BT Infinity Speed Estimate

Hello, I'm currently looking at getting BT Infinity for a new house that I'm buying. However I'm a little hesitant due to the results from the BT Speed estimates, which suggests I will receive around 35-45Mbps, this wouldn't be a massive issue if it wasn't for the fact that the houses either side have an estimate of 78Mbps, which I find a little odd.

The cabinet from what I can tell is around 100m away, if that. Would the discrepancy in the results of my property and the neighbours simply be an error on the system, or could there be an actual physical reason for the difference ? And if the reason resides within the physical world, would there be any chance of BT correcting it ? Their lack of a cooling off period after go-live worries me.

I do have the option to go with Virgin media however I'd prefer not to, as I haven't heard very good reports from friends who live locally...

I should also add that these results are based on address searches only and not phone numbers which I appreciate is less accurate.

Any help/advice will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Stuart

I'm a few hundred metres away from the cabinet, my estimate was 59Mb/s, in reality I sync at the full 80Mb/s. Sometimes the estimate is close, other times not so much.

Same cabinet number on checks as others when you check full address

Hi, yes the cabinet is the same for all the properties I have checked. I would accept a small difference between my closest neighbours but 30Mbit seems a little on the extreme side.

If I went with BT am I stuck with what I get, no option to cancel or ability to request an engineer to look into the speed ?

Thanks,

Stuart

If the estimate was 70 Meg and you got 5 Meg then easy to get them to let you walk.
If their estimate is 35 Meg and you get 30 Meg, then would be a long fight to be allowed to walk.

It is possible for some unusual reason that your line just happens to be worse than the others, or it may be a simple mistake in the database. Only way to know is to order a service and see how it performs

The database used by BT Wholesale is not without errors. It had services offered to all neighbours (100 plus houses) but not mine. It took my ISP complaining for about 6 weeks before they would believe us and then correct the database.

However as MrSaffron says you may find it hard to get BT (or any ISP) to cancel the contract if the actual speed is close to the estimated speed or within the estimated speed range. My product is ranged for 40 to 80Mbps so quite a large margin there.

You have to decide if you can live with only 35Mbps. Just a year ago I was happy with 3Mbps now I have 75Mbps and I am finding issues with the service (legitimate ones) which I didn't at the slower speed.

I have a couple of examples for you, to show that there is no consistency. That houses, and wiring, can all be individual.

1. I worked through the speed estimates of all the properties on my (previous) 1990's estate, and noticed an interesting effect.

The estate was mostly separate houses, but there were 5 blocks of apartments dotted through the development.

The estimates were all sane for the houses, in proper proportion to the distance from the cabinet. However, all the flats had markedly higher speed estimates than the houses on either side of the block.

When comparing the blocks alone, their speeds dropped off correctly with longer distances... they just dropped off slower than the houses.

The conclusion I reached was that the apartments had been wired with broader gauge cable than the houses - probably 0.7mm cable instead of 0.5mm.

2. My current property is a flat in a converted house (from more like 1890's); the speed estimate for the 3 flats is considerably higher (60-80) than either of the houses on either side (35-47).

I always thought it odd that this house/these 3 flats were wired to a different cabinet than the houses on either side - but the street distance to both cabinets is identical. Cabinet numbering (one is cab 22, the other is 119) suggests that one cabinet was added a lot later, perhaps to overcome congestion - even though both supply an area of 100+ year-old properties.

Then I discovered that the cable routing takes our phone line out the back of the property, overhead, and along a back alley rather than out the front, underground. The different routing saves perhaps 20-30m of distance, but that alone isn't enough to explain the difference in estimates. The rest of the difference probably comes from the gauge of the cable, or its age.

Strangely, the estimates weren't originally as profoundly different as they are now. When I moved in, our estimate was around 55Mbps, while the neighbours were around 45Mbps.

3. That difference is nothing compared to the last house on this street. As the last house, it is close to a T-junction for a cross street, at the far end to either cab 22 or cab 119. For some reason, it isn't wired to cab 22 like its next-door neighbour, but is connected to the same cabinet as the houses on the cross street. That cabinet is on a different exchange, and only got upgraded 3 years after our exchange, so they had to be a little more patient.

But the patience must have paid off, because they got FTTP instead.