Broadband Conundrum - Line or Provider?

2012morpheus

Evening all,
First post, but a regular visitor.

Here is my problem: I was a satisfied Tiscali customer, now a not so happy Talktalk customer. My download speed has never been great, but I accept that to a certain extent as I live out in the sticks and I'm about 3 miles from the exchange, however it has recently dropped to between 0.07 and 0.13 Mbps (speedtest.net). I have my line rental with BT and I quite fancy their current broadband deals, but I don't want to go to all the hassle of changing providers if I'm going to end up with just as slow broadband with a different provider because it's down to the line speed.

So how can I be certain that I'm going to get a better service if I switch?

When I spoke to BT, they said that I should be able to receive "up to 3Mbps", but 0.07 is "up to 3 Mbps" isn't it? Does that mean that talktalk is at fault for my slow broadband speed?

I just seem to be going round in circles!

Any advice gratefully received!

Rob

iniltous

If you post your router stats then you may get a better idea of what your line potential speed is, though at 3miles away from the exchange you are never going to be fantastic speed unless fibre to the cab is available, my line is about the same length as yours and I connect at about 3Mb and get about 2.5Mb throughput, if you haven't already, try connecting your router to the test socket in your master phone socket, if you have a NTE5 type master socket, also make sure if you have extension phone sockets that the bell wire is disconnected, you only need 2 wires connected on terminations 2 and 5, disconnect any others as they are not needed, google 'bell wire problems adsl' ,

Buzby

Since in all cases you'll be relying on Openreach and the local loop, the chances are your improvement will only be worthwhile if the contention rates are different (the number of customers on the same connection). I certainly wouldn;t instigate a fresh minimum term without service guarantees on speed.

2012morpheus

Thanks guys.
Buzby, I'm inclined to agree with you, hence sticking with Talktalk for this long.
iniltous, thanks for all your tips - I'm going to spend some time this weekend moving my router to the test socket (I've got a NTE5 socket although it isn't the latest openreach version) and checking my extensions for the bell wire.
I'll let you know my findings!
Many thanks again
Rob

2012morpheus

Hmmm, the plot thickens. BT claimed to have fixed the fault yesterday on my line that by coincidence started just prior to my broadband speed dropping and just after 3 openreach vans had been working in the next street. Yesterday I was still getting between 0.09 and 0.13 Mbps and was not a happy bunny. Today, and without doing anything at all at home I am back up to 1.6 Mbps.

I still fancy one of the current BT deals though...

Rob