Below min speed guarantee, improve / FTTC cab move possible?

Short version:
I'm 20% slower than my minimum speed guarantee, how can I get Openreach to listen to BT and provide my service from the cab 40 metres from my house rather than existing cab that's near a mile away and incapable of providing agreed service?

Long version:
I signed up for fibre broadband through BT a while ago, the line they put in was only capable of 24.07Mbps download/3.04Mbps upload and hub advised of an error on first use so was logged as a fault for BT engineer to attend (speed estimate at sign up was 44-32 download (28 as minimum speed guarantee), 8.3-6 for upload so certainly didn't look right especially as the BT Broadband Availability Checker had been estimating up to 64.4 a year before so the updated 44-32 estimates was expected a conservative guess). BT engineer arrived and found line had many faults, on the telegraph pole my house is fed from there were no spare lines at all (apparently lots have been ripped out as faulty over the years, only 7 lines available for the whole street and all in use - engineer ended up swapping my phone line with the only person on the street who had a phone only service to try and fix!). After the switch I'm told the errors have reduced but so has my broadband speed (now down to 23.31 download/2.84 upload)! The BT engineer spent about 2 1/2 hours up the telegraph poles nearby re-terminating connections with new equipment, the phone line from the telegraph pole to my house and the BT socket on the wall were both installed brand new less than 2 years ago so no fault there (first year or so I had ADSL).

From what the BT engineer has said given that the phone line from the telegraph pole to my house and the BT socket on the wall are both new, connections outside re-terminated etc there's basically nothing else that can be done to improve the speeds I'm getting, apparently the cabinet I'm connected to is 3/4 of a mile or so away but path the cable follows involves a very congested street and copper covered aluminium forms at least some of the route.

Whilst they were there they ran a speed test from their BT equipment they let me take a quick photo of, results below - from looking at the current test results/line attenuation/SNR etc is there anything that can be done to try and improve speeds or does this look maxed out? Upload is shown as 5056K on the test but even after reset of my line profile the BT router is stuck at below 3Mbps so something doesn't look right here either.

I'm currently provided to cab 3 which is a long way from my house and provides a service 20% below my minimum speed guarantee, cab 64 and associated FTTC box are less than 40 metres from my house (less than 10 metres from existing cable route - ie approx 10 metres from FTTC cab to first of 3 telegraph poles my route follows) and would clearly give me speeds above my minimum speed guarantee. I've been pushing BT to get this fixed for a while now but Openreach keep cancelling all orders to get moved to the other cab, they did recently come back with an option for me to pay £1050 or so +vat if I want to pay for a new line provide from cab 64 but it seems ridiculous to be trying to charge me when they can't get anywhere near providing my minimum speed guarantee from the existing line, sounds a lot like they're trying it on in the hope I agree to subsidise upgrading the 40+ year old kit between the cab and my house. So far they've wasted 3 days of my time off work, on the last occasion I confirmed with BT in writing that 'They have routed off cabinet 64 as per the open reach notes' but when the engineer arrived Openreach had changed it again to another provide from cabinet 3 which is incapable of resolving this problem, engineer just apologised and left but I have no idea how to get this resolved now. 23Mbps simply isn't quick enough for what I need to do working from home and 2.84 upload is far too slow as well. If they'd provided the 28 minimum speed guarantee I'd really struggle but I'd have no cause for complaint, somewhere in the 44-32 initial estimate (ideally towards the top end) is workable, 23 just isn't...

What can I do to get Openreach to resolve this properly rather than just keep ignoring the BT orders/opinion of BT engineers who attended site (without me paying near £1300 obviously), are there any Openreach employees on here who could maybe take a look what is going wrong at their end/why they refuse to accept the evidence/what additional information they need? Making a complaint to BT isn't likely to do much as there's nothing they can do to get Openreach to do the work required.

Really stuck and not sure how to get past this now, paying £1300 is clearly ridiculous especially as they've not provided a service anywhere near the minimum they set themselves (and £1300 sounds crazy for 10 metres of cable anyway), as an end user speaking to Openreach to try and apply some common sense is impossible of course... Any suggestions?

Thanks

Line test results:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y137/ad-d/BT_Line_T...

Nowhere does it state that the guarantee means you will get that speed, the guarantee exists so that you are not tied to the contract if you want to exercise an exit from the contract.

Network rearrangement is possible and you've had the price, a good chunk is not the actual work, but all the work involved in obtaining quotes etc and without knowing exactly what is involved hard to say if the cost is fair or not.

So solution is

a) Keep pestering and they may give in, but you might waste more time off
OR
b) Pay for the network rearrangement

Not the answer you wanted but that's the stark choice.

I would pay £1300 on the spot if that would be enough to rearrange my exchange only line, but the price tag for that would be around £20.000-30.000. I would probably pay that amount just to get the line you already have, as the speed I can get is 3Mbps down and 0.2 Mbps up and no plans to do anything to it.

