BT and speed variances

Sorry if this is old hat but:

I have had very slow speeds from BT. I complained and made a fuss and low and behold my speed went from roughly 2mb to near 8mb. Everything was fine but now, slowly but surely, the speed is creeping down again and it is now 5.5mb.

Why oh why does BT inisit on this and give the excuse that my exchange is sooooooo popular that we have to share. It isnt my fault that BT have oversold their connections but it is me that has to suffer.

If I went to a Rolls Royce show room and ordered a car and when it arrived found that it was a model of what I thought I was getting because the car was so popular, would that be OK?

EDIT-I have just checked and my speed is now 4.7mb - what is going on with BT? does anyone care about it?

Edited by deleted (Tue 18-Jan-11 08:05:48)

you effectively bought a timeshare in a rolls royce - a contended best efforts service with no performance guarantee. Hence the price.

speedtester.bt.com will show if you have a problem with an IP profile or whatever, but 2 and certainly 4M are within the predefined acceptable performance ranges.

Other ISPs are available, as the BBC would say.

It could be temporary congestion at the exchange - this usually gets fixed after a while. It could be just normal BT over-selling, in which case you are another victim of their very effective advertising. Or it could be you do have a line problem either at your place or between there and the exchange.

What exchange is it? The link to what samknows would be great. That tells us a lot about what else you could get and also lets us check for some sorts of temporary congestion.

Does the slowdown happen at particular times of day? The results of a BT Performance Test would be useful, down as far as the end of the upstream speed. The text below that is useless.

And finally, if you can find your connection speeds, attenuations and noise margins from your Home Hub or other router that really helps.

Thanks for the input guys but I dont think I made my point very well. I was trying to say that I had a similar problem, shouted and screamed, got the engineer in after I was told it was a fault at my end (which he proved wasnt the case) and eventually they changed my profile and I was getting near 8mb. NOW, after a cooling down period my speeds are slipping again. So do I have to go through the same rigmarole to go back to the speed that I was experiencing?

All I want is consistency of supply, not a megaspeed demon, they are quick enough to take money so why show you what is possible and then reduce performance without any notification or apology?

Do BT not know when demand will outstrip supply - that cant be right surely as that would mean bad management and lack of forethought and no leadership!

Sorry, without the info I asked for nobody will be able to suggest a solution. As I said, it could even be temporary congestion at your exchange, in which case the scheduled fix date may be available.

But I assure you there is a solution, though if you are still within a 12/18 month contract period with BT then it would cost you to avail yourself of it.

You should be so lucky. 5mb and you're complaining! Living 6km from the exchange BT told me that the best I might expect would be 1mb and for 6 years, with the odd blip which they corrected when told about it, it has remained at about 750kbps to 920kbps. Nothing great but at least much better than dial-up.
Then before Christmas it dropped to about 230kbps, then 125kbps where it has remained constantly. On the 4th Jan BT said it would get better in 10 days time but nothing has happened. Like you I object to paying the full amount for a product which falls well below the standard that you were offered and nobody even takes the trouble to explain what is wrong and why it cannot be put right. The final straw is that the BT speed tester will not work. After taking an age to download, the page it tells me that the number is not recognised!!!
How can I get through to someone at BT who understands the local problem and can tell me what is happening. The call centre people on 0800 111 4567 are ever so polite and seemingly helpful but they are ineffective.

An ISP would not sell you 8mbps of transit for a retail price, if you want that kind of dedicated bandwidth it would cost 1000s, and the exchanges don't even have 1% backhaul to give everyone the FULL speed that they're advertising.

FYI: Maximum speeds with BRAS (your IP profile) is 7.1mbps, unless your on the exchange door step your not gonna get much more than 6.5mbps, maybe 7mbps, so 5.5mbps is pretty reasonable allowing for speedtesting inaccuracies as flash based tests sites aren't always accurate.

My thoughts exactly, so annoyed with these "gimmie my full 8megs i pay for" village idots.

I thought these forums were meant to be helpful. What is the point of coming on and talking about 'backhaul' and 'BRAS' and calling people 'village idiots'?
The original post and mine were just queries from a couple of newcomers who feel that they have been poorly served by BT and have received no explanation or apology from them.

All I want to know is how do you get through to someone at BT who can tell me in plain English what has gone wrong with my Broadband service and when it is going to be improved.

In reply to a post by eamason:

I thought these forums were meant to be helpful. What is the point of coming on and talking about 'backhaul' and 'BRAS' and calling people 'village idiots'?

He does get a bit like that sometimes. Fortunately most of us are a bit more helpful.

On the other hand, your first words ever on these forums were "You should be so lucky. 5mb and you're complaining!" I think the OP may have not thought that particularly amusing. OK the rest of your post was a reasonable moan in sympathy, but in a way didn't seem to need a response.

The original post and mine were just queries from a couple of newcomers who feel that they have been poorly served by BT and have received no explanation or apology from them.

Which is why you will almost never find BT recommended as an ISP on these forums. You are far from the only two.

All I want to know is how do you get through to someone at BT who can tell me in plain English what has gone wrong with my Broadband service and when it is going to be improved.

Short answer - never! Longer answer, with luck a BT_Care rep will pick up your posts and try to help. The people using that nick are good.

It's possible we may be able to help you in the forums as well, but it would be better to raise your problems in a thread of your own, and I suggest in the General Broadband Chatter forum as you will have a wider range of helpers there. It would be helpful if you do, to include the results of a BT Performance test, (down to and including the upstream speeds, not all the text following it), and the line stats from your Home Hub or other router.