That explains it then. Thanks for your help - I'd never have guessed that. I'll get on to customer service now and see if I can get any sense out of them. Wish me luck..!

Ummm.

Change of mind. Your best is probably ADSL2, but I suggest you get them to give you ADSL2+ and then you tweak it down with your router.

Explaining to them why ADSL2 might be best would be very painful.

Unfortunately, as they have you on ADSL, you can't tweak up so far as I know.

Long and painful phone call to BT customer services got me nowhere. However quick posting on the BT Forum got me this reply the next day (a Sunday!)

**************

Thanks for your email. I've placed an order to migrate your line from ADSL to ADSL2+ this afternoon and it should complete within 48 hours. I've made sure to uncap the upstream speed as well so hopefully you get similar speeds once this order goes through as what you did with your previous provider.

The reason your line was placed on ADSL is because your downstream speed is incapable of going any higher than 8Mb; for lines estimated to support speeds higher than 8Mb they are automatically put on ADSL2+. Let me know when you see the changeover anyway and I'll close this case off as resolved if no other action has to be taken.

*************

So all fixed the next day. Upload speeds back up to 0.8Mbps. Any other BT customers with similar issues please use the BT forums as strangely it seems to give you a hot-line to people who know what you're on about and have the power to deal with these matters. Don't waste your time with the call centre in India unless you're bored/lonely. They're very polite, but there's only so many times you can re-boot your router/check your micro-filters etc without losing the will to live...

Well done .

Please can you post the line stats now?

New stats (Note I'm on ADSL2 rather than 2+, but as you suggest that may be a better option in may case. Either way my U/L speed is back to where it was and that's all I'm bothered about. D/L speed speed is much the same but more stable than before)

# adslctl info --stats
adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: ShowtimeRetrain Reason: 8000
Channel: FAST, Upstream rate = 888 Kbps, Downstream rate = 5067 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: ADSL2
Channel: Fast
Trellis: U:ON /D:ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 5.3 4.7
Attn(dB): 51.0 27.0
Pwr(dBm): 0.0 13.0
Max(Kbps): 5868 836
Rate (Kbps): 5067 888
G.dmt framing
K: 159(0) 14
R: 12 16
S: 1 8
D: 32 8
ADSL2 framing
MSGc: 59 10
B: 158 13
M: 1 8
T: 1 9
R: 12 16
S: 0.9978 4.0000
L: 1371 256
D: 32 8
Counters
SF: 4044056 846771
SFErr: 733 4294967264
RS: 262863670 1149025
RSCorr: 17295136 38
RSUnCorr: 7056 0

HEC: 625 4294967285
OCD: 1 0
LCD: 0 0
Total Cells: 783630195 1821495
Data Cells: 1088541 11424
Drop Cells: 0
Bit Errors: 0 0

ES: 433 0
SES: 1 0
UAS: 37 0
AS: 65574

INP: 1.12 2.00
PER: 16.21 18.00
delay: 7.98 8.00
OR: 32.07 7.11

Bitswap: 6926 1096

Total time = 18 hours 8 min 51 sec
SF = 4044056
CRC = 733
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 433
Latest 1 day time = 18 hours 8 min 51 sec
SF = 4044056
CRC = 733
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 433
Latest 15 minutes time = 8 min 51 sec
SF = 32785
CRC = 4
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 2
Previous 15 minutes time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 55425
CRC = 8
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 8
Previous 1 day time = 0 sec
SF = 0
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
15 minutes interval [-30 min to -15 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 55549
CRC = 9
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 6
15 minutes interval [-45 min to -30 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 55549
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
15 minutes interval [-60 min to -45 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 55487
CRC = 24
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 13
Showtime Drop Reason: 8000
Last Retrain Reason: 8000

Looks OK .

Unfortunately it seems on BT Wholesale circuits interleaving caps the upstream at 888kbps for some reason. But when FTTC comes along you will be fine.