BT FTTC Opt 1 v 2 Speed Madness?

Last year I switched from another ISP to BT FTTC Option 1 and achieved speens of 25 - 36Mbps down / 1.6 up.

In mid-April 2012 I upgraded to BT FTTC Opt 2. The down speed DROPPED slightly, the up speed remained (apparently) capped at 1.6.

I raised a couple of queries with BT, who eventually told me that the Opt 2 service was provided at higher frequencies and that, due to radio/electrical interference within 10 miles, I would never receive the 54.8/13.2 as advised in their 'Welcome' letter.

So, I downgraded back to the Option 1 service.

Imagine my astonishment when the down speeds remained in the 29-35Mbps range but the up speeds rocketed to 8Mbps!

Is it me or do BT FTTC not know which settings to tweak centrally or at the various exchanges?

Our standard Infinity package gives you the opportunity to browse at superfast speeds:

up to 38Mb download speeds
up to 9.5Mb upload speeds
40GB usage allowance

Or for faster all-round speeds and more flexibility upgrade to our unlimited package:

up to 76Mb download speeds
up to 19Mb upload speeds
unlimited usage allowance

Upstream - on 2Mbps you will only ever see 1.6xx Mbps and for the 10Mbps a maximum of 8Mbps.

When you changed in mid-April there was a minor band-plan change which, some users are reporting, has caused a small drop in downstream speed - as to why, no real answers.

An 80Mbps service does use higher frequencies along side those used for a 40Mbps service - in fact they could both use the full spectrum and a 40Mbps cap placed on your line. Noise/interference will cause issues but I doubt that is a major cause if you were originally getting 36 Mbps.

It actually looks as though they may not have actually moved you to Option2 !

Could be that the change was requested and went through but did not correctly propagate through the network but when you moved to a 40/10 the change did go right through.

Many thanks. I will give it a few weeks then re-request the upgrade to Option 2.