New line instead of migration.

My Sky contract is just about up so I�ve been looking at migrating.

Despite being close to the cabinet, my line can�t connect at 80Mbps. When I first got an 80/20 service I got 73 and that dropped to 64 as others got connected. Recently it�s got as low as 59Mbps albeit with a slightly higher noise margin of about 7.

I decided to order a new line rather than migrating. The idea was to improve the internal presentation of the line (old line comes in via the bathroom then through a wall but doesn�t impact line quality) but also to see if a new pair could improve speeds.

So I�ve moved to Plusnet. The new line is now connecting at 80Mbps with a maximum a little higher, and the phone line has been rerouted so there�s no cable in the bathroom.

Overall I�m pretty happy and it ended up well worth the £50 install fee.

That's a very nice improvement, and a gamble that paid off.

Your old line could have faults on it, contain ally or just be heavily affected by cross talk, or more likely a combination of things.

... and yet the new line doubtless takes the same route in the same cables as the original line ...

So maybe again proving that a lot of issues are down to the in home wiring

Completely agree.

Positioning of the cable pairs in the bundles can affect cross talk

Yep.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

... and yet the new line doubtless takes the same route in the same cables as the original line ...

Come on Zarjaz, we all know that a pair swap can potentially improve things, the OP stated that the original internal wiring had no impact so we can presume he's tested from the master socket test point, although of course he may not have done or it could be incorrectly wired.

But regardless you well know one pair will perform better than another pair, even if electrically both pairs were perfect (which I doubt they will be) due to crosstalk, unless the optimal pair is already in use. But of course that increase could be short lived if another new subscribers lines impacts it. It is at the end of the day a lottery, which is why I said the gamble paid off.

The above is also why I moved to Virgin, I got fed up with my speeds decreasing, being on a flawed ECI cabinet, ally in my line, but with perfect internal wiring

Yes, it potentially can.

It�s all ifs, buts and dark ju-ju. No hard and fast rules, just guidelines.

Just to add some more info...

The old line had been checked by BT a while ago and confirmed to be ok.

The dropwire connects to the rear of the terraced house as that�s where all the poles are for our street. It then comes through the edge of a window into what has been a bathroom probably since the 70�s (house was built when baths were in front of the fire and the toilet would have been outside)

It was gel crimped to internal wiring (BT twisted pair) through a wall and connected to NTE5 with filtered faceplate. Internal wiring was about 1-2M.

The engineer drilled a hole in the external wall from the bedroom and redirected the existing dropwire through it to the existing NTE5 (0.5M or internal wiring). He then used the alternate pair in the existung dropwire to provide the new line.

The changes to the old line made no difference to its line stats, suggesting any difference is likely in the link from cabinet to pole (200M approx road distance)


The added perk of leaving sky (other than that plusnet is cheaper) is I can lose the double NAT setup I had as google wifi didn�t support Sky authentication types - now I can use a normal PPPoE connection.