Fibre speed query

moneyisnteverything

I'm hoping someone might be able to advise...

I'm with TalkTalk and as fibre has just arrived in the area, I asked for the upgrade.

Between 10mb and 14mb Download / 1 Upload was promised.

In the event, speed achieved was around 5mb / 0.5mb, which is similar to the previous broadband speed.

A BT engineer visited the property and in consultation with a BT wholesale engineer identified a problem with the underground cable between the FTTC cabinet and the local distribution cabinet.

The engineer's readings showed 40mb at the FTTC cabinet and 8mb at the local distribution cabinet. Both engineers said this was wrong and that the local cabinet should have had a figure nearer 20mb.

TalkTalk now say that the best speed I can have is 5mb, a figure which seems to come from BT as they appear unwilling to look into the cable problem (obviously, money is an issue). As there is no reason to pay extra for the same speed, I have asked for the fibre to be returned to standard broadband.

The distance from the FTTC cabinet to the local cabinet is 0.9 miles (approx)

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of the speed drops over this kind of distance, or does anyone have a similar story to this?

penrhyn

Talk Talk are cheap for a reason. Presumably they are not charging you more than £ 10 / month for this.

JJ_Egan

Between 10mb and 14mb Download / 1 Upload was promised.

That would be an estimate .
Probability is that errors have caused the exchange to resync your line down to a lower stable speed.

jje

kwikbreaks

penrhyn wrote: »

Talk Talk are cheap for a reason. Presumably they are not charging you more than £ 10 / month for this.

That part of the circuit belongs to Openreach and they are duty bound by Ofcom to offer the same level of service and pricing to all ISPs. Sadly Ofcom don't seem to have specified the level of service which appears to vary between dire and abysmal.

R_P_W

moneyisnteverything wrote: »

I'm hoping someone might be able to advise...

I'm with TalkTalk and as fibre has just arrived in the area, I asked for the upgrade.

Between 10mb and 14mb Download / 1 Upload was promised.

In the event, speed achieved was around 5mb / 0.5mb, which is similar to the previous broadband speed.

A BT engineer visited the property and in consultation with a BT wholesale engineer identified a problem with the underground cable between the FTTC cabinet and the local distribution cabinet.

The engineer's readings showed 40mb at the FTTC cabinet and 8mb at the local distribution cabinet. Both engineers said this was wrong and that the local cabinet should have had a figure nearer 20mb.

TalkTalk now say that the best speed I can have is 5mb, a figure which seems to come from BT as they appear unwilling to look into the cable problem (obviously, money is an issue). As there is no reason to pay extra for the same speed, I have asked for the fibre to be returned to standard broadband.

The distance from the FTTC cabinet to the local cabinet is 0.9 miles (approx)

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of the speed drops over this kind of distance, or does anyone have a similar story to this?

You sure the fttc cab is that far away from the local cabinet? Seems a large distance

cajef

R_P_W wrote: »

You sure the fttc cab is that far away from the local cabinet? Seems a large distance

Agreed the cabinets are usually next to each other and it does not sound like fibre if they only quoted a doubling of their speed.

moneyisnteverything wrote: »

Between 10mb and 14mb Download / 1 Upload was promised.

In the event, speed achieved was around 5mb / 0.5mb, which is similar to the previous broadband speed.

moneyisnteverything

Point taken about TalkTalk upgrade cost not being high, but as kwikbreaks says, the cabling is BT's problem. I did speak to the BT engineer about the possibility of this situation occurring and he said that he had seen a couple of similar problems, where nothing was done to correct a connection fault causing a very low fibre speed.

Regarding the cable, it's about 1 mile from the exchange to the fibre cabinet (FTTC - fibre connection) and then 0.9 miles from the FTTC cabinet to our local distribution cabinet (normal telephone cable). This connection uses original trunk cabling and is probably at least 50 or 60 years old - I would say the problem is here.

As other people in the area try out the fibre, they will also discover the poor speed and eventually, through numbers of complaints, something may be done - it's a shame to have to wait. The mention of Ofcom's responsibility gives me the idea to complain to them.

I would imagine that there are still many customers who cannot get a decent fibre connection - in fact, I saw somewhere that 95% of houses in Britain are at a distance of something approaching 1 mile from the FTTC cabinet - hence a lot of people are going to be hoping there is a good copper cable connection to their house.

It's all to do with money! Don't have to accept it though!

R_P_W

moneyisnteverything wrote: »

Point taken about TalkTalk upgrade cost not being high, but as kwikbreaks says, the cabling is BT's problem. I did speak to the BT engineer about the possibility of this situation occurring and he said that he had seen a couple of similar problems, where nothing was done to correct a connection fault causing a very low fibre speed.

Regarding the cable, it's about 1 mile from the exchange to the fibre cabinet (FTTC - fibre connection) and then 0.9 miles from the FTTC cabinet to our local distribution cabinet (normal telephone cable). This connection uses original trunk cabling and is probably at least 50 or 60 years old - I would say the problem is here.

As other people in the area try out the fibre, they will also discover the poor speed and eventually, through numbers of complaints, something may be done - it's a shame to have to wait. The mention of Ofcom's responsibility gives me the idea to complain to them.

I would imagine that there are still many customers who cannot get a decent fibre connection - in fact, I saw somewhere that 95% of houses in Britain are at a distance of something approaching 1 mile from the FTTC cabinet - hence a lot of people are going to be hoping there is a good copper cable connection to their house.

It's all to do with money! Don't have to accept it though!

Where are you getting your info from? The majority of houses are pretty close to a fttc cabinet when installed.

Buzby

If you are a mile from the FTTC box, you clearly do not have 'fibre'. (Technically, unless you have FTTP, you only have marketing hype).

However, I'm surprised at ANY ISP stating (as you have done) notional speed without the 'up to' qualifier. Any connection has the potential to offer the speeds you mention, but so much gets in the way (contention rates, backhaul congestion etc) no firm, even TT old be foolish to state this - as rejection for 'not as advertised' would be a lam dunk!

moneyisnteverything

I expected the speed to be up to those original figures but not continuously less than half that amount and especially not the same as pre-fibre upgrade. The figures I was quoting were those given by the engineers under test conditions.

Unfortunately, very few properties have FTTP, this area has FTTC with individual properties being fed from the FTTC cabinet. As my query was to do with the quality of this copper connection to the house, I wondered about other people's speeds achieved with regard to the length of this copper wire. What's annoying here, is that the fibre cable runs past the front door, but because the local cabinet is only a distribution point, access at this point is not possible!