I do not think the price they ask is excessive as they are basically providing bespoke service for you. Your line also meets the future USO, and I would not be too surprised if upgrading it would not be a priority for them just now. There are over a million lines in the country not meeting USO planned for 2020, which will probably mean all sorts of "nice to have" upgrades will have to wait their turn.

If this is an important issue, I would seriously consider paying what they ask, especially if you are the homeowner and expect to live there for the years to come. If the cabinet you would be moved to is only 40 metres away, you will get top speeds from the rearranged line when they start rolling out G.Fast.

H

actually there is no current Defined speed for Broadband at present -and Openreach will not move people from one enabled cabinet to another enabled cabinet for the improvement of broadband experience due to equivalence but may do in certain exceptional circumstance where voice does not meet the USO requirement he figure you have been advised of seem to be remarkablty cheep so not sure who prepared it for you and on what context

It may be worth ordering a separate second line installation. By the sounds of things there are no spare pairs back to the current cabinet, and routing a new pair from there would cost openreach much more than routing one for you from the closer cabinet. Standard openreach construction charges for an install are up to a limit of £3500 if I remember correctly,before the customer has to pay anything additional . They have already confirmed the routing to the other closer cabinet comes in at just over £1000, so the likelyhood is they would choose this option to provide service within their standard construction charge limits. If it turns out not routed that way then you can cancel your first line anyway without penalty as it's under the minimum speed guarantee. Just an option to consider .

The issue isn't just 10m of cable.

The starting problem is indeed 10m of cable that doesn't exist, that needs to be put in ducting that likely doesn't exist either. 10m of hole in the ground is more expensive than it sounds.

The secondary problem is that, once those 10m are in place, that cable wouldn't be allowed to physically joint into the existing cable. To do so would be to invite interference between VDSL2 services from the two different cabinets - downstream services from the old cab would be badly affected by services from the new cab, while upstream services to the new cab would be decimated by services up to the old cab. There would be risks to ADSL services too.

Crosstalk is a noise source that is the primary killer of VDSL2 services - and the possibility of your service disrupting everyone else's (and vice versa) cannot be emphasised enough!

That means a whole new, full-length cable is needed. And a separate DP at the top of your pole too, in all likelihood. There needs to be space at the top of the poles, and the extra cable must not end up overloading any of the poles with additional weight/strain.

And BT will, of course, have to live forever more with a segment of network that is just non-standard. That a short segment has 2 cables, 2 DPs, 2 cabs is a source of future confusion, and the source of inadvertent faults too.

The USO exists for the first line into a home, but doesn't apply to send lines or to second homes or holiday homes. The £3500 isn't going to be swallowed by Openreach in those cases.

And they would most likely just use a spare pair in the existing cable anyway which would go back to the existing cab - you generally cannot choose which cab a new line connects to when ordering and I doubt you could do that under USO even if it was applicable.

In reply to a post by Dean83:

It may be worth ordering a separate second line installation. By the sounds of things there are no spare pairs back to the current cabinet, and routing a new pair from there would cost openreach much more than routing one for you from the closer cabinet. Standard openreach construction charges for an install are up to a limit of £3500 if I remember correctly,before the customer has to pay anything additional . They have already confirmed the routing to the other closer cabinet comes in at just over £1000, so the likelyhood is they would choose this option to provide service within their standard construction charge limits. If it turns out not routed that way then you can cancel your first line anyway without penalty as it's under the minimum speed guarantee. Just an option to consider .

hi, BT already tried to get a second line installed from cab 64 although openreach changed it to a cab 3 order before the engineer arrived, think I'll ask BT to try a second line install again and see what happens, if openreach change it back to cab 3 which seems inevitable I'll let them try to install this time. Hopefully they'll then find there's no other lines available as previous engineer told me all others were ripped out as faulty, if BT engineer reports back that telegraph pole is full will see what openreach have to say about resolution - providing from nearest cab 40 metres away is surely going to be much cheaper than back to a cab around 3/4 of a mile away although knowing my luck they'll somehow manage to find something in the area that can be re-cabled my way above ground.

If requesting additional lines and costs are exceeded and it may be a low hurdle as USO only requires a functional telephone line that supports 28 Kilo bits per second and subsequent lines to a property do not fall into USO remit then likely to go around the loop many more times.

So legally there is nothing to force them supply you from the nearer cabinet, or even to supply a second phone line.

In short I believe you are on a hiding to nothing without spending the cash on the network rearrangement

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The issue isn't just 10m of cable.

The starting problem is indeed 10m of cable that doesn't exist, that needs to be put in ducting that likely doesn't exist either. 10m of hole in the ground is more expensive than it sounds.

The secondary problem is that, once those 10m are in place, that cable wouldn't be allowed to physically joint into the existing cable. To do so would be to invite interference between VDSL2 services from the two different cabinets - downstream services from the old cab would be badly affected by services from the new cab, while upstream services to the new cab would be decimated by services up to the old cab. There would be risks to ADSL services too.

Crosstalk is a noise source that is the primary killer of VDSL2 services - and the possibility of your service disrupting everyone else's (and vice versa) cannot be emphasised enough!

