de-merged it. Telefonica have no share in BT as far as I am aware.

 

[Rob Cowell]

As i said i have now surrendered to whichever German company that owns BT

Is that a reference to T-Mobile holding about 12% of the shares? I'm not certain but I assume that is down to the merger with EE.

 

[Chris]

Frank, I'm sorry to say that if you'd mentioned Talk Talk in your first post, I might have said Ahh, I think I see the problem. Don't Talk Talk own Landrover?

 

[Dave2000]

Telefonica bought O2. A few years after BT had de-merged it. Telefonica have no share in BT as far as I am aware.

Thanks for that Rob, I knew something went on but was not sure, @Shayne ignore me mate, talking out of my hat, no change there then!

Regards

Dave

 

[GeekOKent]

As I understand it the Broadband providers all have their own equipment in the exchange and I think openreach only do connections and cables. If I change provider I assume they will be swapping over equipment and therefore I might solve the problem. Is that what you found Shayne ?

Not all. Some do. Like talk talk and sky( again only in some places, its called llu where an ISO has their own equipment in the exchange and lease lines to and from the exchange from BT ).

The whole setup is mad complex with different products and contention rates and over commit ratings etc. Essentially going with a BT owned brand in places with bad connectivity like PlusNet can help make it easier. On the other hand is like Zen as well as Andrews&Arnolds are far more clued up and will help on the technical side with custom profiles for specific lines etc.

What you really want is to get your modem as close to, if not into, the master socket to the house. This can also make a huge difference. Then ask the ISP to tune the profile for stability rather than speed. You might get slower but it should stick a lot more with fewer line drops. Then another thing to check is use a good ADSL splitter. Some of the cheap £1 ones can themselves be causing static issues. Finally, you can likely setup a retrain profile on the modem itself. Depends on which one you have, and how much admin it lets you do.

This is literally just the tip of the iceberg, but a few things to start with.

You might also want to check with Sam knows about the real status of your exchange and cabinet you connect to. Sometimes, rare but I know 2 people who lucked out, if you are in a dense area there might be an option to get a line from a different cabinet. Typically inner London like density.

Finally make sure your modem isn't hacked or at risk. When you think the net is slow, you might just be actually participating in a bot net flood attack somewhere, and that is eating up all your internet speeds.