As of yet I have not seen a FTTc connection that runs at the speed it is suppose to.
Mine runs faster than the estimate, with a sync of around 70 (just dropped from 76 after some fiddling) on an estimate of 58.
My impression from various posts is that it is very common to get speeds significantly over estimate,
though of course there are many cases where they come in well below as well.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

As of yet I have not seen a FTTc connection that runs at the speed it is suppose to.

Depends on your definition of "seen", I suppose.

I've had two different FTTC lines in two separate parts of the country. Both worked at least 25% faster than the prediction. That's two you now know about, even if you haven't seen them in operation.

Strange then that a mate of mine who is on plusnet and lives around the corner from the cabinet is gett less than half of what he is suppose to get.
Had Bt there and they said there was nothing wrong and his line was reporting 76Mbps. It may be plusnet mind you, with all their traffic management

It depends on what tools he used to "see" his speed.

As you say, the ISP traffic management could be an issue, and could depend on package type. It could be backhaul. It could be use of WiFi, or the settings for the network within Windows (or whatever OS). It could be a limitation in a browser, and it could even be a plugin in a browser. I've seen all of those (except backhaul) cause issues for me, on one machine or another.

I've even had one PC suddenly decide to run its gigabit ethernet connection at 10Mbps, for no apparent reason.

At these speeds, there is so much more that can go wrong, not just the FTTC - which I agree, can go wrong too. And can be harder to get fixed.

i think mine is about 500meters from me, mind you depends on what cabinet it comes from.

That sounds right, for a 45Mbps prediction, or perhaps a little higher.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

As of yet I have not seen a FTTc connection that runs at the speed it is suppose to. Granted they are still faster than my 10Mbps which I get from my ISp, which is faster than what I used to get with ADSL.

Estimate 44.6meg - actual today 48meg. (very stable as shown by my Samknows reports).

Strange then that a mate of mine who is on plusnet and lives around the corner from the cabinet is gett less than half of what he is suppose to get. Had Bt there and they said there was nothing wrong and his line was reporting 76Mbps. It may be plusnet mind you, with all their traffic management

Its possible he's on the wrong product, and congestion can occur as on any other ISP either in the ISP network, or on their trunks/peering - or within the broadband network, either WBC or LLU. I assume by "Bt" you mean he had Openreach, not BT Retail.

Knowing Bt they will cut corners and muck it up.

Compared to Virgin Media here where my neighbours get a 60meg service that runs at 10meg in the evenings with insanely high latency, my BT Infinity 48meg download, 8meg upload and consistant latency has excelled itself since last Sept. Only thing I miss from my BE days is the static IP option, and if I was signing up now there are more ISPs with more choice.

Not too bothered about really high speed to be honest, I got a reliable 10

Whilst a lot of people I know would love 10meg (one gets only 512k, the rest about 4meg) - the concept of superfast is in a different league for what you can do, and what you'll be able to do in the future. I used to use around 40gb a month on my 14meg (16meg sync) connection. Now I use around 70gb a month, thanks to the speed I now stream HiDef from iTunes and Netflix.

As of yet there are no small ISps that offer FTTC for a decent price with a decent data usage and to be honest, I doubt they ever will be able to.

Yes, the economics of the BTWholesale network mean that you need a _lot_ of customers to amortise the usage over to get the sufficient economies of scale. But at that point you get the BT and Sky price of around £25/month for unlimited usage.

AAISP for example for my 70gb a month would cost me over £80 - AAISP seem to think that more than 20GB a month is 'business' and even businesses apparently use less. That's a very early 2000s viewpoint of an Internet Connection.

Four, i would be once again at the mercy of bloated toad. (BT)

I'm not their biggest fan, but the Openreach split seems to have worked for many people across the country who now have a good competitor to Virgin Media, who are in my view over selling a very poor product. Not something I can say about Openreach.

My next ISP won't be BT Retail, but will be someone with a sensible usage allowance (at least 100GB a month) and static IP. I don't need email or webspace, or free Yahoo/Flickr accounts - and I'd be happy to pay £30/month (after phone rental) - and I think only PlusNet have a product in that space. However I'm in contract until April next year, so everything could be very different by then.

