1km away from cabinet.

Hi

I had FTTC installed 11 days ago. The first in my village so the engineer said. I have been speed testing daily and I get speeds of around 14 down and 1 up. Very little variation.

I am 1km from the cabinet.

When I put my phone number in here: http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.Teleph...
it says I should get 15.6.

When I put the phone number of all the neighbours around me (all almost exactly the same distance from the cabinet) it shows speeds of 30. I can't verify their actual speed as they haven't installed yet.

Although I have had a significant speed boost from ADSL d/l speed of about 3 or 4, I feel as if I should be getting closer to 30 now.

Is there anything I can do to boost this? Will BT investigate and do anything?

Well, I dunno on the 'guessimates' that BT give, but with my new spanking shiny fttc connection:

80 odd yards away to GPO box which is 60 yards or so to the fibre box I get (on a 40/2 profile):

35/36 down
a constant 1.8 up

So, I guess you will not make 30 by any means.

Nick

[edit] Actually, thinking, remember you have route to the GPO box that then goes to the fttc box - so it could be a lot more distance than stated. I am actually only 50 yards away from the fttc box, but where my phone line hooks in to the GPO is further!

Edited by Lethe (Mon 04-Nov-13 16:49:00)

Best speed possible on 40 Meg is 38 Meg from a speedtest and assumes a perfectly setup PC/router...so 36 or so is in the realms of if you signed up to a faster product you might go faster

The checker is only an estimate, not an absolute measure. The only absolute measure is to enable the line and see how it behaves.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband.... gives a secondary guide to FTTC speeds, and you are not massively out for 1km..

The neighbours estimates might simply be more wrong, rather than indicating you have a problem.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Best speed possible on 40 Meg is 38 Meg from a speedtest and assumes a perfectly setup PC/router...so 36 or so is in the realms of if you signed up to a faster product you might go faster

Not being being sarky, but have you been on the sherry? Obviously if I signed up to faster product it would go faster...

I was just stating that topographically, no matter how close the fttc box is, you still need to measure the GPO box your phone line goes to and then how far that is away from the fttc box.

Nick

Thanks for the replies.

I guess I should wait to see what the neighbours get if/when they switch.

Don't know where the 'GPO' box is. The copper wires all go along wooden poles as far as I can see. Pretty sure it's almost exactly 1km. Actually 910m as measured on google maps.

The upload speed as way off according to the secondary guide. It says 9 Mbps, I'm getting 1 Mbps.

Do I have any sort of leg to stand on if it turns out the neighbours get faster speeds?

Well, the GPO box thing is a mystery.

I have one 40 yards away that is 10 yards away to the fttc box. There is another GPO box 80 yards away in a side side street that is 70 yards away to the fttc box.

Guess which one my phone line goes to?

Nick

In reply to a post by monkeychops:

Do I have any sort of leg to stand on if it turns out the neighbours get faster speeds?

In a word, no. The speeds given are estimates, nothing more. If you are way below the estimated speed, you might be able to secure release from the contract, but that won't help you if you want the fastest possible connection and your fairly slow FTTC is faster than whatever you had before.

Was just making sure you were not implying that 35 to 36 was the speed to be expected at your sort of distance

To be honest your line may just go a longer route. Nothing can really be done, it's never been a case of the neighbours lines guaranteed to take the same route as yours. In reality you often see a neighbours line taking a much shorter route to your own, or vice-versa.

An example is I had an attenuation of 28 and a sync around 17Mbps. My neighbour had an attenuation of 42 and a sync around 9Mbps. We were both in the master socket with no extensions. The attenuation measures line length so it was clear their line was much much longer than mine.

Simply put when lines were installed it was only a concern to get a voice signal down the lines, broadband didn't exist so there was no worry about the route taken or the length of cabling, you got what was easiest. Extremely long lines delivered voice fine so it made no odds.

Even now on new estates you still get what's easiest / cheapest vs what's shortest...

If the neighbours line goes down some ducting which was full, the you'd take another route even if it ends up much longer. Often your line goes the wrong direction to eventually do a u-turn on itself. If you're near an airport or a large park often the lines loop around the entire airport / park rather than going straight through too. It's not a fault as such it's how the networks were designed.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 04-Nov-13 19:20:56)