Magic! perhaps it was a druken ferret with no sense of direction being lead by a drunken squirell high on acorns.

Seems extraordinary that would pass any sort of IQ or OQ.

Thanks for the heads up though Lemzip.

James

It's academic how long your line actually is. All you'll ever know is that the attn. is > 63 dB, so your line is at least 4.6 Km and you'll never get more than 2 Meg out of it

Thanks XRaySpex,

If however I could prove that there was unused cable in the exchange or there was a differnet method of routing to that exchange then surely that could only be benefical.

Perhaps as you say thats academic, its just hard to live with.

James

Beneficial to your blood pressure but nothing else.
BT is under no obligation to provide you DSL at any speed.

If your line proves stable and the wandering IP profile indicates it is not, then the target noise margin could be reduced and you might sync at 2.3 to 2.6Meg giving a 2Meg IP Profile. Effort expended in that area rather than chasing a mythical line length is more important.

BTW 60dB = 5.5km of cable based on BT calculations. When properties are built they invariably take the line from where there is spare capacity.

Thanks for that response Andrew,

It was certainly not my intention to come on here as some form of catharsis.

That is definitely my aim. With the root cause hopefully diagnosed now (Noisy extensions and Sky HD box) i am hoping the profile can become more stable. At he moment i would happily settle for a 1500kbps profile, and then try to improve it.

As i see it, it is pointless aiming for anything better than that till i know it is at least theoretically feasible.

Can anyone substantiate that there might be coils of unused cable on the end of my line between the telephony and DSL equipent at the end of the exchange, is this something i can perhaps get BT to look in to.

Another alternative is getting BT to visit once I have a stable Profile and paying that £90 for the 500k increase. Thoughts on this please?

Thanks again

James

Regarding that BT visit:

Might be wrong about this, but I thought that all they do was,
try to improve your internal wiring, by disconnecting bell wires
or fitting an "i-plate" (something along those lines).

It's possibly something that you could for yourself, given some
advice from the experts on this site.

- Alex

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-Apr-11 11:42:30)

Thanks Alex,

I'd be more than happy doing that myself (Am reasonably skilled) If BT do it i think at the momment they are offering that £90 back if they can' get the speed increase. Hence someone possibley doing it for free.

Thanks

James

The free version of what they do http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.htm...

Also what is holding your speed back is the target noise margin, reset that and

1) You will sync faster
2) The line might be more unstable, leading to the IP Profile not increasing.

Without knowing the address/area it is hard to comment, its not uncommon for sites estimating line length/routes to get things wrong.

You are clutching at invisible straws on the there may be a few km of cable on the end of you phone line in the exchange.

As i am running from the test socket, as i understand it, that�s the equivalent of having no bell wire in. (If the line stabilises like this, I would have gone down that road anyway)

How do I reset my target noise once i have a stable profile?

I didn't expect there to be Km�s of unused cable, on another forum an Openreach engineer said it was not uncommon for there to be 400-500 meters. Over 5km of cable to an exchange 1.69 km way still doesn�t sound in anyway reasonable to me. Hence the question.

I am happy to provide the exchange code if you think that will help. It�s a small town, the Exchange is one side and I am the other, the whole town has a circumference of about 4km.

This lead me to the conclusion (Rightly or wrongly) that the quality of the install might not be that high in the first instance. I know BT are only governed by Ofcom�s Code of Practice for this. On BT�s own website it says �BT supports Ofcom's Code of Practice on Speed and we're committed to providing you with the best speeds possible for your phone line.�

If that is true and there is an issue caused by something that they have potentially done negligently or is of poor quality overall, then I would like to understand where that leaves me as a consumer. Particularly as swapping to another ISP wouldn�t benefit me if the infrastructure is poor.

How far does that commitment run, can I use that as leverage, would Ofcom support the assertions that might mean BT have to look at the line length etc, the quality of the infrastructure. This is not me being belligerent, I just want to understand that if things don�t improve that I have recourse. 9 months of intermittent issues makes this feel likely.

Thanks again for all contributions to date.

James

Have you tried asking some of your neighbours what speeds they get? If it is spare cable on your line then you would expect some variation of speeds across the local neighbourhood as presumably they won't all have km's of spare cable (if they do then you would think BT would be recovering it as copper is not cheap and the amount of space that much cable would take up is significant).