FTTC - what's the point???

Well, it finally came to our village. I found out by accident and was on the phone to the ISP the next day. The line tester was predicting speeds of 12-19Mbs. I couldn't wait...
Two weeks later, it was all done!!! YAY.

With bated breath, I logged in a did a speed test. Result before, (with ADSL) ~5Mbs, after (VDSL) ~ 6.2Mbs - wow!!!!

What an anticlimax. I have been on to tech support and we have tried various things but that is what it is. And, yes, I am plugged into the test socket.

The odd thing is that the BT wholesale speed checker tends to give results around 10Mbs (sometimes it's as low as 6 but 4 out of 5 times it's 10 or even a touch more).

I have tested with TBB speed test and Ookla, same result. If I download one of the TBB test files, sure enough, around 6.

I'm about 1500m (by road) from the cabinet (which, ironically is a about 100m the *other* side of the exchange).

The ISP says that they can't log a fault with BT as it is within the "tolerance band" or some such excuse.

So, is there any point to FTTC, is it all a just a big sham???

By the way, if I try to run the 'further tests' on the BT speed-checker, it fails with the message 'The Performance Tester is currently unable to run a speed test for your broadband connection.'

Edited by filbert42 (Fri 27-Nov-15 21:02:48)

Is it one of the smaller ISPs? Not still UKFSN I assume.

In reply to a post by filbert42:

Well, it finally came to our village. I found out by accident and was on the phone to the ISP the next day. The line tester was predicting speeds of 12-19Mbs. I couldn't wait...
Two weeks later, it was all done!!! YAY.

With bated breath, I logged in a did a speed test. Result before, (with ADSL) ~5Mbs, after (VDSL) ~ 6.2Mbs - wow!!!!

What an anticlimax. I have been on to tech support and we have tried various things but that is what it is. And, yes, I am plugged into the test socket.

Good word that: anticlimax. It was for us, too. From 20Mbps LLU ADSL2+ to circa 25Mbps VDSL2.

Maybe get an unlocked modem; study the max data rate, attenuation, and whatnot.
At least you can gauge whether you should expect any more.

Surprise perhaps that they even up-sold you to VDSL2 when you're 1500m+ from the cabinet.

And your slight up-lift in speed -- from 5Mbps with ADSL to 6.2Mbps with VDSL2 may be short-lived.
Initially we had a max data rate of nearly 50Mbps, but over 18 months, half of that's been lost to crosstalk.

BT may postpone the inevitable by rolling out cheap fixes to the copper (G.Fast and the like) but the only solution for people like us is fibre all the way.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Is it one of the smaller ISPs? Not still UKFSN I assume.

Smaller, yes. Not UKFSN. I won't say who just yet as they are being very good so far.

Is there much of a financial premium for that uplift of 1.2Mbps? If it's the same price and a stable service, maybe stick with it? What about the upstream? How much has it been boosted? Here's where we did gain something. Previously we got 1Mbps upstream on ADSL2+, but now get 6Mbps. An improvement but not hugely useful, as we don't host, nor fileshare much. Shame the VDSL2 isn't more dynamic in its allocation of spectrum between upstream and downstream bands.

Well the upstream is just as important as the downstream, whether you file share, host or not.
If you have no more spare upstream you cannot request for stuff to be downloaded.

Basically every time you request a webpage you are requesting a page and then requesting several or upwards of more files like images css stylesheets and so on.

Stuff that stream like media also uses your upstream when watching or listening to music etc, every time it asks for the next block in the stream its uses upstream bandwidth.

And when there is no more upstream left you cannot download anything else.

Granted these request packets are on the small side, but they all mount up, especially if multiple uses on the connection are doing stuff.

Paul

Have you checked the state of your internal wiring, from the NTE where the external BT/OR wiring arrives in your house, using the QLT, Quiet Line Test)?

Dial 17070 etc,

Ermmm?

Has the OP mentioned audible noise on the line?

If you go to BT wholesale performance test and run the speed test.
http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/
hen click further diagmostics Put in your phone number and it should give you some indication of what speeds are available at the exchange.

hope that helps a little
(edit)
oppss miss the final paragraph - mmm intresting i wonder why further diagnostic wont run. When i was having connection problems and my download speeds dropped to les tan 2 meg I was still able to run Btw diagnostics

Edited by deleted (Sat 28-Nov-15 09:45:47)

Hi Millie, and welcome to the forums.

About your own problem with the BTW diagnostics, have you changed ISP to an LLU one since it used to work for you? That would cause this, as the Further Diagnostic part doesn't recognise LLU phone numbers. Also, all we gain from the Further Diagnostics is the IP Profile, and LLU suppliers don't have one. It only applies to BTW connections.

(Friendly tip - every post has its own reply button, so you can reply to the actual post/person, in this case the OP rather than me . You can see it in the post headers. If you switch to Threaded mode, which lots of people use, you can see how it chains conversations (sub-threads)).

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 28-Nov-15 10:06:32)