adsl speed puzzle

Hi,
Having just been informed of a price hike by my current provider - Breathe - I decided to look for a better deal. As my phone is still with BT I decided to check them first. now i live in a rural area with no upgraded exchange or fibre etc so I'm in the 'up to 8 meg' category, nevertheless i am quite satisfied with the fairly constant 6.5meg that i get from Breathe. I was surprised therefore to find that BT although offering up to 16meg could only estimate 3.5 meg on my line. I have checked with several neighbours who are on BT and sure enough none of them gets more than 4meg - including my immediate next door neighour. I have checked my line with lots of different speed tests and all of them show 6.5 meg plus. So why is my line faster than my neighbours and why can't BT or any of the other ISPs i've tried estimate more than 3.5 meg. AND if i change ISP how can I be sure that I wont lose my current satisfactory speed?

BT estimates are just that and often underestimates.

The estimates you were given are of router connection speeds, but you are measuring them by throughput from speedtests. It's almost certain you are connecting at 8 Meg.

Post your router stats, which are the only reliable way of assessing what you should get if you're not already.

You can't be absolutely sure, but generally you should get about the same on any ADSL Max supplier.

Thanks,
Router shows 8128k up and 424k down. All speed tests show steady 6.5meg. near neighbours on same speed tests get between 3 and 4meg which is what Bt predicts. We are all equidistant from same exchange. Why is my speed better than theirs? Is it down to the ISP - Breathe offers 24meg Bt 16meg but the exchange is only capable of 8meg anyway. I don't want to risk moving isp if I might lose the better speed but then I don't see why I would lose that speed as my line is show to be capable of it. Confused!

So you should get an 8128 Kbps connection with BT too then, it will be the same physical connection to the telephone exchange

As for why neighbours get lower speeds, this is a common pattern where people see roughly what checker suggests, so don't bother looking at router data and sites like http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/calc/calculator.php to see if they could go faster with better internal wiring e.g. no extensions, removal of ring wire

@rocket101
To save you getting confused, Mr Saffron's post would be clearer if the word "they" was inserted - as in

so they don't bother looking at router data and sites like http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/calc/calculator.php to see if they could go faster with better internal wiring e.g. no extensions, removal of ring wire

The reason the estimators show the low figure is because they all come from a couple of BT databases, and those databases adjust over time to what the majority in the area are getting.

Your neighbours' lines are all underperforming, so screwing the estimates for all, including yours. Moving to BT wouldn't alter your connection speed at all.

Re the 16Mbps on products on the website, very few ISPs now show separate product figures for exchanges where ADSL2+ is not available, as ADSL2+ is the norm. Even the 16Mbps is rubbish, as they are "up to 24Mbps" connections but they can now only advertise connection speeds that at least 10% of customers achieve.

Thanks,
I've checked on the link you gave me and with my figures of 8128kb, 37db and 6.7db it confirms my speed capability of between 6 and 7meg - just what I am getting. for some reason my neighbours' connections are poorer or is there an issue with BT - they all use Bt as ISP - e.g could BT be choking back their speeds for some reason?

Thanks

From all the research I've done I'm confident that my speed of 6.5meg is correct - as you point out my neighbours' lines must be underperforming for some reason - I don't suppose that it could be BT choking back speeds - they all use BT.
BT does advertise that it will supply at the best speed a line is capable of so I suppose it becomes a matter of trust.

It isn't BT (Retail) choking their speeds. Most of the time it is poor home extension wiring or not fitting filters to things like Sky boxes.