ADSL+ Broadband Speeds are unregulated

[Deleted User]

Broadband speeds are unregulated as a service if they are compared with gas and electricity. Gas pressure into the home has to be within regulated limits as does the mains electricity voltage.

But not so it seems for broadband speeds.

http://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/graph-ADSL-speed-versus-line-loss-distance

Speed is limited by the quality of the signal expressed as a signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the geographical distance from the exchange to the user usually as a road journey because wiring often follows roads and is rarely a straight line of site distance between the two.

The higher the SNR at the exchange the better the speed. The shorter the distance from the exchange the better the speed. Yet ISP's will often say that as long as speeds are between two limits then there's nothing can be done. They say this on the basis that the distance from the exchange doesn't matter. In other words the copper wiring is loss less and does not degrade or attenuate as it travels.

Openreach who maintain BT's telephone infrastructure are under no obligation to minimise the distance loss or attenuation from your home to the exchange. In the link above a line with a distance loss of 36 dB (equivalent to ohms in an electrical sense) should support an ADSL+ line speed of 11.8 Mbps when the distance from the exchange is 2.61 km. The speed is also limited by the quality of the signal in this case an SNR figure of 50 dB (first graph) will reduce the line speed to about 5Mbps.

A customer experiencing under the above circumstances a speed of 1.5 Mbps will be fobbed off by the ISP saying it is within acceptable limits. A line fault cannot be raised because line attenuation is not regulated so Openreach are under no obligation to treat it as a line fault.

Here's the rub because speed is unregulated in terms of distance and signal quality Openreach can allow its infrastructure to degrade without consequence. Customer speeds are often much lower that they should be for the distance the signal has traveled. Unless you have access to a techie then there is little or nothing that can be done to challenge Openreach in terms of a line fault citing excessive attenuation as the cause of the problem.

alderpoint

It's called physics - line attenuation goes up the longer the line. If you want to have a lower attenuation (and hence higher speed) then either you need to move house so the line is shorter or pay £££ for a thicker copper or more likely a fiber to be installed - both of which have lower signal loss.

All that "regulating" the service to say that they "must" provide a certain bandwidth will do will cut off the people to whom that bandwidth cannot be achieved.

Line length is being addressed by installing equipment in green boxes closer to end users which also enables more frequencies to be used (VDSL2) and this is what is used by Infinity.

BT are also starting a trial of G.Fast, which runs the fiber to the manhole or pole closest to you which makes the line lengths even shorter and thus higher speed.

The root of the problem is that there are literally millions of phone lines out there which were never intended for the purpose they are now being used for and improving the situation requires a lot of time and effect (i.e. investment). The BDUK program is helping a lot, but the sheer size of the problem is the key issue.

By comparison, the rollout of smart meters for electricity and gas is trivial...

penrhyn

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[Deleted User]

I agree it is physics. Consider it another way who benefits from increased line resistance or attenuation? BT of course because they can install fibre which they can charge more for. The physics say that for distance and signal quality a certain speed should be achievable.

What if Openreach were to install restricters that increased line attenuation and lowered line speeds. Its not the ISP who is to blame its the infrastructure they sit on top off. Who benefits why BT because they can create a market for fibre. How are they getting away with this? How do we know that they are not fitting line restricters because the evidence says they are.

Most home accounts are 20CN but 21CN is just around the corner promising ADSL+ speeds of 24 Mbps. Its not in Openreache's interests to maintain lines for optimum distance quality because its a threat to fibre and the justification for it.

[Deleted User]

penrhyn wrote: »

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

But awareness is everything!

Roland_Sausage

[Deleted User] wrote:

How are they getting away with this? How do we know that they are not fitting line restricters because the evidence says they are.

Attenuators do actually exist, however they are used for testing purposes.

I would be interested to see your evidence that they are being fitted to live circuits.

littleboo

[Deleted User] wrote:

I agree it is physics. Consider it another way who benefits from increased line resistance or attenuation? BT of course because they can install fibre which they can charge more for. The physics say that for distance and signal quality a certain speed should be achievable.

What if Openreach were to install restricters that increased line attenuation and lowered line speeds. Its not the ISP who is to blame its the infrastructure they sit on top off. Who benefits why BT because they can create a market for fibre. How are they getting away with this? How do we know that they are not fitting line restricters because the evidence says they are.

Most home accounts are 20CN but 21CN is just around the corner promising ADSL+ speeds of 24 Mbps. Its not in Openreache's interests to maintain lines for optimum distance quality because its a threat to fibre and the justification for it.

So you are claiming that you have evidence that Openreach are deliberately attenuating lines in an orchestrated plan to pressure people into taking fibre ? Do you imagine this only happens where fibre is available, or in your world is it happening everywhere ?
Can I sell you some tin foil ?

alderpoint

[Deleted User] wrote:

Most home accounts are 20CN but 21CN is just around the corner promising ADSL+ speeds of 24 Mbps.

I don't know where you get your ideas from...

The original ADSL up to about 2Mb/s. Then this was enhanced to provide ADSL Max, which best case did 8Mb/s. For a long time this was the best you'd get out of BT.

There is no such thing as ADSL+

Various other ISPs (e.g Be) installed their own equipment in the exchange which did ADSL2+ which does up to 24Mb/s - but that was over 5 years ago. Some ISPs only advertised ADSL2+ as offering up to 20Mb/s, as higher is only obtainable on a small number of very short lines.

BT's 21CN program was all about upgrading the core of the network, i.e. the telecom exchanges and the interconnect between them, nothing to do with the local access loop. But after they killed Marconi by awarding the contract to Huawei BT realised this was a rather bigger problem than they thought and it was mostly quietly dropped, hence System X and AXE10 are still in the network and I understand now expected to last until 2025...

kwikbreaks

alderpoint wrote: »

I don't know where you get your ideas from...

Nowhere real that's for sure. The suggestion that Openreach deliberately restrict line speeds is pure hyperbole.

JJ_Egan

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Nowhere real that's for sure. The suggestion that Openreach deliberately restrict line speeds is pure hyperbole.

But i saw a BT OR man go down the hole today with a clamp in his hand is that not for throttling connections ??

[Deleted User]

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Nowhere real that's for sure. The suggestion that Openreach deliberately restrict line speeds is pure hyperbole.

Evidence, some testing is required. First you need to find what exchange your ADSL is being served from.

https://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

This will give the post code of the exchange. Now find a distance checker something that will measure the road distance from your house to the exchange. Next log into your router and look at its statistics page and note down the SNR and downstream line speed figures.

Next find a broadband speed checker.

http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/

Does it agree with what you recorded from your router? Next using the linked graphs in the first post work out what speed you should have for the SNR and distance from the exchange. Is it lower than it should be?