Milton Keynes So Slow

Hi, I live in South Milton Keynes and I only get 512k speed broadband which is next to useless even for trying to watch I-player. I believe I am connected to the Woburn Sands exchange which is probably Victorian hense the speed.
Anyone any idea when BT plans to upgrade this poor old copper cable please. I also pay almost the same amount monthly as people on 4meg which also seems a little unfair.

Kohlirowe

The problem will lie with the length of your phone line not the exchange. The Building may well be Victorian but the kit inside will be more or less the same as any other exchange.

If you post up the stats from your router then people will be able to advise on whether or not you could expect better by tidying your own phone wiring. Don't expect BT to do anything with theirs any time soon unless you are very very lucky.

To get router stats check here - http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

If you can post your router stats, we can give you more specific advice, but in general terms, a lot of the problems in Milton Keynes stem from the use of aluminium cable. I live in Bradwell and can manage 3M. It's unlikely BT will upgrade the cable infrastructure unless they move to fibre.

Hi, I live in the S.E of Milton Keynes. My exchange is Bradwell Abbey, situated in Fishermead just south of C.M.K. Not only does M.K suffer with poor quality telephone cable, it also has a geographical problem when it was being developed. This being that many telephone cables run around the perimeter of the estates before reaching the street cabinet. This makes the line distance to the exchange far greater than the distance that the crows fly, i.e straight line of sight. I am approx 3.35 km from my exchange as the crows fly but can only manage a 1.5 meg connection speed if that's any indication of our problem here.

Hi, thanks for the replies. I have to say that half a meg is all I'm going to get based on BT's blurb etc. I've run a few speed checks and the fastest I have got is:-

Downstream 473.42 Kbps
Upstream 230.22Kbps

Quicker than my old dial up but no good for catching up on unmissable TV.

Kohlirowe

This FAQ might help.

Got some numbers off my speedtouch:-
Link Information


Uptime: 0 days, 0:13:36

Modulation: G.992.1 annex A

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 288 / 576

Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [KB/MB]: 828,00 / 4,55

Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11,5 / 15,0

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 31,5 / 63,5

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 17,0 / 14,0

Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / ALCB

Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0

Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 19 / 0

Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0

Loss of Link (Remote): 0

Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 866 / 0

FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0

CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 398

HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 100

No idea what it means....

I reckon that line is good for at least 1600-1700kbps sync on ADSL Max, with an IP Profile of possibly 1.25Mbps (effective sync).

The site I use to check that sort of estimate seems to be down at the moment.

Against that estimate is the high number of error seconds. Every second is errored, yet that isn't mirrored in the actual error stats. Odd.

Have you ever checked your phone wiring? That can make a big difference to a line.

Are you absolutely sure nothing is connected to the phone line without a filter, such as a Sky box or burglar alarm?

Is there any chance you could plug your filter into the test socket, (that's the one at the back that the faceplate plugs into), and get the stats from there after say 15 minutes like the ones you have posted? Then do it again with a different filter if the error seconds are as bad.

Looks like fixed speed half meg service, will provider let you regrade to an up to 8Meg (Max) product? It may run at twice the speed.

In reply to a post by stevejh:

Hi, I live in the S.E of Milton Keynes. My exchange is Bradwell Abbey, situated in Fishermead just south of C.M.K. Not only does M.K suffer with poor quality telephone cable, it also has a geographical problem when it was being developed. This being that many telephone cables run around the perimeter of the estates before reaching the street cabinet. This makes the line distance to the exchange far greater than the distance that the crows fly, i.e straight line of sight. I am approx 3.35 km from my exchange as the crows fly but can only manage a 1.5 meg connection speed if that's any indication of our problem here.

Wasn't MK originally wired with fibre only ? And BT had to dig it all up because you can't put ADSL over fibre ?

Or am I getting confused with somewhere else ?