Switching to Fibre to solve a bad connection?

My Dad's has BT Basic + Broadband, and his connection is flaky to say the least - some days OK, some days no connection at all, most days a mixture of the two. But cutting out on average at least 10 times a day. This has been going on for more than six months.

No technical explanation is forthcoming. He lives in a suburban area relatively near the exchange, with generally quite decent broadband. Openreach have been out a number of times, replaced the wires between cabinet and exchange, replaced the master socket, replaced part of the wire from the house to the cabinet - nothing seems to work.

Last Openreach engineer was reduced to suggesting I switch to fibre to try and circumvent the problem. I'm willing to do this (I'm over there three days a week, and need internet to work) - but what I don't want is to sign an 18-month contract with a fibre provider and be left in a similar situation as just now, except committed to paying £400-odd quid for it.

My question is - if I take out a fibre contract, and have the same problems, intermittent dropouts throughout the day right from the outset, would I be allowed to cancel the contract after four weeks or whatever? What is my best approach?

First you need to check what is available at your Dad's. Use this to see what he can get. If he can get FTTP (not FTTPoD - ignore that if it comes up) then that should be stable connection. If it is FTTC then see what the speed range is and let us know.

When you sign up to a FTTC supplier they should give you a minimum speed guarantee. If the line is not performing to the minimum speed and they can't fix it then they would have to let you go. There are some ISPs that are better than others - AAISP being the obvious that is more likely to get the issues resolved but they are more towards the premium end of costs.

Thanks for that.

The link you gave me returns this for his address -
http://nulmedia.com/fibre.jpg
so it looks like he can get FTTP "on demand" - but under the table it says "FTTP is not available".

Not sure what that means in practice?

You can get FTTC and G.fast.

I'd be surprised if moving to an FTTC product came with a cost increase over a basic ADSL service, and the advantage is you get the copper from the exchange to the cabinet out of the picture.

How are you judging the ‘no connection at all’ ?
Is the router losing sync ?
Has the router been replaced ?
Are the connections to the router wired or wireless ?

Could it be something on the LAN side is swamping the upload, easily done with modern equipment backing up to the cloud for instance

My idea of no-connection is a practical one - i.e. when I'm plugged into the router via an ethernet cable I can't get sufficient data for my browser to retrieve any info from a web site.

The usual situation is a shifting one - not connected / connected but no IP address / connected and with an IP address, but I can't bring up even a basic web page like Google.

The router seems like the one thing that hasn't been replaced during this process, but I have dug out a previously-sent router ( another BT hub 4 ) so I'm going to give that a go before I resort to changing provider.

As Ian says, switching to a provider with a better customer service reputation will help get the problem resolved if it persists. Also, most of the better ISPs will only want a years contract. Work out what the extra cost is over the year vs. BT and see if that is worth it to help get the problem resolved.

In reply to a post by gordon_k:

so it looks like he can get FTTP "on demand" - but under the table it says "FTTP is not available".
Not sure what that means in practice?

FTTP isn't generally available in the area BUT if he (or you) wanted 'FTTP on demand' you can ask for a quote to install it. Generally it will cost an arm and a leg to get it to you and probably far more than you might be prepared to pay.

As others have said, if you get FTTC installed you might find your problems disappear, unless of course, the problem is in the cabling from the local cabinet to the house. Hopefully not.

And of course with FTTC there is always the fall back 'downstream handback' value. But looking at it you should be fine and if not, badger the ISP to death to get it fixed.

What is the mobile reception like? If it is an area where the mobile reception is good and the possible increased latency by connection through a mobile network is not likely to be an issue (e.g. no heavy use for gaming) then you could consider binning the landline connection (although you might wish to retain it purely for the voice service) and move your internet connection over to a mobile network solution. There are a number of people round these parts who have done that and find it just as effective as a landline based connection and no more expensive. If that would work you could even port the landline telephone number over to VOIP and cease the landline completely while retaining the ability for people to ring your existing landline number.

Edited by GonePostal (Wed 12-May-21 21:09:30)

Don't forget this is his dad's connection. The OP is there three days a week.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 12-May-21 23:00:21)