Sudden Speed Boost

Hi All

We have (had) really slow broadband, it was usually around 6mbps down and 0.5mbps up. Yesterday, I went to do the tedious task of downloading a big update and it, instead, rocketed along. I checked and it was connected at 40mbps down and 9.99mbps up. I'm pretty sure these are the limits set by my ISP package.

The thing is I spoke to BT only a few months ago and they said OpenReach categorically stated my line was incapable of going faster due to the distance from the cabinet and that there was no plans to upgrade anything.

When I look on the BT site to see how fast I "could get" the checker still shows 1-5mbps download.

So my question is: Is there a way to see what work was done on a cabinet, is that published? And do you think these new speeds are here to stay?

I don't want to get my hopes up but it makes such a difference. Last night we streamed a 4K movie for the first time, I want to keep this!

Quite possible that a new closer cabinet has been installed and you have been moved to it. Plans are often not known between different parts of BT so no surprise the person you spoke to didn't know anything about it.

If they have moved you to a closer cabinet then it is likely to stay as it is and if you share you line stats from the router it might show if you could actually get much faster with a different package.

Also, there are some here that could probably give a lot more info if they knew which cabinet/exchange you were on.

Thank you very much for the information. From the router do you mean these details:

DSL Status
Up
DSL Uptime
4 days 10 hours 9 minutes 3 seconds
DSL Type
VDSL2
DSL Mode
Fast
Line Rate
9.99 Mbps 40 Mbps
Data Transferred
14953.85 MBytes 291458.31 MBytes
Output Power
7.4 dBm 13 dBm
Line Attenuation
6.6, 31.3, 47.6 dB 14.7, 38.7, 58.4 dB
Noise Margin
8.6 dB 15.3 dB

Stats are looking pretty good - there is definitely room there for a fair level of increase in the downstream so unless BT actively undid whatever they have done then your line is looking good to maintain this speed and potentially give you quite a bit more if you were to upgrade.

Guessing they have put an infill cabinet in and moved you to it. Will probably take a while for the checkers to catch up to the change.

As I said, if you say the exchange and cabinet number that the checkers say you are on then others here might have information about changes to it that would explain the vastly improved connection.

That is very exciting, thank you!

telecom tariffs codelook
for christchurch indicates some intervention work...

Cabinet PR3 FTTC being Activated, live due by September 2020 Phase CEO Escalation 22a

https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm?xid=2...

In reply to a post by ggremlin:

Phase CEO Escalation 22a

Is that what it sounds like? When I spoke to BT a few months ago it was after a final, desperate, plea to the CEO. I heard back from someone who was very nice but definite it couldn't be improved. Did my complaining actually achieve something?

In reply to a post by ian72:

Quite possible that a new closer cabinet has been installed and you have been moved to it.

You know, the more I think about it the more I think you're right. I saw an OpenReach guy working on a cabinet just down the road all last week. However the more I think about it I'm sure, though there are several cabinets there, ours was actually supposed to be about a mile away much further down the road.

If you paying for old ADSL then you probably will notice next bill to put up price because the price between ADSL and FTTC are difference. The FTTC price will be slightly higher than old ADSL price.

But glad you are on faster FTTC now.

Highly unlikely that they have changed package as their ISP would have informed them of the change, more likely a network rearrangement to connect them to the closer cabinet.

The OP was on a 40/10 FTTC service with very low speeds before being moved to a much closer FTTC cabinet, there was no change from an ADSL service.

I'm a little mystified why the OP was on a VDSL package when the speeds were so slow.

BT Consumer has been offering ADSL/ADSL2+ customers upgrades to the entry level VDSL2 40/10 package at the same price as ADSL2+, i.e. £24.99/m or £26.99/m depending on which week in the offer cycle

Ok fair enough. That's good.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

I'm a little mystified why the OP was on a VDSL package when the speeds were so slow.

Up till last year my FTTC speeds where lower than that. AFAIK not that unusual.

Why?

I have friends on a sub-3 Mbps VDSL/FTTC service.

And is the VDSL dearer than the ADSL?

No. And the ADSL was sub 400 kbps