Neighbours Get 1.5M but I get <128 kbps

BT have just cancelled by BB account as they said that my line length is too long to support BB.

I have been with BT since moving into my house on 4th July and my BB has been up/down over last month and I never get above download 128kbps (upload 300kps).

I have spoken to my neighbours on both sides of my house and they get 1-1.5Mbps consistently. One of them is using Tiscali. I will ask the other neighbour which ISP he uses later.

The bottom line is that my neighbours also have long line lengths but still get a service (I will find out the distance later) of >10 times more download speed than me. BT say that my line length is potentially a lot longer dispite being neighbours. Hmmm. Sounds suspicious. Is this true or plain balls? I suspect that my line is de-graded and BT won't replace/re-route to cut their costs. I wonder if using another ISP will do better (may be they have the power to get BT to re-route)?

Your feedback is welcome.

Alas BT is under no obligation to provide any broadband service, as you've found.

Another ISP will not alter the phone line length, but a LLU one may avoid the issues that the IP Profile, and DLM system from BT introduce. ADSL2+ will be of no use to you.

What you needed to do was some checking while the ADSL was still active, i.e. stats from the modem after just switching it on, and then again from when plugged into the test socket. The test socket (documented in front of Telephone Book) disconnects your extension wiring, which can often be the problem on longer lines.

As for your line being longer than the neighbours, it is entirely feasible, without access to attenuation, connection speeds and noise margin figures it is hard to say more. The difference in distance does not need to be massive, as ADSL is a very weak signal and a little distance difference can mean losing a lot of speed at the edges of its reach.

Ordering a re-route, if willing to pay then BT might, and by pay it may mean £1000's.

Thank you.

Fortunately, I still have 14 days before the service expires. So I will test and document my findings.

Also worth a visit to www.speedtester.bt.com and posting the full text from the result.

It may be you are connected at a reasonable speed, but are getting messed up by the way the IP Profile setting works

I will do the tests tonight.

On another note, before I moved into the property I did a test on the line (via BT Wholesale link) using the old owner's phone number. The test returned much better results... 0.5-1M (if I remember correctly).

I have a different phone number now in the same house with BT and the same BT Wholesale link returns 0.256 for this new number.... So why the change? May be my memory is wrong... However, I don't think that anything physically changes with a number change... Or am I wrong? Could I have been put on another line physically? Seems silly. I was happy to keep the old owner's phone line and setup anyway.

Did they have broadband via a BT Wholesale provider?

The checker generally updates to reflect the real world figures, whereas prior to that it is an estimate for the area

Good question. They were definitely with BT as he gave me his account number etc. in order to trasfer his service into my name when I moved in. BT still provided me with a new account and new number anyway.

He never really used his internet except for checking his emails once in a while.

since you are new to the house, can you look for anything that might be joined to the phone line (alarms for instance) and verify filters are in place.
the next step will be to test from the test socket... - then remove any spurious wiring...

Here are my results from: http://www.speedtester.bt.com/

Download speedachieved during the test was - 109 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 50-250 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :160 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 135 Kbps

For this test:
I plugged the BT HUB into the main socket (very old setup [more on that later]). I connected my laptop directly to the GigE port. No other internet traffic was present on my LAN.

Details from BT HUB:


ADSL Line Status
Connection Information
Line state: Connected
Connection time: 0 days, 12:56:26
Downstream: 160 Kbps
Upstream: 448 Kbps

ADSL Settings
VPI/VCI: 0/38
Type: PPPoA
Modulation: G.992.1 Annex A
Latency type: Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up): 6.9 dB / 16.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up): 69.6 dB / 31.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up): 13.4 dBm / 12.4 dBm
FEC Events (Down/Up): 3618898 / 354
CRC Events (Down/Up): 5717 / 332
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
HEC Events (Down/Up): 3521 / 264
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 3976 / 675