The "up to....." condition

makemdano

I changed to BT 4 years ago from SKY, a change that was fraught with problems that took 5 months to resolve. Although the initial speed was fine (compared to SKY, my previous provider) this has since degraded. They put in a new line to the house, new hub, new primary socket (this is the only socket in the house) over 2 years ago but the performance has degraded at peak times down to zero. Rebooting the hub sometimes resolved this temporarily. Raised an incident beginning of August which they closed without fixing. Eventually had to have an engineer called out but he couldn't find a fault. At one point they found lots of "errors" on the line which they cleared and the problem is much resolved but not cleared.
Our line is a spur of the main line as there are only 6 houses on the street.
As my conract will be finished soon I'm thinking of leaving but it seems wherever you go the speed is always "up to" but no one seems to have any guaranteed minimum speed. Is there any customer protection anywhere for this?
From a technical perspective it can't be rocket science. The potential bandwidth of a cable/fibre channel can be measured and a simple calculation between number of users and available bandwidth would give a guaranteed minimum speed. Does any service provider perform this sort of calculation?
I suspect they all use mean figures and trust to luck that customers will just accept excuses but before I change providers I would like to see some form of guarantee. I wouldn't mind paying a bit extra for a better service either.

My front runner at the moment is Plus Net who I was last with on a dial up service (some time ago!) but they were pretty good then

JJ_Egan

As line speeds are dependant upon many factors like distance from exchange line quality internal wiring then not on a residential contract .Degrading at peak times is contention .
PlusNet are still good but will you get better speed over the same BT line ?
Changing ISP can improve your contention sometimes .
Alternatives are Virgin Cable or a paid for fixed line or fibre if its ready at your cabinet .

kwikbreaks

makemdano wrote: »

Our line is a spur of the main line as there are only 6 houses on the street.

It doesn't work like that. You have a dedicated pair all the way back to the exchange. There is no "main line"

makemdano wrote: »

As my conract will be finished soon I'm thinking of leaving but it seems wherever you go the speed is always "up to" but no one seems to have any guaranteed minimum speed. Is there any customer protection anywhere for this?
From a technical perspective it can't be rocket science. The potential bandwidth of a cable/fibre channel can be measured and a simple calculation between number of users and available bandwidth would give a guaranteed minimum speed. Does any service provider perform this sort of calculation?

They all do in their capacity planning. You wouldn't like the answer that calculation gave though because it would be amazingly small. At any given point in time the vast majority of users are making no demand on capacity at all. Even a user actively using the internet only gets download data in bursts - e.g. after downloading a web page there will be a pause while it is read. With most providers these days there is only a relatively small peak period slowdown. It is all the video streaming that has forced ISPs to increase their capacities as slowdowns there are both obvious and unacceptable.

Are you measuring your speeds over an ethernet or WiFi connection is the first question that needs to be asked.

parttimeskint

As far as the "up to" bit is concerned, that's what is called the headline speed based on the type of service. ADSL 2 up to 16, fibre 2 up to 80, and so on. these are the max speeds attainable with that type of service (theoretically).


There is a formula to work out the speed and you can check yourself too.


The providers now do, and have to, give you a more accurate estimate EAL (estimated access line speed) - this is the speed you should be getting on your line. If asked, they should also now be able to give you a MAL (Minimum Access Line speed) - this being the speed they guarantee to provide as a minimum. (providers are not obligated to volunteer the MAL, but they do have to supply it if you ask )


If they can't hit the MAL after you working with them to achieve that, jumping through what ever hoops, you can leave penalty free. Check with the supplier what their time constraints are. I think its up to 3 months.


Run a check on your address or phone number on any of the suppliers sites now and it will give you an estimated speed.