You tell'em Tommy . Get nearly every ISP in the country to change it's attitude. We know you can do it!

I bet not all isp's will hide behind the often inaccurate bt speed estimates , only those who can't be bothered pushing bt openreach whilst on the other hand are quite happy to take your money each month ,
Getting bt to fix faults is part of being an isp, or it should be, and whilst some are happy to provide this there are some who aren't
But it's bang out of order where someone who has an estimate of say 50mbps but gets a higher sync or even the max 80mbps and the line has maintained this speed for several months or even a year, and their speed is suddenly cut due to DLM and the isp simply says "but you are still above the estimated speed for your line, theres nothing we can do sorry"
I in the past had a similar argument with BE support, they where trying the same spiel, all because they refused to accept or even investigate if there was a problem with trheir own llu kit

In reply to a post by tommy45:

I bet not all isp's will hide behind the often inaccurate bt speed estimates , only those who can't be bothered pushing bt openreach whilst on the other hand are quite happy to take your money each month ,
Getting bt to fix faults is part of being an isp, or it should be, and whilst some are happy to provide this there are some who aren't
But it's bang out of order where someone who has an estimate of say 50mbps but gets a higher sync or even the max 80mbps and the line has maintained this speed for several months or even a year, and their speed is suddenly cut due to DLM and the isp simply says "but you are still above the estimated speed for your line, theres nothing we can do sorry"
I in the past had a similar argument with BE support, they where trying the same spiel, all because they refused to accept or even investigate if there was a problem with trheir own llu kit

Exactly my point mate FTTC has not been around that long and I guess BT Wholesale testing for estimated speeds was not deeply investigated and ISP's just take whatever is given to them to which they don't care as I see it estimated speeds should but just ONE of the factors used not the ONLY one as talktalk are using if I was able to get 72mb for a week let me have it don't give it to me for a week and then take it away if it was stable to me, if I was only estimated to get 54mb give me 54mb in the first place and leave it at that.

+ if talktalk gave me a reasonable excuse in the first place like there have been new customers added to your cab or DLM has detected errors not just there is no reason it just is what it is basically the guy was arguing with me on the phone he didn't know anything about FTTC he kept referring to the dam exchange ha do they even have ADSL in India lmao

Edited by deleted (Sat 15-Jun-13 16:36:52)

As crosstalk has been mentioned, here's an example of 'probable' crosstalk on my connection:-

http://i.imgbox.com/acoPwHgr.gif

Back in December 2012, my connection could (& did) sync at almost 30Mb / 6 Mb.

Since then, my QLN graph has deteriorated, indicating a 'noisier' connection & Bitloading & SNR (not SNRM) have worsened.

My ISP, Plusnet, have recently arranged 2 separate engineer visits to investigate why my connection now syncs at below 21Mb / 5Mb when my speed estimate was 30Mb downstream (I can't now recall the upstream estimate).

BT's response was to lower my speed estimates to 23.3Mb / 5.4Mb!!!!

It does appear that increased crosstalk is the cause of my reduced speeds & the latest engineer confirmed that my cabinet is now almost at full capacity (thus my connection is highly likely to be experiencing reasonably high levels of crosstalk), although his tests confirm that it is in pretty good physical condition.

So, until vectoring is introduced, it seems that I'll either have to live with lower speeds, or move house to be closer to a cabinet.

BTW, I live around 1000m or so from my cabinet.

In reply to a post by ashmo:

... do they even have ADSL in India lmao

The company I work for has an office in India that has a 20 Mbps internet connection. It's in one of the few areas where up to 100 Mbps business broadband is available. Generally residential broadband out there is up to 750 Kbps or up to 5 Mbps for business broadband.

In reply to a post by simon194:

The company I work for has an office in India that has a 20 Mbps internet connection. It's in one of the few areas where up to 100 Mbps business broadband is available. Generally residential broadband out there is up to 750 Kbps or up to 5 Mbps for business broadband.

I know of people in Bangalore who at home had cable services with similar offers to Virgin Media (this was 5 years ago) of 10meg, 20meg, and 30meg, with around 1meg upload. I suspect that might be only in the area with high amount of IT workers of course.

The BT wholesale speed estimates are not just plucked out of thin air.
The estimate you were given was 54Mbps. This was the speed they thought you would get after DLM had kicked in etc. It takes into account crosstalk over time etc. The fibre estimates are far better than the ADSL ones.

It may seem stable to you however you are not constantly monitoring things - DLM is. The line was clearly not sufficiently stable, whether that's errors building up or whatever but ultimately your speeds were reduced.

It's probably down to say an extra 25 customers getting fibre in that week when you had better speeds. This would cause a gradual increase in crosstalk, followed by gradual deteriation of your line, error build up and ultimately DLM would have kicked in before matters got worse.

Sadly as uptake increases these things only get worse.

The wholesale estimates are the very best estimates that we have. They are realistic. So many people sign up and see great speeds and think damn that estimate was unrealistic, I'm getting so much better... These people nearly always end up around the estimate over time due to crosstalk.

The estimate is what you should really be looking at. That higher sync is a pipe dream and unfortunately the only way for you to get significantly better speeds is to stop everyone around you getting fibre.

You could swich ISPs but they all suffer the same crosstalk on FTTC. That's no solution.

The ISP does not have DLM on fibre. The fibre cabinet does run DLM though which is ISP independant. So whatever it does to a talktalk line, it would do the exact same if that was a BT line.

ADSL DLM was different accross different ISPs in many cases.

So they are right and wrong to say they don't have DLM. They don't but the technology used to deliver the internet to you has DLM built right in. That's not ISP provided though.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sat 15-Jun-13 23:58:56)

+ if talktalk gave me a reasonable excuse in the first place like there have been new customers added to your cab or DLM has detected errors not just there is no reason it just is what it is basically the guy was arguing with me on the phone he didn't know anything about FTTC

Sadly this is the reality when you use an ISP which very often gives out free internet and has rock bottom prices. It's not the agents fault he's just not had the required training. You either pay more for better support at another provider (and usually a signficant amount more) or you can rely on us guys to give you this kind of info

even been close to a cabinet is no gaurantuee.

I can probably throw a stone at a FTTC cabinet from my front door, its very close.

Problem is its not the cabinet that serves me, the coverage is not a circular area.

I also do take issue with a comment that says openreach is powerless, the company that owns and maintains the lines that send the signal is not powerless, just they have chosen to employ policies that restrict possible resolutions to the problems related to crosstalk. eg. engineers doing pairswaps or testing neighbouring lines when doing new installs to make sure not adding new crosstalk, or replacing low quality cables when enabling an area, or reducing density of cables plus more.

BT installed a new dropwire to my property, my attainable jumped from high 60s to over 100mbit. Then they proceeded to move my line back to the old (shared with neighbour) dropwire on the basis of 'BT policy'. I asked for a quote to keep the dedicated dropwire but heard nothing back so gave up on it now. I was pretty shocked BT went to the expense of undoing their work just to enforce a policy.

crosstalk isnt gradual, it seems most people think whenever a new FTTC line is enabled in the cabinet it adds a small affect of crosstalk to existing lines.

Whats nearer the reality is many lines may add no crosstalk at all (not close proximity) but then other lines may add a ton of crosstalk in one go as they close in the bundle.

Its complete luck what happens. Someone could order FTTC and have speeds way above estimates with no to little crosstalk all that time, or someone can be the first on a cab and have heavy crosstalk after a week.