Low broadband speed

SquissMcBliss2601

We live on a 20 year old housing estate and are only able to get a maximum of 35Mb broadband speed. We're currently with Sky and get about 20Mb on average, several of my neighbours are with BT and average about 7Mb. An Openreach engineer came to a neighbour today about a different issue and several others spoke to him about the problems on the estate. He advised that we will always have low speeds because there is a load of coiled cable under the estate somewhere that's causing the issue. He said that if we could get 250 households to complain or sign something, BT would have to do something about it. Can anyone advise if this is true and what we would have to do? We're thinking of going door to door to try and rally people! Thanks 😊

Browntoa

I cannot envisage "coiled cable" as cabling is in quite small ducts , cabinets and access chambers. Nowhere to coil huge amounts of cable as suggested.

Is possible a petition signed by as many residents and handed to openreach may influence them but not guaranteed especially if the cost is high .

In the long term fibre is continuously being expanded , first to the green cabinets ( FTTC ) and then ultimately to the premises (FTTP) . By 2025 the plan is to close down the old home phone network (PSTN) using the copper network and replace with Voice over IP (VOIP) and then remove the copper . That should resolve your problems

JJ_Egan

Be worth having a look on the Open reach web site see if any plans for FTTP in your area .

brewerdave

More likely that there are chunks of aluminium cable out there under the  roads - and that is degrading far faster than the copper cabling.

matelodave

Browntoa said:

I cannot envisage "coiled cable" as cabling is in quite small ducts , cabinets and access chambers. Nowhere to coil huge amounts of cable as suggested.

Is possible a petition signed by as many residents and handed to openreach may influence them but not guaranteed especially if the cost is high .

In the long term fibre is continuously being expanded , first to the green cabinets ( FTTC ) and then ultimately to the premises (FTTP) . By 2025 the plan is to close down the old home phone network (PSTN) using the copper network and replace with Voice over IP (VOIP) and then remove the copper . That should resolve your problems

I think you'll find that even when BT decide to switch off the PSTN they will still be using copper for the "last mile" for a fair few years (if not forever). Those who have Fibre to the Cabinet will still have access to a broadband connection and VOIP will be carried on their broadband coonection. Those people who only want a phone will get a pared down broadband connection to service the phone

I guess it's pretty unlikely that they'll be coming round and pulling optical fibre to replace all the copper wiring and expecting evryone to install an ONT.

Regarding the suggestion of a petition, BT/openreach have been known to respond to a pent up demand if enough people request it however, it's not as easy as you think to get people to sign one.

I've run two campaigns to get better broadband - one down in Essex in a town of around 3500 and I leaflet dropped to every house and knocked on doors, even spoke to our MP to get people interested. We did get the desired result but it was very hard work.

The second time was to get FTTP where I live now because we were only getting 1-8-2mbit's on a good day There are only around 100 houses and I was a "broadband champion" working with the Connecting Cambridgeshire project. It took a couple of years but we got there in the end and we can now enjoy up to 900mbit's if we want it (I'm more than happy with 76mbit/s) But it's surprising how few people want to participate or how many are reasonably happy with slow speeds.

SquissMcBliss2601

Thanks everyone. I'll do a bit more research on what we've got in our area and any plans by Openreach to put in FTTP. It's all a bit over my head though!

littleboo

matelodave said:

Browntoa said:

I cannot envisage "coiled cable" as cabling is in quite small ducts , cabinets and access chambers. Nowhere to coil huge amounts of cable as suggested.

Is possible a petition signed by as many residents and handed to openreach may influence them but not guaranteed especially if the cost is high .

In the long term fibre is continuously being expanded , first to the green cabinets ( FTTC ) and then ultimately to the premises (FTTP) . By 2025 the plan is to close down the old home phone network (PSTN) using the copper network and replace with Voice over IP (VOIP) and then remove the copper . That should resolve your problems

I think you'll find that even when BT decide to switch off the PSTN they will still be using copper for the "last mile" for a fair few years (if not forever). Those who have Fibre to the Cabinet will still have access to a broadband connection and VOIP will be carried on their broadband coonection. Those people who only want a phone will get a pared down broadband connection to service the phone

Indeed, the PSTN switch off and copper retirement are two separate but complimentary programmes.