FTTC in Frome - promised 37mb, getting 8mb!

So fibre has come to Frome. Yay! BT tests showed that my line was good for 37mbs. As it turned out it was only good for about 20mbs. And even then only for a day or so till it began to drop because of....don't know really. Instability?
It is now down to about 8mbs which is what I was getting with standard ADSL. Okay, my upload speeds are just shy of 5mbs which is nice and better than ADSL.
Engineers have been round about four times, changed modem, changed fillter, scratched their heads and told me that the copper tested okay, but that I was about a kilometre from the cabinet. SHould I just accept this? I really feeli dissapointed I can tell you. Is my ISP in breach of its obligations do you think? Its not BT btthe way, but they are using BT lines.

There is no obligation to provide the speed suggested at signup - its not a promise, just a guide/estimate.

They may let you leave and exit contract without any penalty, but there is no way of forcing them to improve the line.

1km of copper line should manage 24 Meg as en estimate, but another 500m is dropping it closer to the speeds you are getting. So question is what makes you think line is a kilometre long.

I guess one question is how much of an improvement compared to ADSL/ADSl2+ is FTTC?

Hi Andrew. I got that distance from an Openreach engineer who visited. The increase in upload speed is worth it, but not sure if it is an extra £30pm worth it.

Try to negotiate a price reduction

I don't think they will go for that. I have been a customer of theirs for nearly 10 years so it would be a shame to leave. But they are charging top rates for something that does not deliver so I may as well save myself £360pa by going elsewhere. I have written a rather stroppy letter, lets see how it pans out. They did however promise a 12mns throughput minimum so if that is not happening surely they are in breach of their terms and I can leave without penalty? Not a lawyer, but I bet they have their asses covered every which way.

Well my speed has now gone down to 3.9mb. Upload speed is 4.9mb. BT are saying that this is because I have a long line. Yes, it is around 800m or so. But I know someone who is 400m from the cabinet and he is getting 39mb. 10 times as fast - half the distance. Do that figures actually stack up or are BT pulling my chain?

In reply to a post by ixnay:

The increase in upload speed is worth it, but not sure if it is an extra £30pm worth it.

An extra £30 per month? That's £10 a month more than I pay in total!

Edited by kasg (Thu 13-Sep-12 20:38:51)

Sounds like you need to post some stats, some people have hacked the FTTC modem so that these can be seen. If your speed if dropping by that much it suggests that something is affecting your line or home network.

Are you using wireless, is your router plugged directly into the modem, have you taken all the other sockets out. is no-one else using BB when you test? (all the normal questions).

Try a reboot of the modem and then check again.

Does it drop around the same time of the day?

If the upload is around 4.9Mb it is unlikely to be the Line but may be interference affecting the DS frequency ranges.

No at 800m you would expect a lot more

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband....
28 Meg from our pessimistic estimate

Check out the stats here. You can clearly see when the last engineer called after they had hooked me up onto a different pair from DP to cabinet.


Speedtest results

So I check speeds morning and evening. Have checked with all other equipment unplugged. Have checked also by connecting a PC direct to the VDSL modem and bypassing the router. Made no difference.
BT are just saying its a line length issue and the speed estimate they give is only an estimate.
I wish I was a lawyer.

Openreach say it is a line issue and that VDSL is more subject to noise and errors in old lines than ADSL was. When I had ADSL I was getting around 8mbs downloads and I am around 1.7km from the exchange.

Edited by deleted (Thu 13-Sep-12 22:31:33)