I think you are right also, I think BT significantly under estimate so they have a cop out on bad performing lines, and of course peopl then are happy when they are above the estimate. Inevitably some lines will only be at estimate or even below it but vectoring will remove most of that variance at least in any given area, although different areas may still perform differently due to the make up of their local loop's. If vectoring is deployed properly and works as expected then everyone can expect performance close as to what they would get if they were the only one on the cabinet.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Depends on your definition of "seen", I suppose.

Gone to peoples places and seen FTTC working, granted I have only seen three

I've had two different FTTC lines in two separate parts of the country. Both worked at least 25% faster than the prediction. That's two you now know about, even if you haven't seen them in operation.

Someone down the road says he is getting around 38, which is what he been told he would get, but not because he is further away from the cabinet, but because that is the product he is on.

It depends on what tools he used to "see" his speed.

Just standard speed tests, normally speedtest.net, but we have used this site tests as well

As you say, the ISP traffic management could be an issue, and could depend on package type. It could be backhaul. It could be use of WiFi, or the settings for the network within Windows (or whatever OS). It could be a limitation in a browser, and it could even be a plugin in a browser. I've seen all of those (except backhaul) cause issues for me, on one machine or another.
I've even had one PC suddenly decide to run its gigabit ethernet connection at 10Mbps, for no apparent reason.

He got 4 machines connected, a laptop via wireless, his sons laptop, a older machine via ethernet and his sons surface via wireless.

i even took my own router down, just in case it was a problem with that junk that plusnet forces people to pay for, put the laptop via ethernet, even went direct to the modem. Still the same.

Did a speed test with Bt own speed tester including using Bt own user name, which bypass the ISp and it still came back with naff readings, which is why I have doubts that it is the ISP.

At these speeds, there is so much more that can go wrong, not just the FTTC - which I agree, can go wrong too. And can be harder to get fixed.

It was bad enough when ADSL went wrong, i don't think I want that hassle any more.
I have had 2 un-notified outages since I been on the service I am now and both was solved within 20 mins. the only little problems that they seem to be having a lot of maintenance at the moment and we are getting a few notified outages, but they are normally early in the morning when I am still in bed.

That sounds right, for a 45Mbps prediction, or perhaps a little higher.

That of cause depends who you go with and if they go above 40. I would not pay for anything higher to be honest, not worth it just for another few megabits.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Estimate 44.6meg - actual today 48meg. (very stable as shown by my Samknows reports).

so what do you do with all that speed?

Its possible he's on the wrong product, and congestion can occur as on any other ISP either in the ISP network, or on their trunks/peering - or within the broadband network, either WBC or LLU. I assume by "Bt" you mean he had Openreach, not BT Retail.

They have only got two products, as far as I know, I doubt very much if congestion is the issue, well not when he first had it as the cabinet was new. Now maybe, but i doubt it.

Yes, Bt openreach.

Compared to Virgin Media here where my neighbours get a 60meg service that runs at 10meg in the evenings with insanely high latency, my BT Infinity 48meg download, 8meg upload and consistant latency has excelled itself since last Sept. Only thing I miss from my BE days is the static IP option, and if I was signing up now there are more ISPs with more choice.

I heard the VM can be a pain sometimes, I would liek the chance to try them, but it is not going to happen.

Whilst a lot of people I know would love 10meg (one gets only 512k, the rest about 4meg) -

I only get 10 because I pay for it, normal on this system is around 5, which is still faster than what I got on ADSL. I know people that would love to get 10 as well, thankfully one family I know will be able to soon as the system I use is being expanded where they are.

the concept of superfast is in a different league for what you can do, and what you'll be able to do in the future. I used to use around 40gb a month on my 14meg (16meg sync) connection. Now I use around 70gb a month, thanks to the speed I now stream HiDef from iTunes and Netflix.

Netflix Hd works on my 10Mbps connection, never use Itunes. i can when it is working also watch HD on Iplayer. I doubt it would work if I was downloading something at the same time, but since it is only me here, I can control what the network is doing.

