Rural Broadband - The Land that BT Forgot!

I have been a lurker in the forums for years but here is my first post!

I am looking to change ISP. I have been with aol uk for four years and I do not think I need to say anything about their customer service. However, in the last few months they have moved me over to LLU without telling me as TT now have equipment in the exchange and they have also cut my speed. Before I was getting around 1mb fairly consistently but now most of the time it seems to be at 0.5 (although it went back up to 0.9 on Friday.

aol have told me:
1. My line cannot support any more than 0.5. I offer them four years of tt speedtests and they tell me the line cannot do more than 0.5.
2. When I tell them my upload speed is higher thanmy d/l speed they are inimpressed and say the line......
3. I ask for my MAC code and they offer me a guaranteed 3.5mb in return for more money and an 18 month contract.

I am waiting for my mac code and currently looking at Eclipse and Vivaciti.

Questions:

1. According to routerstats my d/l attenuation is 43db which according ti Kitz should give me about 7mb on LLU. How reliable is Kitz?
2. Eclipse (like most ISP's) say 2mb on non LLU. TT say 2.5 and Vivaciti say 2.7 but were quite happy with the kitz result and if it was higher then ok.
3. Should I consider LLU?
4. What is th actual impact of Vivaciti's throttling? They say "For the home 100 and surfwise variety there is a lower traffic priority during normal office hours (between 8am � 7:30pm weekdays) for peer to peer and newsgroup traffic (this includes video streaming), all other times are unaffected. " I could live with some prioritisation but not if they are virtually going to close off usenet! I use p2p rarely.
8. If I go to Vivaciti shold I move my phoneline to them to. If so why and if not why not?

Many thanks for your input.

wg

I will post my line stats shortly.

Line stats:

system Up Time 47:04:49


ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 898 kbps 967 kbps
Line Attenuation 43 db 13 db
Noise Margin 13 db 12 db

Up time suggests it is stable.

43dB should be around 6Meg for actual speedtests i.e. connect at 7Meg'ish. So kitz is reliable.

What speeds did you connect at before the move to LLU, I would suggest a change of ISP in the first instance, as AOL seem to be messing you about.

It is possible the slow speeds are partially down to wiring in your home, as well as the 12dB target margin that appears to be on your line, reducing the target to 6dB, will probably get you to 2 to 3Mbps. Which is still slow for your line length, thus time to look at the testing from the test socket.

Who is your phone line with at the moment?

The LLU question is less important than getting almost anywhere rather than where you are now. I like the way the same firm can tell you your line can't do more than 0.5Mbps in one breath, and in the next guarantee 3.5Mbps if you pay them more.

Which exchange is it please? The link to what samknows says would be good. The reason I ask is to see what else is available to you. Surfwise Variety runs on the TalkTalk Business Wholesale system and you may not fancy that. Though it does seem to be a lot better than TT itself, just as many non-LLU ISPs are better than BT Total.

I agree with MrSaffron that there seems to be a problem on your line, possibly at your end. If you could plug the router into the test socket, on the wall at the back in this pic, then take the stats again, we will know more about that. Just use the short ADSL cable of the router - no plug-in telephone extension cable to reach it.

With that attenuation, as he says on ADSL(1) around 7Mbps connection should be possible, with download speeds of 5-6Mbps. So "summat's oop!"

On (non-LLU or LLU) ADSL2+ you could perhaps even get another couple of meg above that.

So the stats from the test socket please , . That will tell us if you have a home wiring problem.

For what it's worth I'm with Eclipse (Home Select, monthly contract) and, for my connection, they use Tiscali LLU.

My downstream attenuation is around 45-46db, download connect is around 7900-8100, and a download speed of 6400-6800Kbps.

Upload attenuation is 25db, upload connect is 650-670, upload speed is 540-560Kbps. Cable distance - best guess - is around 3km.

[Edit for typos]

Edited by cheshire_man (Sun 27-Mar-11 13:51:51)

Thanks for the input - much appreciated. The link to the sam knows page is

As far as I know we don't have a master socket as per the picture. The house is a new build and is 4.5 years old. I have looked ror the master socket in the past and have found where the line comes into the house and what I believe to be the first socket in the loop but nothing like the picture. Just ordinary phone sockets. I have plugged the router in them before on a wi-fi connection and there seems to have been no difference. Is it worth doing it again, plugging the puter into the router instead of wi-fi and posting the stats? Very happy to if the info will be useful

My line rental is with BT and my calls with aol uk (yep....tt!).

The only LLU option is with tt or a wholesaler which is why I was looking at Vivaciti. I don't really mind if it is LLU or not as long as it gets me the best from the line.

The link is missing.

That sounds as though you have an external NTE5, scroll down to the bottom of this Kitz page.

Don't bother with a new test at this stage, but! -

Note what Kitz says about the ring wire. That looks a strange comment as if the ring wire isn't connected then T3 IDC would not be used.

I suggest you have a look inside your socket and tell us three things. Is there a wire to T3; what colours are all the connected wires; and is there more than one wire to each connected IDC terminal?

There's a fair chance the extension wiring by the builders is a load of garbage and that's why your speeds are bad .

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NDWAT

Terminals 2, 3 & 5 appear to be connected.

T2: Blue
T3: Orange
T5: White

We had a good rummage around for an external box when we realised there was no internal one but have been unable to find one. We have traced where the wired come into the house and taken the grey bt housing there but there is nothing but wires there and no proper box like in the pic. It seems it is there more to shroud the wires than anything else.

The wiring of what I "think" is the master socket is here http://flic.kr/p/9tKXuQ and yes, some terminals appear to have more than one wire connected.

Edited by wildgoose1uk (Sun 27-Mar-11 18:26:17)

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/btsockets.htm

Not quite sure what you mean by that. Is it external? Any chance of a pic?

Are those wires pure blue and pure white? It looks so from the picture. Not blue with bits of white and white with bits of blue?