Hartington Exchange - Any chance of an upgrade?

Hey, I'm really asking this for my Dad who lives in the middle of nowhere.

He's connected to the Hartington exchange and is around 3km from the exchange (eep!).

He currently gets around 2Mbps and the exchange hasn't been upgraded since 2006!

Does anyone know what the deal is with these rural exchanges? I've tried searching but can't find any sort of upgrade information for it.

Thanks.

Four km's from exchange and get 8 Mbps here on ADSL2+, so you need to double check the router stats. Drops to around 6.5 Mbps with ADSL mode, i.e. what you have.

http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/calc will do the sums for you and can see if you are in expected range or not.

Improvements will be dependent on the BDUK project i.e.
http://www.digitalderbyshire.org.uk/

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5987-derbyshire-t...
95% target for people able to access a FTTC based service, so need to look at how far the property is from the green street cabinet and some range versus speeds for VDSL2 are given at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband....

Thanks for the info, I'll check this out when I next visit (which will likely be a few weeks).

Hopefully I can find the line stats easy enough. I know he has an O2 Wireless Box II, which my memory says isn't too forthcoming with actual line data.

On the O2 box you have to log in as (or change user to) SuperUser with password either the Serial number on the router label or if old firmware it is O2Br0a64nd - note the capital O at the beginning and the numeric zero in the middle.

Both the username and password are case sensitive, and the login tends to fail the first time you try it.

You should then be able to find the basic stats easily, and IIRC at the top right of that page there is a Details button.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 26-Jan-14 18:38:12)

I've checked out the router, and it seems I'd slightly underestimated the connection.

Here's the raw stats from the router:
Maximum Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,036 / 8,224
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 7,680
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 19.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 23.5 / 42.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 21.0 / 6.0

The checker website reckons it should get 4Mbps to 6Mbps, however a speedtest reports 3.52Mbps down and 0.38Mbps up.

The exchange is not currently included in those that have been requested for an upgrade, but I'll get my Dad to register his interest.

Thanks for the help.

That's O2 Access, which always was extremely congested.

A migration to almost any decent ISP, not TalkTalk which could be worse, should give them consistent speeds of well over 5.5Mbps, and in some cases over 6Mbps.

My suggestion would of course be Plusnet. But that exchange is not a "low cost" area for them so ignore the banner prices on their website. See this post for the relevant prices.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 08-Feb-14 15:56:43)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

particularly TalkTak which could be worse

Why even mention TT? They are not LLU there and OP never suggested them, did he? And 'particularly' does not make sense in context; maybe you meant 'except' but even that does not make sense as TT is not 'decent' there.

Surely BT is the obvious mainstream destination for price & service?

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sat 08-Feb-14 15:38:03)

Correct, thanks. A badly worded post made worse by a typo. Fixed.

As for BT, why?

BT for price mainly as they don't have 'out of area' surcharges and will provide exactly same product as others.

Agree PN, for better support, if OP is prepared to pay their surcharge.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sat 08-Feb-14 16:28:36)

Sorry to keep harping on it, but surely better as:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

A migration to almost any decent non-LLU ISP , not TalkTalk which could be worse