Yes, the economics of the BTWholesale network mean that you need a _lot_ of customers to amortise the usage over to get the sufficient economies of scale. But at that point you get the BT and Sky price of around £25/month for unlimited usage.

AAISP for example for my 70gb a month would cost me over £80 - AAISP seem to think that more than 20GB a month is 'business' and even businesses apparently use less. That's a very early 2000s viewpoint of an Internet Connection.

And this is a major problem for me, I got fed up of the big ISps with their naff customer service, reading from scripts and dare you ask anything that will put them off.

I phoned up my provider a few months back when things was going a bit slow and a engineer phoned me back within a hour and told me that their supplier have sent them the wrong network switch, so it could not handle the amount of data that was required. He did start to explain what a switch was, until I told him I knew. So because I knew some stuff he did not treat me as if I was a imbecile, which I found the larger Isps did and yet they knew nothing apart from what they was reading.

it did take a bit longer to sort out which I would have liked, almost a week, but it only knocked 4Megabits off.

ADSL24, was also good with customer service, but not as good as All pay, but then that is only because Allpay is a local company.

BT, I tend to avoid, Talk Talk i would not use them if they was the last Isp on this earth, so the only larger one would be sky and i would not reallly want to use them either, but at least their customer service is a bit better than the other two.

I'm not their biggest fan, but the Openreach split seems to have worked for many people across the country who now have a good competitor to Virgin Media, who are in my view over selling a very poor product. Not something I can say about Openreach.

My next ISP won't be BT Retail, but will be someone with a sensible usage allowance (at least 100GB a month) and static IP. I don't need email or webspace, or free Yahoo/Flickr accounts - and I'd be happy to pay £30/month (after phone rental) - and I think only PlusNet have a product in that space. However I'm in contract until April next year, so everything could be very different by then.

This is one of the other problems i have with large Isps, they all offer other stuff and they badger you via email or phone calls to get these other services. Bt is the worse. A friend of mine have got Bt broadband and they got calls about BTvision, then about Bt phone as they still pay line rental to another supplier. Now they are getting badgered about FTTc and BT you view.

The same with someone I know that is on Talk Talk, but they mainly get emails telling them about You view and all the other exciting Talk Talk services.


I myself just want broadband, i don't even want a phone line to be honest, which is one of the reasons i went wireless. i don't need email, I don't watch Tv, so I don't need you view. i don't want their anti virus or talk Talk spying homesafe or what ever they call it.

i just want a decent connection with a decent speed to the internet.

My contract ends next year my broadband, I expect I will stay as I am, but you never know. I am not saying I will never go FTTC, but at the moment, I don't feel the need. who knows what will happen, Allpay may not make enough money with their service, which would be a shame as there are people out in the sticks that rely on their service for decent broadband. the problem is inside the city itself they are not going to get the people like myself as FTTc is available to most people.
I just like to be different and i like to support the smaller companies.

I haven't bothered to read all the content of your posts, but it sound like to me:

A) You're trying to justify to yourself your choice of package/ISP
B) You don't really know what you are doing.

Have you checked your friends Plusnet speed profile?

To do this login to the member center, go to connection settings, then high speed broadband. It will then show your friends current line speed - PN will not send data any quicker than this. It should be slightly lower than what his modems synced at. They can get set to the wrong value.

Have you unlocked his modem and checked the stats?

My estimate was 57Mbps, I currently get around 42Mbps, and never had 57Mbps even though I was the first on the cabinet. I'm disappointed with the connection speed, no, would I like a higher speed, of course I would, but I doubt it will make much difference.

My connection has been very reliable, even in the early days when a fault existed in the cabinet which kept causing resyncs it was still reliable in use.

I'm just hoping that vectoring will boost my line speed, as sooner or later the additional speed may be required.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

A) You're trying to justify to yourself your choice of package/ISP

Why would I need to justify to myself my choice of package/ISP?