That means a whole new, full-length cable is needed. And a separate DP at the top of your pole too, in all likelihood. There needs to be space at the top of the poles, and the extra cable must not end up overloading any of the poles with additional weight/strain.

And BT will, of course, have to live forever more with a segment of network that is just non-standard. That a short segment has 2 cables, 2 DPs, 2 cabs is a source of future confusion, and the source of inadvertent faults too.

hi, looking at location of cab 64/where the FTTC cab near cab64 is/my existing cable route and location of BT man hole covers there must be ducting etc going right past the nearest telegraph pole so I wouldn't expect too much additional work relatively speaking if they did re-provide from the nearest cab. Given that there are only 3 telegraph poles on my street with tired 40+ year old equipment, one of the DP's at top of my pole has been completely ripped out as fully faulty, and I'm provided from the pole furthest from the cab I'd say it would make much more sense to just run a new cable from cab 64 along the telegraph poles, replace the faulty DP's on the street and re-provide all houses from the new cab. Chances of openreach doing this is probably low knowing them as they like to avoid work but the cabling in my street is very old, capacity is full (due to so many faulty cables being ripped out) and if they were running new cable the full 40 metre length of the street to my house anyway it just makes sense to fix the problems once and for all, would also avoid any of these Crosstalk/segmentation of network issues mentioned. Not sure preventative maintenance is a concept openreach have got to grips with though and even if I paid they'd no doubt just install one line and wait for the rest to inevitably fail soon after.

In reply to a post by ian72:

And they would most likely just use a spare pair in the existing cable anyway which would go back to the existing cab - you generally cannot choose which cab a new line connects to when ordering and I doubt you could do that under USO even if it was applicable.

hi, as far as I can tell there are no spare pairs hence they had to swap my faulty line with the only phone only line on the street to try and fix the errors I was getting, maybe there is spare capacity in the local area they could extend in my direction but as for the DP on the telegraph pole opposite my house it's full I'm told

You could try ordering a new line but as they don't have to provide a second line then they might well just charge you the money for installing a new cable anyway.

As has already been said BT are under no obligation to make your line faster (their only obligation is to allow you out of contract for not meeting minimum expected speed). You either keep on badgering BT and hope they give in, give in yourself or pay the money they are asking for.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If requesting additional lines and costs are exceeded and it may be a low hurdle as USO only requires a functional telephone line that supports 28 Kilo bits per second and subsequent lines to a property do not fall into USO remit then likely to go around the loop many more times.

So legally there is nothing to force them supply you from the nearer cabinet, or even to supply a second phone line.

In short I believe you are on a hiding to nothing without spending the cash on the network rearrangement

you may be right but I have to at least try to get this fixed and BT have offered to try and get a second line installed, got to be worth a try. Tempted to cancel my line then find two other people on the street with no BT line and pay them to have one installed before reordering mine when there is definitely no capacity! No doubt openreach would find some way of messing that up as well though

Remember that BT are under no obligation to provide you with a second line and that any such installation is likely to incur charges in full for any additional costs incurred by BT.

In reply to a post by ian72:

You could try ordering a new line but as they don't have to provide a second line then they might well just charge you the money for installing a new cable anyway.

As has already been said BT are under no obligation to make your line faster (their only obligation is to allow you out of contract for not meeting minimum expected speed). You either keep on badgering BT and hope they give in, give in yourself or pay the money they are asking for.

I'll try the second line install from BT and see where it takes me, can't end up worse than where I am now. Is there an in depth way of checking for any line errors on the router/via other method (and is there an 'acceptable' number of errors within a certain time period etc)? My old line had many many errors and so bad the HH6 told me I needed to test the line/call an engineer, I seem to remember after moving me to the other line the engineer said the errors were 'much reduced' rather than completely gone - if I'm still getting errors maybe I can report the line as faulty again and get it looked at that way (if there's nothing but faulty lines available at the DP they'd have to do something...)

In reply to a post by MCM:

Remember that BT are under no obligation to provide you with a second line and that any such installation is likely to incur charges in full for any additional costs incurred by BT.

BT themselves have suggested installing a second line then cancelling the first line/transferring broadband to line 2 when 2nd line is up and running, they already sent an engineer to my house once to do the install but we aborted once I talked to them and found job notes stated cab 3 again. Only afterwards did I think it might have been better to let them try to install and have him report back that all lines are in use. If there are any charges for a second line they will need to inform me of costs before proceeding and I can make a decision at that point.

That is because with the equivalence rules BT who you are ordering from have the same abilities as Sky to demand certain cable routing...i.e. its not normal

So a provider can do things like add to job notes, but they cannot guarantee it as part of a usual consumer order

Regardless of what a BT engineer may tell you you need to remember that BT Openreach are unlikely to carry out a network rearrangement to provide you with a second line without you being required to pay the full cost of the work. Remember also that BT Consumer are not Openreach and are treated by Openreach in an identical fashion as they would Talk Talk or Sky.

In reply to a post by ad_d:

Not sure preventative maintenance is a concept openreach have got to grips with though and

Thank Ofcom for establishing the competitive market we are now in. There's no money for anything preventative.