Too right. A proper business ISP should be on the ball with this, otherwise why are you paying a premium for utterly rubbish service?

I’ve walked for less. Unfortunately there are quite a few “cowboy” business ISP operators: it’s very simple either you sort, or I walk.

You just have to brave enough (and be prepared to contractually) call their bluff!

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Too right. A proper business ISP should be on the ball with this, otherwise why are you paying a premium for utterly rubbish service?

I’ve walked for less. Unfortunately there are quite a few “cowboy” business ISP operators: it’s very simple either you sort, or I walk.

You just have to brave enough (and be prepared to contractually) call their bluff!

Fully agree. The performance is way worse than can be explained by contention in the immediate vicinity as explained so cogently by Iniltous. And contention on a more distant scale would have even less impact.

So on that understanding, it's a case of collect the evidence and give Spitfire time [14 days?] to shape up or be sacked without contract penalties. And do it in writing with an adequate explanation than can be referred to in the inevitable dispute.

My money is all the more on Spitfire throttling OP with throttling speeds appropriate to ADSL.

No way is this PON congestion. Bandwidth usage in general is much higher in the evenings, so it would be even worse in the evenings if it was.

It's also extremely telling this is a business ISP and the congestion is worse in business hours.

I'd bet it is some OR/BTw <> Spitfire handover link (can't remember the name of the products these days) being overloaded because they didn't want to pay more for the 10G vs 1G one only having a relatively small number of customers to split the cost on compared to residential ISPs, and probably an extended lead time to upgrade?

Or it could just be general congestion on their transit or what not but I'd assume that is much more fixable and they wouldn't want all their customers upset.

Why is the OP with this ISP in the first place btw? I would be moving straight away personally given some of the responses from them. Life is too short.

Edited by mr_mojo (Sat 01-Feb-25 22:23:36)

Plus isn't GPON supposed to be load balanced so that under contention the bandwidth gets split equally across all 30 customers, giving a minimum downstream rate of around 60Mbit?

If that is true then the contention would have to be at the 10Gbit fibre further up the chain, which would mean everyone across several different PONs are having performance issues and that SHOULD trigger a capacity upgrade.

Well, I'm back at square one with them.

When I brought up the SIN506 minimum speeds of 110mbps for this service, I was transferred to another *much* less helpful person, who simply said

"This is an up-to service, therefore we have no minimum speed guarantees. Furthermore, we have run tests from our end and determined that there is no problem, so you WILL be charged if you decide to escalate this to our supplier."

Grrrr...

I've had enough of them, especially as this morning I was trying to grab files off a server at a blistering speed of 20mbps...

Looking into contacting the account manager now, to find out what the fees for cancellation before the contract is done are.

I should have known better than to go for a 24mo contract!

90% OF THE REMAINING TERM FEES

Aghhhh!!!
Hopefully the account manager can sort this right out, especially as my neighbours have *no issues* with speed drops during the day (on Sky FTTP)

https://www.spitfire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/0...

It's time to remind them of their obligations under consumer law. If they insist it's PON congestion then call their bluff on it - get another service installed under the agreement that if it works fine then they release you from the contract. They have nothing to lose unless they are bluffing.

They also need to be reminded that they've already admitted to observing the same problem when they sent you a test router.

Also if they are refusing to do anything ask for a deadlock letter and go to ADR.

Edited by jpm (Tue 04-Feb-25 13:24:32)

In reply to a post by nyctomanica:

90% OF THE REMAINING TERM FEES

Aghhhh!!!
Hopefully the account manager can sort this right out, especially as my neighbours have *no issues* with speed drops during the day (on Sky FTTP)

https://www.spitfire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/0...

Are you signed up as an individual or business?

In reply to a post by nyctomanica:

Well, I'm back at square one with them.

When I brought up the SIN506 minimum speeds of 110mbps for this service, I was transferred to another *much* less helpful person, who simply said

"This is an up-to service, therefore we have no minimum speed guarantees. Furthermore, we have run tests from our end and determined that there is no problem, so you WILL be charged if you decide to escalate this to our supplier."

Grrrr...

I've had enough of them, especially as this morning I was trying to grab files off a server at a blistering speed of 20mbps...

Looking into contacting the account manager now, to find out what the fees for cancellation before the contract is done are.

I should have known better than to go for a 24mo contract!

Can you please either post here or DM me the terms of the agreement.

Remember you are not cancelling the agreement - they are in breach! There is a very big difference, in how you phrase this and your correspondence with them.

I'm signed up as an individual, not a business if that helps.

These are the terms I agreed to on sign up, from their website

and here is the page for the service I'm on

I went with Spitfire in the first place as I'd used their FTTC back in 2018, and found their support and speeds flawless. However, things appear to have really changed for the worse...