Help, Inifnity FTTC slower than regular Adsl

I have just switched to BT Infinity FTTC. Engineer out about two hours ago and and I have seen a significant drop in my broadband speed. For the last year and a half I have been getting approx 6Mps down and consistent 0.4 Mps up. Today on FTTC i'm getting approx 3.8-4Mps down and consistent 0.9Mps up. I have tried to get my router stats but am I right to think thats not possible via FTTC? Should I expect speeds to increase or is something wrong? I am about 1.8miles from the exchange and the engineer said he was surprised I even got FTTC at all? (Not that BT said anything about that when they were encouraging me to get it!). When testing with his own speed tester the engineer was getting some conflicting stats, sometimes around 1-2Mps down up to 10-12Mps. Thinkbroadband speed test once gave 12Mps down but only once all other times 1-4Mps. Would appreciate any advice/ thoughts or help.

Your distance from the exchange is irrelevant to FTTC performance. It is your distance to the cabinet that matters. Did the engineer mean you are 1.8 miles from your telephone cabinet?

Apologies. Yes I think it must be cabinet not exchange.

If 1.8 miles from the cabinet then this sort of performance is to be expected

What was the estimate given when you ordered?

What does this checker say about your expected speeds?

To answer previous questions, I was quoted much more than 4Mps!! I was with BT Option3 already and quite happy with that service. I even said to the(local) sales rep on the phone that I would ONLY be interested if speed would be better. He assured me they would be much better. I cant remember what exactly the speeds he was quoting but thought if I even got the lower estimate I would be happy.

Below is what the checker states about my line. The Adsl estimateseem strange to me as I have consistently got approx 6Mps.


For Telephone Number xxxxxxx on Exchange NEWTOWNSTEWART

Your exchange is ADSL enabled, and our initial test on your line indicates that your line should be able to have an ADSL broadband service that provides a fixed line speed up to 2Mbps.

Our test also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL Max broadband line speed of 2Mbps; typically the line speed would range between 1Mbps and 3.5Mbps.

Our test also indicates that your line currently supports a fibre technology with an estimated WBC FTTC Broadband where consumers have received downstream line speed of 24.9Mbps and upstream line speed of 5Mbps.

The ADSLx speeds are nearly always very low compared to what you get.

The FTTC ones are usually quite close.

From what you said about the engineer's tests, it sounds like a bodged installation. He shouldn't have left it below 15Mbps solid connection speed with a minimum 12Mbps actual download. Probably one of the new half-trained, (if even that), recruits.

He did say he had only been working with BT for a very short time. He seemed pleased with 3.5Mps on FTTC because iplayer and youtube were running?! I was thinking ahh NO. But where does this leave me?

In reply to a post by Speedchaser:

He did say he had only been working with BT for a very short time. He seemed pleased with 3.5Mps on FTTC because iplayer and youtube were running?! I was thinking ahh NO. But where does this leave me?

You could report it as a fault (technically i may be representative as such )
As you have just gone live, you should have a short time(cooling off period) to cancel should you hit the BT brick wall and see that you are getting nowhere or they are too stupid to see that you have a fault, due to the blundering untrained engineer they employ who thinks An FTTC connection is ok if giving under the 15mbps figure ( which should IMO be set to at least 24mbps)

I am about 1800 meters from cab and mine connects at 12down and 0.6up.

Ive had 3 engineers come out to see why the upload is so slow, even when they phone up openreach control and force it to connect at anything above 0.6 upload the line will not sync.

The last engineer basically told me that he thinks it may be a defective port in the CAB but his bosses told him he is not allowed to change me to another port to test because there is only 100odd in the cab and they didnt want to waste one on me even if the one i am currently on is infact faulty!!

Even when they force my connection to 5mbps download the upload still will not go above 0.6mbps otherwise is just does not sync!

I was getting 1.2mb upload on ADSL2 at 2x the line length!!


It basically after 3 engineers sounds like im going to just have to live with 0.5mbps upload because open-reach don't want to use another port up in the DSLAM or actually get to the bottom of the problem. The line tests ok no CRC or line faults.

So I am expecting a phone call from the man I am dealing with at BT retail probably going to tell me that the "line just cant take more than 0.6mbps upload" as i expect that is what open-reach will say to him. (The man (Darren) at BT retail has been super helpful in trying to get this fixed for me so massive respect to him for that, excellent customer service on his part.) and hes got 3 engineers sent out for me, but if open-reach go back to him and just say there is nothing they can do, then there will be nothing more he can do for me either, which is a real shame.)

Edited by deleted (Sat 20-Oct-12 16:17:21)