BT Infinity Speed Decrease

Signed up for Infinity 2 in May.

Your broadband speed
We estimate your download speed will be: 53.2Mb
We estimate your upload speed will be: 15.7Mb

Settled down to
52 - 51.2 - 9.26

Checked occasionally and was about same. Upload has never been above 10.

Saw Openreach in street today so I did speed test
44.5 - 41.6 - 9.37

When I look at BT predicted speed test it now says I should get 43.7 and 10Mb.

So a drop in speed and they have lined their tester up to the lower speed.

Anyone got any thoughts?

Keith

Edited by deleted (Fri 06-Dec-13 17:22:20)

That's what they do . Estimates have always adjusted towards actual over time on a given line, and currently Openreach/BT Wholesale seem to have revised all estimates downwards anyway. For at least the second time in two years.

Quite a lot of mention of this in the Fibre forum. Contrary to what BT want you to believe, BT Retail Infinity is just their fibre offering. As with ADSLx there are well over 100 alternative ISPs offering the same technology, based on Openreach FTTC.

For some (including me) the second (very recent) estimate change revised the estimate upwards. I was always above estimate (apart from when I had a fault), now the estimate is a pretty good match.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As with ADSLx there are well over 100 alternative ISPs offering the same technology, based on Openreach FTTC.

With much the same speeds on FTTC, unlike ADSL.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

With much the same speeds on FTTC, unlike ADSL.

Until we get wires only FTTC. :-/

Does that make a diff?

this comment confuses me.

each isp still has their own transit and peering arrangements as well as their own fttc backhaul so performances can still vary.

on top of this plusnet has traffic management, and I am seeing some disturbing looking posts on their forums where people have reported weird speed issues which I guess are congested/qos related but misdiagnosed as local cpe issues.

I was talking sync speeds. The kit in the cab is the the same, operated by BTOR.

Yes, I agree, throughput and management might vary with ISPs.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Does that make a diff?

Simple answer is no.

In my Orange days I was getting a regular speed of 6 on their up to 8. To be honest day to day I do not notice much difference from then even on over 50.

I suppose the point is they estimated 53 and I got that. Months later the speed drops and so does their estimate. So it is not about what I am capable of getting but what they are capable of providing.

Not going to get too worried about it. From start of internet I have been lucky with reliability and speeds, mainly with Orange.

Keith

Hi

Crosstalk, the interference between your pair of wires and other people with VDSL, becomes more of a problem as more people sign up.

BT will be able to adjust their estimates as time goes on based on real world data, and I suspect the adjusting down of line speeds is to take into account the likely speed a customer will end up with once the cabinet is at or near capacity, and so crosstalk is at a maximum.

Our sync speed governs the maximum speed we can get less overheads, of course the minimum speed is decided by our ISP and the bandwidth or traffic priority we get or are willing to pay for, as well as the fibre capacity between the cabinet and the exchange.

Regards

Phil

Thanks Phil for explanation.

I'll keep a closer eye on it from now.

Keith

And your reply has to do with 'wires-only' in what way?

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Does that make a diff?

On ADSL we've seen people go from 0.5megabit to 10megabit by fixing wiring in their home.

Here is an ISP's take on it:
http://revk.www.me.uk/2013/12/wires-only-fttc.html

We've already seen in the BT and Sky forums that ISP supplied all-in-one hardware will prevent customers from being able to replace the router for a better model (e.g. with better in-home features). This is a retrograde step.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 08-Dec-13 12:34:36)

aaisp see it in the real world.

they dont see the issue as local witring issues been unresolved because they know like me those are few and far between but hyped up by openreach to be the main source of problems. yes every now and then someone has a legit wiring issue this gets reported on and suddenly it must be the case everyone has a wiring issue, it gets fixed and they geta jump in speed, but its rare enough that out of all lines I have seen not a single one has a wiring issue affecting speeds. even having a bell wire is uncommon now days.

the real issue as revk states is that if there is a fault present on installation day, instead of been fixed by the install engineer the isp will have to raise a fault and go into the SFI battle to get it fixed and avoid charges.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sun 08-Dec-13 20:39:40)