Ah, perhaps I've mixed up the exchange and cabinet after all. I was using CodeLook earlier.

I'm served by the Woodseaves Exchange Cabinet 2

I am about 2500m from the cabinet and get 5.9Mb, a neighbour is closer, so at about 2000m from the cabinet and they are on 12Mb.

So your expectations are realistic, you can be happy if you get anything faster. It will certainly be faster than the ADSL connection you had before. There is no point in signing up for 80/20 at all.

HTTPS://goo.gl/maps/PWNHjZZvwF42

Great stuff Ribble! I know where that is, and it's no where near 2000m. More like half that distance. Expecting something in the 20s now if I'm lucky!

Thanks for your help.

I am at over 1300m from the PCP and I get around 24Mbps download just to give you an idea.

Remember it is line length which is not direct straight line and not always te road route. Your line may go off in various directions before getting to you. As an example friends are under 1km from their exchange - the line in 9km.

Where did the original 2096 come from? was it from a BT Tech?

Thanks for the response guys. It's starting to look like I'm just going to have to wait and see what happens. There seems to be no hard and fast rule. I've ordered 40/10, with my activation date being 20 days away. Excited. Mind, hoping I lean towards the mid 20's rather than the low teens.

In reply to a post by soziblewuup:

Is 18Mbps referring to the lowest I could expect before the distance from the cabinet takes effect? Or is that suggesting the overall lowest I should expect, regardless of distance, is 18Mbps? I would imagine the former.

The two ranges already take account of your distance (strictly, other factors influence speeds too, such as thickness and material).

You can expect your speed to be somewhere in the A range if your line is in decent shape - no dodgy joints, no extra branches of cable left attached, no insulation worn away etc.

You can expect the B range to apply if there are faults in the wiring.

ISPs will decide which range to use based on your installation choice; go for an engineer installation, and they should quote range A speeds ... and jump into action if reality falls well below these higher figures. Go for a self-install, and they'll use range B instead.

Whichever range is chosen, your actual speed is more likely to start out at the higher end of the range (or above it) if you are an early subscriber on the cabinet. It is likely to drop as time goes by, and more subscribers get added.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

ISPs will decide which range to use based on your installation choice; go for an engineer installation, and they should quote range A speeds ... and jump into action if reality falls well below these higher figures. Go for a self-install, and they'll use range B instead.

That doesn't really ring true because if your speed is outside the A range after a self-install and you report it, they will send an engineer.

Guess it depends on the ISP. There have been plenty of posts on self-install cases where range B is both quoted pre-order and used when reporting faults.

I can't speak from experience though. All my installations came with an engineer, and all my faults have been dealt with as verified by a test, not just with "low speed" as the only symptom.

IMO, it would be a good move for BT to do as you say.