It would have been.

Is the decrease most likely down to the cabinet filling up? There have been some new houses built at the end of my road in the last year.

It's more likely due to Openreach getting more data on people on your cabinet ordering the service and then more accurate data is available. It's likely that someone around you, on the same DP, ordered FTTC so Openreach have their connection data to provide a more accurate estimate for you.

Have you tried Openreach to see if they plan FTTP for you?

Back to your original question, I find that DSLchecker is too variable from test to test in the same time slot, to be relied on. I find Speedtest.net to be more consistent.

Test One

Test Two

Test Three



TBB admins swear by their own test, although I have my doubts. I get tests equally bad during on and off-peak times, suggesting that their whole test is internally dodgy, whether they are multi-thread or not.

If you really want an accurate measure for FTTC I would use a file download method or speedtest.net multiple times and then average the results.

In the end though, speed tests are only worth getting into if you are finding that download speed issues are affecting the way you use your connection.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14887...

Edited by deleted (Sun 05-Mar-17 09:36:09)

In reply to a post by roughbeast:

Back to your original question, I find that DSLchecker is too variable from test to test in the same time slot, to be relied on. I find Speedtest.net to be more consistent.

Test One

Test Two

Test Three



TBB admins swear by their own test, although I have my doubts. I get tests equally bad during on and off-peak times, suggesting that their whole test is internally dodgy, whether they are multi-thread or not.

If you really want an accurate measure for FTTC I would use a file download method or speedtest.net multiple times and then average the results.

In the end though, speed tests are only worth getting into if you are finding that download speed issues are affecting the way you use your connection.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14887...

What have any speedtests got to do with the estimates from BTs DSLChecker?

As for our test being internally dodgy, care to elaborate on that?

The way speedtest.net drops the slowest 30% of samples and top 10% of samples and then calculates an average will mask the up/down speeds the graph you have from our test, our using a median will generally show a slower figure. So two methods and which is right depends on what you information you want to convey.

Nothing wrong the test itself that I have written e.g.
http://tbb.st/1488381736597421555 and http://tbb.st/1488381621221545555 from same user

And from someone in Scotland http://tbb.st/1488476575635064255

In reply to a post by MHC:

What have any speedtests got to do with the estimates from BTs DSLChecker?

Just what I was thinking. Particularly on a VM Media cable line.

Perhaps the poster's opinion isn't well-informed .

I am looking to upgrade to fibre, can only reach 4.5mb adsl speed because of the distance from exchange.
I have just done the BT dsl checker and these are the estimate download speeds etc,

VDSL A high 80 low 64.7


VDSL B high 78.9 low 54


FTTP 330

The cabinet is about 80 yards away, so should i be good to go to order a up to 38/40 mb fibre product.

With those estimates, you will probably get significant extra speed from an up to 77 Mbit/s compared to an up to 38 Mbit/s product. It is up to you to decide what is worthwhile, remembering that you can usually upgrade without penalty but often cannot downgrade without serving a minimum contract period.

I suspect the FTTP mention is FTTP On Demand which is extremely expensive. It is very unlikely that Openreach will provide both FTTP and high speed FTTC to the same location.

Yes. The "A" line is if you have a very clean line between the FTTC cabinet, through the PCP, to your master socket. The "B" line is if there is anything dodgy between the cabinet and reaching your house, and/or you have bad wiring in the house or set it up badly.

In your case it looks as if the only factor the estimator is covering with the B figures is what your internal wiring may be like, as BTW don't know about that.

Bearing in mind that faulty electrical equipment next door could also cause problems, but that applies to all of us.

You should have no problem at all with any 40Mbps product, but note both TalkTalk retail and Plusnet only provide 2Mbps upstream on that. Most ISPs supply 10Mbps. If you don't upload much it probably won't matter. But lots of photos, or file backups, and a 10Mbps one may be advisable.

Also, BT Retail these days is 55/10, not 40/10. To me that doesn't matter but I believe the 55 is to do with streaming the highest definition TV or something like that. 40/10 might struggle.

All ISPs that provide the 80Mbps product give 20Mbps upstream on it, but of course it costs more.

Whoops! I just realised I misread DSL checker as meaning DSLReports. Apologies.

I am happy for my post to be deleted.

However, I do stand by my comments regarding the utter inaccuracy of the TBB single thread and multi-thread tests. I do not apologise for that. But that is another story.