Aluminium cabling

I currently have BT Infinity 1 and get about 41Mbps download speed and 6 Mbps upload which is okay for my day to day needs at present. However as part of a retention offer a couple of years ago I was offered an upgrade to BT Infinity 2. When the changeover was implemented from Infinity 1 to Infinity 2 I didn't get any performance improvement. No explanation was offered but BT returned me to Infinity 1 and gave me a price reduction instead.
Last Autumn we had a BT line fault which initially took the phone service and then the internet connection. Took ages to fix and eventually a BT Boost engineer came out to get me back to my pre-fault internet connection speeds. The engineer said that as I live on a 1960's built housing estate some of the BT cabling between the Fibre Cabinet and my house was aluminium not copper as it was cheaper and more readily available at the time the estate was cabled. He suggested aluminium cabling and FTTC didn't work that well together.
My question to those forum members who understand the technicalities better than I do is whether it is true that aluminium cabling between the Cabinet and my house will restrict the service I can get and is it the case that I have reached a plateau which won't improve unless re-cabling takes place?

Yep, aluminium doesn't conduct as well as copper. Back when it was installed, the internet wasn't really a thing, let alone the high speed technologies that have been developed since.

Your speeds won't increase any time soon.

In reply to a post by codsallandy:

My question to those forum members who understand the technicalities better than I do is whether it is true that aluminium cabling between the Cabinet and my house will restrict the service I can get

Correct. Generally speaking aluminium has a higher attenuation rate than copper cable.

and is it the case that I have reached a plateau which won't improve unless re-cabling takes place?

At the moment yes, but of course G.fast is on the way in the near future and will potentially give you a higher speed. The cable won't be replaced unless it is actually faulty.

Edited by troublegum (Sat 11-Mar-17 15:37:57)

G.fast is not a solution for customers only getting 41mbps especially on aluminium, until/if the G.fast pods get deployed deeper into the network, such as to the DP.

A couple of years ago Infinity 1 was 40/10

What does www.dslchecker.bt.com estimate for your line?

And it's now 55/10, so when the OP changed back to infinity 1, they'll get what their line can support, up to that.

So there was a performance increase. Or the op is referring to max data rate?

I assume, the OP was on Infinity 1, went to Infinity 2 and was getting almost identical throughput (40mbps vs 41mbps sync) and thus, deemed it not worth the extra money, for a miniscule improvement, so downgraded back to Infinity 1.

Since then, the 55meg cap was introduced.

It will be interesting to see what the dslchecker estimates are

how far from the cab are you -- I would reckon circa 600 - 800 metres

The aluminium wiring is likely to be between the 1960s PCP and your 1960s house only.

The new/recent FTTC ("Fibre Cabinet") for VDSL is linked to the old PCP only, not directly to your house; and will almost certainly be copper and a relatively short, around 10 Metres to 50 Metres generally.

Sorry for delay in posting - been watching the rugby!
In no particular order: distance from cabinet is about 800m; I was on the old 40/10 Infinity 1 at the time of the offered upgrade, I think I used to get about mid- thirties download speed and Infinity 2 did indeed only give me 1 or 2 Mbps more which after the offer period would have been more money for 2 Mbps extra; I am now on the Infinity 1 service on 55/10 maximum; the BT broadband availability checker predicts a clean download high of 51.1 and low of 38.3 or an impacted range high of 41.2 with a low of 25 Mbps.
Thank you to everyone for your informative posts. I got the answers I was after which were that the BT engineer wasn't telling me a tale, that aluminium is pretty useless for broadband and that the service I'm getting is as good as it gets until BT and Government invest some serious money in a 5 to 10 year FTTH programme. Dream on!

In reply to a post by lee111s:

Yep, aluminium doesn't conduct as well as copper. Back when it was installed, the internet wasn't really a thing, let alone the high speed technologies that have been developed since.

Aluminium cables as installed by the GPO quite possibly have a lower resistance but higher capacitance than copper cables for a given length. The higher capacitance could well lead to a greater loss of high frequency DSL signals.

Housing estate I'm on has alumimum cable,my connection dropped from the estimated 54Mb to 14Mb, no spare pairs, & BTOR wouldn't do nothing.
So, I wrote to Sir Mike Rake & others, & made myself very unpopular, took a few months for things to happen, but I got my line moved to another pole at back of my property which is closer to cabinet,took two days for work to be done,but now getting 74Mb.

I to have aluminium cabling to my housing estate which was built in the early 70's 72 i believe. I currently have sky fibre pro and have to say my sync (72) and throughput speeds (68-69)are good enough for me. Last time i had a engineer visit he showed me the line length on his tablet as it accurately mapped out the route of the cable, i'm only 250m from the pcp cabinet so that probably explains why my fibre is relatively good for aluminium cabling. Also ound it interesting that the engineer said back when they laid these cable they probably didnt put duct work in between the main line and the house so its probably just laying in the ground (yay for corrision)

Edited by RBD (Sat 11-Mar-17 21:36:14)