low speed

Hi, I have been with B.T. 3 years and had a download speed of 300Kbps I have had the B.T. engineer to inspect my line but he said I am 8 Kilometres from the Exchange and I am lucky to get any speed at all. I was talking to my neighbour who lives 6 houses away from me and she was having problems with her B.T. Broadband speed and she said they changed the connection and her telephone number at the Exchange and she now gets a download speed of 600 Kbps.I sent a e-mail to B.T. broadband help and got a telephone call from the India call centre saying they would do a line test asked me to connect to the main socket etc etc I said I have done it all before over the last 3 years and I just want the speed my neighbour gets 600 Kbps can you raise My I.P. Profile at the Exchange. The call centre man was very polite but I could not understand him very well and I think he was reading from a cue card. I pay the same amount every month as my neighbour £17.99 and think I should receive the same speed.

At 8 km you are towards the edge of what technology can achieve. There are numerous little factors than may benefit your neighbour and penalise you. Noise on the line, crosstalk, position in the cable bundle, is the line in the same cable quality of joints, how much overhead cable, internal wiring, router, connected phones, micro filter ...

Can you access your router stats - both up and down and post them here. Than will be a starting point.

Get the stats from your normal PC connection and then remove the lower half of the face plate and plug you modem/hub into the test socket directly and get a second set.

When you have the master socket open, as recommended by MHC, write down then tell us what colour wires are connected to each numbered terminal, as in this pic.

In reply to a post by goldtooth:

Hi, I have been with B.T. 3 years and had a download speed of 300Kbps I have had the B.T. engineer to inspect my line but he said I am 8 Kilometres from the Exchange and I am lucky to get any speed at all.

He's got a point. It's not that long ago you wouldn't have been allowed to order broadband at all, and been stuck in the world of dialup, which at those distances would have probably been 28.8 kbps.

Read my old posts to see what I would suggest as a plan of attack, but in short,

Disconnect extension wiring.
Correct any wrongly hardwired devices like alarm systems.
Openreach filtered faceplate.
2Wire 2700hgv router.
Install router at master .

Also, check for audible noise on the line - clicking, crackling, rustling, etc. Dial 17070 Option 2 and listen. Audible noise like that is a voice fault, get it fixed as a voice fault and don't mention broadband.

In reply to a post by goldtooth:

I pay the same amount every month as my neighbour £17.99 and think I should receive the same speed.

Sorry, no. The speed you get is largely down to the physics of radio frequencies carried on copper wire, faster broadband equals moving closer to the exchange.