BT Fibre upgrade is not as advertised - getting frustrated

I've had a good look through the forums and I guess I'm not the first, nor will I be the last to have this issue but any ideas for this non technical frustrated BT Fibre customer out there please?

I'be been running broadband at this address since I moved in 5 years ago, waiting for fibre to come and speed things up. Normal 2+2 family with a desktop PC, couple of laptops, I work from home half the week pulling stuff down pretty much MS Office stuff from company One Drive, SharePoint, using Skype for Business audio, conferencing and sometimes video calls, as well as web-ex for conferencing. My broadband was 'normal' ADSL on an 8Mb download package, as the poles/wires wouldn't give me more than that. I would see about 4-6mbs download on average and 0.2-0.4 upload on average. Things were pretty slow but between 0930 to 1530 most days I could just about cope with work by being selective with what I did, e.g. sharing my screen whilst audio and video conferencing was pretty much a no-no and would kill the connection or the lag / sound quality was so poor it was unworkable and I learned never to attempt to save or pull a file to/from OneDrive whilst in a conf call, as it basically ground to a halt. When the kids came in from school, it was a battle... one or two tablets would kill performance and the X-Box or PC Games were forbidden until after 18:00, as that would kill everything too.

Imagine the joy when after 5 years at "being designed" phase we got the nod and were able to upgrade to Fibre (BT Infinity). I stuck with BT and was delighted when we moved to their biggest available package in this area, which was 77-80 Mbs download, with a "guaranteed 70Mbps download"... they couldn't confirm upload speed but rumors were that it might be 15 to 20 Mbps or more... we had grown used to 0.2, where uploading a youtube vid (teenagers!) would require an overnight upload and even then, perhaps a few attempts over days to get it uploaded.

We went Fibre 12th July and was told that it might be flaky for a few days, up to 10 days. Day one was a little stressful as it came on late in the day and was very erratic, dropping in and out. We did a quick speed test and wow, it wasn't where we'd hoped but 35mbps download, 19mbps upload! Imagine when it gets to 70mbps download. Trouble is it has never got that close... for the first 4 days, I called BT perhaps 6 times, as the smart hub was dropping connection around 35 to 50 times through the day... working at home meant that my stress levels went through the roof... they fixed an issue, then had an engineer to the cabinet to fix another, and now they have another issue. The speed also dropped significantly and on average we see about 25mbps download and 6 to 7 mbps upload... between days 5 to 10 we had a big improvement over dropped connections with an average of around 5 or 6 drops per day.

My Fibre journey has been terrible so far and we still can't do the things we'd hoped, like watch the Amazon Firestick TV, whilst a tween was watching a youtube vid and a teen was playing a PC Game online... the thing is at day 12, we still get 2 to 3 drops of connections per day, we still have to ration out the usage between us, with restrictions on who can go on what device, when. We still are showing around 25Mbps down and 6mbps upload, I have an outstanding BT Level 2 engineer call outstanding as they think there might still be issues (yeah, really BT, you don't say?!) and I get a daily 1800 call from a person telling me they are working on some thing and asking "is it better today?" to which I say well, the package says guaranteed 70mbps download and I get 25, it falls over and the smart hub lights turn orange, lose connectivity a few times a day, we cannot watch TV whilst others are on devices, so no, it is not OK today thanks... OK, we'll phone you tomorrow then is the standard reply...

I am not a techie, I get a little lost with all this but I feel really frustrated. Have I been duped? Will I ever see 70Mbps that I'm paying for/ Will it ever be reliable?

In terms of physical stuff, we had some plastering work on te house done last year, so took the opportunity to move the wire coming into the house (it's on a pole). BT did that for us and at the time upgraded our old 1970's looking junction box in the loft with new wires, a new modern ("fibre ready") box that splits into two, one to the lounge point and one to the study point. We are 175 metres from the cabinet that now has fibre to it (they installed a new big green one about two months ago).

I'm lost... any advice (in non tech laymans terms) would be appreciated please

Thanks.

Can you put your number into here https://www.dslchecker.bt.com and post a screenshot of the results.

Can you also post up the connection stats from router/home hub manager page?

Is your kit connected to the master socket? Or an extensiom socket?

Are you testing over wireless or an Ethernet connection?

I am not a techie, I get a little lost with all this but I feel really frustrated.

So ring BT customer service and report the issue, they'll get a nice Openreach bod out to sort it out for you ...

The most likely cause is within the home environment, incorrect set up and the like.

In reply to a post by COYI:

the thing is at day 12, we still get 2 to 3 drops of connections per day, we still have to ration out the usage between us, with restrictions on who can go on what device, when. We still are showing around 25Mbps down and 6mbps upload

Will I ever see 70Mbps that I'm paying for/ Will it ever be reliable?

The best advice over this process: Forget the speeds for now, concentrate on the disconnections.

My FTTC connection stays up. period. All of the past ones have too, from distances of 100m from the cabinet to 700m from the cabinet. They only go down when I unplug the modem.

Whatever is causing outages is likely to mean pretty unstable speeds and lots of errors, and DLM will be getting involved ... knocking speeds down further in an effort to achieve stability.

So the first aim is for a line that doesn't disconnect.

Then, of course, you want it to be stable but with a decent speed.

Beyond this, any solution that we can help with is going to come from the statistics produced by the modem ... as requested by @lee111s. Unfortunately, when stability is the issue, it is better to have the statistics harvested continuously, or at least multiple sets of statistics, rather than just a one-off snapshot. And more detailed statistics than the BT HomeHub can give us.

I would keep asking for Openreach appointments until disconnections stop happening.

In reply to a post by COYI:

I am not a techie, I get a little lost with all this

One techie thing you can't escape is the notion of crosstalk: signal from other subscribers that interferes with your own signal.

FTTC gets affected by crosstalk, which means your speed can drop as more subscribers get added into the system. The impact accumulates, and is random.

The upshot is that you need to expect speed drops over time, even if everything is working correctly.

Do you know how far you are from the cabinet?

Do you know how far you are from the cabinet?

The OP mentioned 175m in the post Wombat.

I wonder also if theres mains electric in his loft, because it sounds like the NTE may be there, so bridge taps ahoy.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The most likely cause is within the home environment, incorrect set up and the like.

I agree.

For the OP:
If the master is in the loft, and it has split to 2 extensions (lounge and study), then the obvious question is ... how is the modem plugged in? And what kind of filter?

Did an Openreach engineer attend (as part of fibre activation) to sort out the wiring?

It is possible that this arrangement has been wired well for your modem, but it is also possible for the wiring to caused interference.

Explaining further, and making checks, requires a level of techie willingness. If you don't have it, then deferring to an engineer is the best bet.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Do you know how far you are from the cabinet?

The OP mentioned 175m in the post Wombat.

Ah yes - there was a lot of post to read through!

175m ought to be able to achieve 80/20 speeds; those speeds should get to 300m+, and further without crosstalk.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I wonder also if theres mains electric in his loft, because it sounds like the NTE may be there, so bridge taps ahoy.

Agree.

But if an engineer has been to check, then I'd have thought the siting and wiring of the master and any potential bridge taps would have been the first thing to check for.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/fix-my-broadband/unre...

While the phone part may not be relevant letting the connection run at the test socket for a few days and see if its more stable is worth while.

It is possible the wiring work done previously may not be optimal and impossible to tell without more information and thus may need the 'boost' engineer visit suggested. The double check is that when the test socket is visible like in the link that none of the other phone sockets in the home work.

Thanks and yes, I am testing over a wired ethernet connection.

I thought it was the master socket but might be an extension..... more to follow.

Thanks and you know, you;re on to something there