New FTTC install - very slow speeds

I have recently had the 80mbit FTTC package installed from Zen, and the speeds I'm getting are much slower than the ones I had estimated (about 1/10th for the upload). I'm about 150 meters by road from my local cabinet and 100 meters as the crow flies. If I go to the BT wholesale availability checker, I get the following estimate:

http://postimg.org/image/lmi0h1gj7/

77.8 - 80.0 clean, 69.5 - 80.0 impacted downstream
20.0 - 20.0 clean, 19.0 - 20.0 impacted upstream.

When the Openreach guy came to install it, he made a series of errors and had to go to and from the cabinet about 3 times because he said he hadn't punched down the cable properly. I got the feeling he didn't really know what he was doing, I had to tell him what cabinet I was connected to and where it was. He was a contractor on behalf of Openreach - I was very unimpressed with his skills. He didn't check that the internet was working before he left, and left me with a flashing DSL light which flashed for about 5 hours. It then connected for 1 hour at 36mb down, 1mb up, then lost connection and wouldn't reconnect.

In the morning after the install, I went out and bought a cheap phone to see if I had a dialtone and I noticed the line was dead. I stripped down the socket to the test socket and still had no dialtone. At this point (24 hours after install) I just left the phone in the test socket and didn't bother to plug the modem back in. I raised a voice line fault with Zen and that got repaired yesterday, around 48 hours after the install. I then plugged the modem back in and it connected pretty much immediately. Now my downstream speed is 44mb and upload speed is 2.5mb, which was better than the 36 / 1 I got initially, but still far short of the speeds I was given as an estimate.

I'm getting 56.6% of the downstream I should be getting, and 12.5% of the upstream speed. I'm more concerned about the upstream speed.. Surely there is something seriously wrong here? 1/10th of the estimate?

I'm using the Openreach supplied ECI modem (my cab is also an ECI) and regardless of whether I connect directly to it with PPPoE or through my router, I get the same speeds. I'm connecting to it over Ethernet with a windows 8 laptop and I've done all the speed tests with nothing else using bandwidth. Speed is consistent at all times of the day - it's been about 17 hours since the fault was fixed and I plugged the modem back in and it has kept the same speeds. I have done a ping trace to bbc.co.uk for about an hour and lost 0.5% of the packets. The line does work well enough to stream from Netflix, but one of the main reasons I was interested in the FTTC package was the increased upload, which I am not getting. It's a shame I can't see the SNR stats for the line, that would be handy!


So my questions are as follows:

1. Seeing as I had a fault for the first 48 hours of service (no dialtone for at least 30 of those hours), it took forever for the modem to connect and it was trying to connect for many hours, does that mean that DLM would have intervened and put me at a low speed?

2. Is it normal for a prediction of 77.8 - 80 down and 19-20 up to result in 44 and 2.5?

3. Why the heck is the upload so low? I've seen people on 1400m lines with 4mb of upload, I have possibly 150-300m of line and get 2.5mb

4. Is it likely I have a fault on the line still and should report it?

5. Are my speeds likely to improve when DLM realizes my line isn't actually at fault anymore?


Part of the reason I bought this house was the promise of fast speeds. It's rather disappointing to get such slow speeds! Any help/advice would be appreciated.

Cheers guys.

As you have Zen for both phone and Internet ask them to get the DLM reset following the repair of the phone issue.

Seems like a good plan, thanks. I called yesterday to see if they could do that but they wanted me to wait for 24 hours before doing it. I will probably do that today at 4pm, which would have been 24 hours.

Does DLM act to also reduce upstream severely like that?

Phone is dead because sounds like one leg (wire) is disconnected and xDSL will still work but a lot slower.

Fix the phone and the VDSL should speed up.

Also make sure Zen report the state of the job.

Thanks - but what do you mean by "Also make sure Zen report the state of the job"?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Fix the phone and the VDSL should speed up.

In the first post the OP mentions reporting a voice fault which has been resolved...

Tell them to feed back to BT about how bad the install process was and ensure the voice fault is linked to that too.

Long paragraphs get skimmed when playing morning catch up.

If voice has been fixed and attenuation/noise margin figures are sensible, then DLM reset time

Ahh, I will do that.

For a DLM reset, does Zen have to log a fault, or is it a really simple request for them to arrange?

And where are Zen Staff to help this poor guy?

I am sure Zen see this post but cannot be bothered to help him. Or maybe Zen couldn't see his thread here.

@ Provster. Your FTTC estimated are the same as mine Clean A 80 77.8 20.0 on downstream. I am getting full sync rate 79999k/19999k as you should be getting full sync rate after your voice phone was fixed.

I suggest to move this thread to Zen pages instead.

Edited by adslmax (Thu 09-Oct-14 11:36:10)