Engineer visit potential £99 cost

I have an engineer coming next Friday as my speed has dropped from 2.9mbps to the below

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

I am wondering regarding the cost as I have been told that if the problem lies in my home then it would be a £99 charge. But for example if it is the homehub that is not working correctly then would this constitute a £99 charge as it is in my home?

I have changed all the wires, changed the microfilter (twice) disconnected the sky from the same input into the master socket to rule any wiring fault out. But it is still the same.

Also when it starts to freeze it becomes hard to even connect to the homehub stats through the browser which takes around 10 seconds to display each page, is that normal?

Below are my stats

Connection Information
Line state: Connected
Connection time: 0 days, 16:59:55
Downstream: 1.281 Mbps
Upstream: 448 Kbps

ADSL Settings
VPI/VCI: 0/38
Type: PPPoA
Modulation: G.992.1 Annex A
Latency type: Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up): 6.8 dB / 17.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up): 57.3 dB / 31.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up): 15.8 dBm / 12.3 dBm
FEC Events (Down/Up): 499354 / 87
CRC Events (Down/Up): 67 / 7
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
HEC Events (Down/Up): 261 / 5
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 35 / 9

If BT insist that their customers use the router/modem supplied then if that was to prove to be faulty or the cause of the low speeds,then i would say that the answer would be a definate no on being charged by openreach,But if they don't insist on customers using their homehub, then they could charge you if the router was at fault, which tbh may not be working properly freezing up when trying to access it, doesn't sound good, will BT not send you a replacement router F.O.C?
But if you have tested whilst plugged in to the test socket behind the faceplate on the master socket, swapped the adsl cable filters, then failing trying a different modem /router there isn't a lot more that you could be expected to do,to rule out faulty equipment your side,
Is the line noisy at all? with a corded phone again plugged in to the test socket dial 17070 option 2 , and listen carefully, using the secrecy button or coverning the mouth peice of the handset will stop any background noises being induced from your side

Edited by tommy45 (Sat 03-Aug-13 13:41:52)

Have you got anything new electrical or electronic? Or replaced or moved anything of those kinds?

Has next door just got a plasma TV they are proud of?

In reply to a post by colic:

Also when it starts to freeze it becomes hard to even connect to the homehub stats through the browser which takes around 10 seconds to display each page, is that normal?

Have you tried your computer wired to the homehub as well as wireless?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Have you got anything new electrical or electronic? Or replaced or moved anything of those kinds?

Has next door just got a plasma TV they are proud of?

The only one new thing electrical I have bought is a new laptop. I asked my neighbour and she wondered why the hell I was asking her lol. But no she hasn't.

I have not tested the cable to the homehub when it freezes to see what happens to be honest. I have been testing it each day with the cable and it is the same speed as wireless.

I cant test with a corded phone as I have asked a few friends and no one seems to have one lol.

The odd thing was though when I disconnected the phone line from the microfilter the speed stayed the same but the latency went up 20ms I did this a few times and each time the latency went up. I have swapped the microfilter as well so I am ruling that out.

I will be annoyed if I have to pay £99 as it was only 2 years ago I had to pay something like £179 for a phone line to be fitted as it is quite a new house and the original owners never had a phone line installed which I only found out about when ordering sky!

Are you using the new laptop on mains power or battery, or swapping between the two modes?

It would be interesting if it is on mains power to read the stats, then unplug its power cable from the wall socket and read the stats again. The thing that drops the voltage from 230v to 12v could be making noise. Just unplugging the power cable from the laptop isn't the thing to try.

As the Margin SNR has stayed constant but speed halved seems there maybe line or router problem. The HH is well known for problems, assume you have reset the modem and done ipconfig flushdns on computer.
what information is given at www.speedtest.btwholesale.com
Remove and unplug phone from mains. before test.
Do test first then further diagnostics at bottom. should get IP Profile for line and Max Speed. does this match recent results.

It does seem to match recent tests to be honest. But there does not seem to be much of a problem at this line synch rate but when it has gone higher instant problems. It is maxing the speed out as far as the extended stats said IP profile = 1.16 achieved 1.15

I also tested with the laptop plugged in and not plugged in. Normally it is not plugged in I do not use it that often at home I use it more for when I go to work. When it was on charge it sped up by 0.01 which is insignificant (unless you are BT and the chat guy saying "see it is already speeding up")

Just to say thought I use a program called stream2me on my iphone to stream music to it as I love my music but have too much to fit on my iphone so I stream it. When over the same IP address it should recognise the devices straight away which it always did until the problems started. Now I can connect one day and then the following day not be able to connect, I spent about 4 hours trying to figure out the problem and gave up. Then when I restarted the homehub as it was not responding again stream2me worked again straight away.

Sorry, I should have made my suggestion clearer. I'm not expecting a speed change doing what I said, I'm looking for noise margin (SNR/SNRM) changes caused simply by plugging or unplugging at the wall.

Look at all those errors, in a short-ish uptime. When the engineer comes mention, after he has run his initial tests, if there is a possibility of REIN.

This being BT Broadband, this will be a 'Boost" task, so the engineer will also be carrying replacement routers, if that proves to be the issue.