Many thanks for the reply. I didn't realise the resetting procedure was as simple as turning off and on before! It does seem as though my inferior phone line is causing the trouble though so unfortunately it looks as though the only way I'll achieve a faster connection is to move house! Am I right in thinking that Infinity (if it ever comes to my area) won't improve the situation as I'll still ultimately be relying on my phone line.

I will try and get BT to at least look at the line if the resetting after the initial 10 day period doesn't improve things, Thanks again.

Many thanks, I will ensure that I follow those steps on the tenth day. I can't imagine that resetting will improve the speed as it seems the phone line is the problem but it's worth a try.

It just gives it a nice clean restart ... It may not improve it, but I know of cases where it has.

Am I right in thinking that Infinity (if it ever comes to my area) won't improve the situation as I'll still ultimately be relying on my phone line.

The Infinity service from BT Retail is just their name for the provision of Openreach GEA (generic Ethernet access) where the DS throughput will be >= 15 Mbps. You are subscribed to the BT Retail service which is offered to those whose line quality or length precludes the DS throughput speed of >= 15 Mbps. You are still using the Openreach GEA product. In other words, it is all a marketing "smoke and mirrors" effect.

Without moving house, there are only two ways for your current situation to be improved:

(1) Openreach repair / replace the D-side cabling (from the PCP to your house) which, although being within specification for a telephony service, is detrimental to the FTTC VDSL2 signal. For that to occur, you would need to finance the work.

(2) You are eventually provided with a FTTP service. (A future event.)

I reset the modem and hub and the speed was exactly the same as before. I moved the phone from the Openreach socket and connected it to a different phone socket. When I used the phone the broadband disconnected. Is this another sign of a fault with the line? I have 4 different phone sockets in the house on the number the broadband is connected to, am I right in thinking that the higher number of phone sockets, the lower the line quality is or is the number of sockets not significant to reducing the line quality?

This morning I carried out a speed test and the download speed has now dropped down to 2.1 Mb from 3 Mb! Is it possible that the broadband disconnecting last night when experimenting with the different phone socket has led to BT reducing the download speed?

Many thanks again for all your help.

Lots of disconnections will cause DLM to reduce your speed as it sees this as line instability.

Using the phone should not disconnect your broadband, this is a fault and should be reported (or so I'm told)

Given that you may have an internal wiring fault and reading through the thread I couldn't see that you had tried using a test socket to connect.

If you have a split face master socket can you unscrew the bottom half of the socket and plug your modem into the test socket and see if that makes a difference?

If this improves things you can start troubleshooting your home wiring, micro filters, phone equipment etc.

When the broadband faceplate has been removed do any of the phone sockets in the house still work? If yes, they are wired wrong, as removing faceplate should disable them.

Original BT install engineer for the fibre service should have checked that.

I am a little concerned. As this is a FTTC installation, there should have been a SSFP fitted at the NTE5/A.

It reads as if there has been an incorrect installation, which should now be rectified by Openreach.

Many thanks for all the replies. I am not very technically minded so am not totally sure what "SSFP fitted at the NTE5/A" means. I am getting an engineer out to hopefully sort out the problem. I haven't been online much recently as the 2 MBps speed isn't really fast enough to spend too much time browsing and whole idea of getting FTTC installed has caused a lot more fuss than I was expecting.

Broadly speaking, it seems as though either the line coming into the house (outside of my control) is poor quality and causing interference, the extensions running inside the house are poor quality and causing interference (these can be disconnected to hopefully resolve the problem) or the fact that the installation was not carried out properly.

I am hoping that the engineer will soon recognise what's causing the problem and sort it out so I can get in the region of the original 10 MBps. Apart from explaining the problem to the engineer, is there anything else I should ask him to check/carry out?

Many thanks again