I choose the right service at the time and I still think it is the right service, sure I can't get 40Mbps, but at least it is reliable.
If things change in another 12 months is another thing. Price could be better I must admit. £18 for 5Mbps was a bargain, since I was paying more for around 3.5 on ADSL and then the line rental on top. Not sure if a extra tenner to get another 5 is mind you, well not now that Fibre is available.

But I don't need a phone line, so that is a advantage. I think my ISp may have to rethink it prices, but then they did not start up for people like myself, they started up for people who live in the sticks.

But as I said, I made the right choice at the time, fibre kept being put back, I wanted a more reliable system for Netfliks, because ADSl while it stayed connected, it could only just cope with SD netfliks.

If I had known that fibre was only a few weeks away when I had this system installed, I may have had a rethink, but i need unlimited data and none of the smaller Isps do unlimited data at a decent price.


The most ADSl24 does is 500Gb and that costs £65 a month, no doubt I could cope on 250GB, but that is £47, ok data is unlimited off peak, but not much cop to me.

Other small ISps are more or less the same, not their fault, it is just the system we have in this country with BT being a monopoly.

B) You don't really know what you are doing.

Have you checked your friends Plusnet speed profile?
To do this login to the member center, go to connection settings, then high speed broadband. It will then show your friends current line speed - PN will not send data any quicker than this. It should be slightly lower than what his modems synced at. They can get set to the wrong value.

I did not know you could check the speed profile that way. but then if the speed profile was lower then surly the BT engineer would have noticed as he said there was nothing wrong with the speed as it was as close to 80 as it could be, I think it was something like 76.
Also for the first week the speed was fine, second thing is it will peak to around 50 for a little while and then go back to around 25.

He paid extra to get the faster speed and also to get the extra data usage, of cause just after Plusnet changed their packages and it became unlimited, I told my mate he should ask to be put onto that, as it cost the same as what he is paying

Have you unlocked his modem and checked the stats?

I have done that on someone else, but I doubt my mate would allow me to do that on his.

I will pop over there tomorrow or maybe later on if he is not busy and have a look at the speed profile, but I doubt it will tell us anything we don't already know.

My estimate was 57Mbps, I currently get around 42Mbps, and never had 57Mbps even though I was the first on the cabinet. I'm disappointed with the connection speed, no, would I like a higher speed, of course I would, but I doubt it will make much difference.

My connection has been very reliable, even in the early days when a fault existed in the cabinet which kept causing resyncs it was still reliable in use.

I'm just hoping that vectoring will boost my line speed, as sooner or later the additional speed may be required.

His connection is reliable, just not as fast as it should be. It have made one hell of a difference to him, certainly with the higher uploading speed which is what he wanted. He can up load videos and audio in minutes instead of hours. His wife can watch stuff on Iplayer.

If we could get the download speed to where it should be, thing s would be even better, of cause the router that Plusnet supplies don't help. he is going to get one like mine a TPlink at some point, at least the wireless would be better for his laptop then.

The BT engineer will only see the BT side of things, he can not see what the Plusnet profile is set to. To find where the problem is you really need to check the PN profile, and if that's correct then use an unlocked HG612 modem to monitor the line 24/7, which is easy to do, and you could pick one up ebay fairly cheaply. Also you won't know if the PN is correct unless you know the BT profile, which can find out via the BT speedtest.

I pay less than £30 a month including line rental from PN with unlimited usage, PN were a pain at the time because they were very slow updating their packages, but when they did it was a fantastic package at a great price. My upload speed is around 10Mbps, which is great, but my cloud backup services never runs quicker than about 3Mbps. Also with downloads, even though I have about 40Mbps at my disposal, a lot of downloads don't run anywhere near that, and it's nothing to do with PN.

If you need help with monitoring the line or any of this, then start a new thread, as this is all rather off topic.

Don't forget that if high-speed uploading is being done, either deliberately or unrealised from someone's historic P2P downloads which are feeding external seeds, the downloads can grind almost to a halt, as the upstream is flooded and can't send the ACKs.

And if those are happening over the wireless link, that is clobbered as another effect even if the connection upload itself is coping.

Also his current product sounds like the speed-capped one - which I agree shouldn't affect BT speed tests but could affect normal running.