I am exactly one mile from the cabinet in the neighbouring village. This is line length, as I'm able to follow the phone ducts and the Post Office covers all the way from the pavement outside my house all the way to the cabinet.

You still need to find the line attenuation. What you think you can see by walking along the road can be very different to reality.

In our location you can follow the ducts and poles along the pavement from the cabinets.

As my neighbour found when BT tried to reconnect the long disused phone line, her line went past the property and telegraph pole and was found to be connected at a pole 300 yards up the street, so it went past the house and back again to her home.

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

You still need to find the line attenuation. What you think you can see by walking along the road can be very different to reality.

The post you reply to states the attenuation - but the OP was asked for line attenuation and distance to cab to see if they seemed to align. OP has provided both.

And the two do roughly align, so there may be a little to be gained by hardware/filter tweaking but not massive amounts

The cost equation all depends on what the extra speed lets you do that you could not before

I've just borrowed a TP-Link N600 VDSL router, installed it on my phone line and the sync went up by just over 2Mb, so it would seem that the BT HH5 isn't the best for long lines. I appreciate 2Mb may not seem like much of a jump, but for me, it was a welcomed sight.

Although this is still below the minimum sync levels guaranteed by BT from my first order. Once the 10 days training period is over, I shall contact them.

I am surprised they actually "guaranteed" the lower clean figure when the impacted ones were quite a bit lower. You might be in line for an interesting discussion.

Be aware the 10 day training is a myth, generally you are at around your likely stable sync after 48 hours, but it can go down or up at anytime for the years you keep the FTTC.

e.g. I ran at 20 Mbps for a few months, then banded at 15 Mbps for a while and then back to 20 Mbps again, with the odd trip to almost 24 Mbps now and then.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Be aware the 10 day training is a myth, generally you are at around your likely stable sync after 48 hours, but it can go down or up at anytime for the years you keep the FTTC.

e.g. I ran at 20 Mbps for a few months, then banded at 15 Mbps for a while and then back to 20 Mbps again, with the odd trip to almost 24 Mbps now and then.

Thanks for the information, I decided to contact BT and they've now reduced my monthly fee, I'm now paying just £4 more than I was for 8Mb ADSL.

So, whilst I'm disappointed I'm not on a mega speed line, I do feel happier now that the price isn't much more than I was paying before.

A few things to think about that may improve your speed:

How far from where the line enters the property is the master? Does the cable run anywhere near to any electrical or electronic items? TV, Boiler, Fridge ...

How long is the master socket to modem cable? What type is is? Flat or decent twisted pair? Does the cable pass close to electrical or electronic times?

What else is located close to the modem?


IDEALLY, the internal wiring should be as short as possible to the master socket. A decent filtered face plate installed. Then a short Cat5e based RJ11 cable from master to modem. No TV, HiFi, Consumer Unit, Boiler, Fluorescent lights, FIsh Tank pump &c anywhere close to master or modem.

If that location is not convenient for your PCs &c you can run an Ethernet (Cat5e) cable from there to a small 4 or 8 port switch which then connects to the PCs.

Hi MHC,

In reply to a post by MHC:

A few things to think about that may improve your speed:

How far from where the line enters the property is the master? Does the cable run anywhere near to any electrical or electronic items? TV, Boiler, Fridge ...

The master socket is sat right over the hole where the cable enters the house, so there isn't any internal BT wiring.

In reply to a post by MHC:

How long is the master socket to modem cable? What type is is? Flat or decent twisted pair? Does the cable pass close to electrical or electronic times?

What else is located close to the modem?

IDEALLY, the internal wiring should be as short as possible to the master socket. A decent filtered face plate installed. Then a short Cat5e based RJ11 cable from master to modem. No TV, HiFi, Consumer Unit, Boiler, Fluorescent lights, FIsh Tank pump &c anywhere close to master or modem.

If that location is not convenient for your PCs &c you can run an Ethernet (Cat5e) cable from there to a small 4 or 8 port switch which then connects to the PCs.

The modem cable is about 3m long (10 feet), i don't recall it being any shorter and it's the flat type, to be honest I didn't know you could get any other type of cable like this, however, I've now ordered a good quality twisted pair cable and see how that goes.

Sadly my router is sat on top of my fridge freezer, due to being unable to place it anywhere else without adding much longer cables. It would simply get in the way if I just left it on the top next to the master socket. However, I shall attempt to move the router around the room though and see whether it makes any significant difference.

Thank you for taking the time to supply these tips, I greatly appreciate it, I will now attempt to try them all out over the next few days and will report back with any findings.

On a fridge/freezer can be quite bad. You will have two compressor and pumps plus other control circuitry there which can be a source of noise.

Try putting it near the master socket with the cable coiled up neatly and see what happens. If it does improve it - get yourself a separate modem and router set up. Wall mount the modem above the master and run Cat5e to the router which can sit on the fridge.