Who is to blame for rubbish BB speeds?

frontman

My socket isnt quite the same as that. I took the front off but all the wiring is at the back and well and truly out of reach. I saw a BT Accelerator earlier, is that one in the pic? When I pulled the front off mine just now, it just came away as a bit of plastic, no wires attached.

spike7451

frontman wrote: »

My socket isnt quite the same as that. I took the front off but all the wiring is at the back and well and truly out of reach. I saw a BT Accelerator earlier, is that one in the pic? When I pulled the front off mine just now, it just came away as a bit of plastic, no wires attached.

Then dont worry about the bell wire.You dont have any extensions.

kwikbreaks

Line Attenuation (Down):58 (Up):34
Yep that's a long line.

Do you use any plug in extensions? They can be bad news too depending on how you've connected and filtered them.

Your 13dB noise margin suggests that there was a high level of noise when you last resynced the router or that DLM has imposed a high target margin because of instability.

frontman

I think the point I'm making is that my current connection doesn't need optimising its more that I actually want to see an vast improvement in the technology and systems use to service my area - BT constantly say there are no plans to improve this. At all!

To reiterate I am in a densely populated town, 20 miles West of London with thousands of users yet it seems for many of us in the North West of the area are only able to receive 2Mbps - at best. I am trying to work out who I could write or petition to in order to get some focus in this area.

I realise I am an almost silent voice and probably massively insignificant, but surely there is someone or something we can talk to in order to find out about what is being done to improve services and by when.

What frustrates me of course is that I am paying exactly the same money for a service 1.5 steps up from dial up while others receive 8-20Mbps! How is that fair!?

kwikbreaks

BT will be only too pleased to install a fibre link for your own personal use and supply gigabit speeds if you so desire. Of course it may be a bit expensive....

frontman

If I was miles away in the country, up a massive hill in darkest Dorset or living in a nuclear bunker with 1400 microwaves then I would understand the problem. Fact is after 10 years of pretty rubbish net speeds I think its about time to understand why properties less than 1 mile up the road get 8Mbps+ whilst my road gets 2Mbps or less, and why a central Slough exchange is not even on the agenda to upgrade. Not that I have to wait a few more months/years... its not even on the schedule. Why?

If it costs less than a few hundred quid, yeah, I'd pay to upgrade my property alone if it was possible.

dylanuk

I think distance from the exchange is going to hurt your speeds and there isn't too mcuh you can do if you're living in the sticks.

You could consider looking at other providers - this can help with contention at the exchange and also customer service.

There are other things you can try too, such as getting a BT iPlate, looking at your own set up - your wireless router, cables in your home, etc... There's a bit of a run down here: http://www.chooseisp.co.uk/broadband-guide/articles/how-to-get-faster-broadband.html

Quite a few things that don't cost too much that might be worth trying.

kwikbreaks

The problem isn't with the exchange it is with the length of the phone line from it to your property. It may well be considerably longer than the line of sight distance too because it has to take a non direct route. With the line length you have upgrading the exchange to ADSL2+ didn't help. BT have said they will be installing fibre to the street cabinets in many areas by 2012 and if yours is one of those areas you will get a faster connection.

Regarding fairness - I have to pay the same price for half a mile of phone line as you do for four miles - that just ain't fair - mine should be cheaper as it costs less to maintain.

===

Actually I just noticed that in fact you already have ADSL2+

frontman

dylanuk wrote: »

I think distance from the exchange is going to hurt your speeds and there isn't too mcuh you can do if you're living in the sticks.

I think the point is Dylan that I am far from living in the sticks, I'm right in the heart of Slough, one of the most commercially busy towns in the South East. In fact I would love to see some "sticks" but the reality is that where I am you would expect to get a fantastic BB connection.

Thank you for the link, I will be sure to check it out. Part of my concern though is that I cannot further optimise the connection speed, BT already THINK they only provide 512Kbps on my line, when actually I get on average 2Mbps. So if my supplier quotes a max of 512k, how on earth can I optimise that up to the min. 8Mbps that I actually need? (Rhetorical!)

frontman

kwikbreaks wrote: »

The problem isn't with the exchange it is with the length of the phone line from it to your property. It may well be considerably longer than the line of sight distance too because it has to take a non direct route. With the line length you have upgrading the exchange to ADSL2+ wouldn't help. BT have said they will be installing fibre to the street cabinets in many areas by 2012 and if yours is one of those areas you will get a faster connection.

According to BT there a no plans to address BB service in my area at all. And there haven't been for 10 years at least now.

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Regarding fairness - I have to pay the same price for half a mile of phone line as you do for four miles - that just ain't fair - mine should be cheaper as it costs less to maintain.

Haha.... so you are one of the g*ts downstream basking in glorious speeds are you? I see your point, but its not true apples for apples. None of us really feel the effect of "paying for line maintenance", if you do it would be pennies a month in a normal "service charge" amount. I on the other hand receive a massively reduced service in comparison to you every time I click a link or up/download a file on the internet, every minute of every day, my business is less efficient because of it and because of sheer numbers further upstream utilising bandwidth I cam sometimes not connect at all.

I'd say the examples where incredibly, world-apart different