Line Speed Decrease

Hey guys

Long story short I went FTTC when my cab went live and was happily getting around 70-76Mb/s. Gradually this has gone down over time and since January I've been capped at 40Mb/s every resync. Called EE and I've had 2 Openreach visits and the summary is EE are now not able to offer me anything above their 40Mb/s package.

This is despite me being able to get it previously and my neighbour (I know there may be other things affecting this) being able to order 60-80Mb with Zen.

I just don't get it. Something must have changed somewhere, no?

Is there anything I can do?

It could be cross talk or it could be a deterioration in the cables and joints - could even be that for some reason they switched your line at some point to a different pair that degraded the service. If you had a speed guarantee at the start of your contract then you can use that with your ISP - but if they can't meet the original speed guarantee then their course of action may just be to let you leave them.

It could be that your ISP could get Openreach to try a different pair to the exchange which might improve things - but Openreach may refuse to do so or there may be no spare pairs available.

In the end you can continue to badger your ISP to see if they can improve it or could talk to someone like AAISP who might be willing to go the extra mile to try and get better speeds (no guarantee that they will though).

With the work going into FTTP the old copper network is unlikely to see major work - especially where a line is stable albeit at lower speeds than you used to get.

EE seem unwilling to progress any additional jobs to Openreach now.

The minimum guarantee is a whole other issue - that's been based on the 'reduced' service I've been seeing, yet paying for the higher tier so that's not been applicable. They have said they'll let me go without penalty - which is good - but not where I want to be!

The BTw checker speeds are also higher than what EE have said they can offer me - so confused!

Edited by lostinthewoods (Wed 24-Feb-21 11:43:06)

BT wholesale checker is not necessarily accurate. I am not surprised EE don't want to progress further as this costs them money and they know they are probably not going to get much movement from Openreach. You can see what "guarantee" other ISPs will offer you but even if they offer higher it will probably not be much different to what you get now - so if they couldn't deliver then they would probably just let you leave the new contract. As I mentioned before AAISP have some track record of being more willing to push Openreach but there is no guarantee they could change anything either.

What would be useful is if you can post your stats from your router - SNR, Attenuation, sync speeds and power levels would help us to understand if there is any leeway for faster speeds (ie if EE are artificially capping you) or whether there is actually more speed there and EE have capped you to save themselves money.

Just this morning the modem re-synced at 49.89Mbs which is the guaranteed minimum of Zen - no other ISP I've checked offers a minimum that high. It's also higher than the MAXIMUM speed EE is saying I can get!

Stats here:

Up/Down
Noise Margin: 6.1/4.1
Line attenuation: 25.2/18.5
Signal attenuation: 25.1/18.5

The EE router doesn't seem to show SNR or power levels that I can see

Noise margin = SNR so that is already there. Power levels is more of a nice to have.

If you went to another ISP you could potentially get the 49Mb/s but speed tests would be a bit lower due to overheads. It looks like your line has probably degraded one way or another over time and no ISP is going to get you much different unless they could convince Openreach to expend resource and possibly money in order to replace parts of the line - this is highly unlikely.

Other than having different technology available you are probably stuck with what you have I am afraid. You could look at FTTPoD but it is pretty expensive. If you are in a good area then mobile might give you better speeds (although your FTTC speed is pretty good so you would be pretty lucky at this point to beat it with mobile).

Afraid I can't think of many other options for you at this point - at least not at consumer pricing.

Thanks for your comments ian72

It's funny I've just gone to try a test socket check (found out I don't have a filter that fits anyway) and I've synced back at 50.11Mbs - now it's going up slowly!

EE have put a 'no penalty' flag on my account if I switch but I might just ride it out for a while if it sticks around 50Mbs.

Zen were offering 45-71Mb but it seems anything 60+ is not going to happen anymore.

Guess I just have the long wait for FTTP

If you haven't tested in the test socket then have you confirmed you don't have any extensions that could be causing this issue? Have you tried unplugging everything else from the phone line as sometimes items such as sky boxes can cause issues? Do you not have any ADSL filters from any routers you have had delivered in the past lying around any where that you could use to test?

I'll have another look in the loft and see if there are any lying around.

I'm not aware of any extension sockets and almost certain there's no wiring to any. The line comes in from outside to the master socket and that's it, there's nothing else connected to it.

The only thing plugged into the splitter is the modem

Need to do the test socket check this weekend but my sync speed is currently 53.01Mb/s.
Would the engineer have done some sort of reset after replacing cabling?

Tempted to call EE back to gloat that I'm getting speeds they can't offer me even though I'm with them