Shell broadband speeds plummeted after “upgrade”

Flintly

I was previously with Shell broadband on their “Superfast fibre” package, getting reliable download speeds of 36-38mbps with upload speeds of around 10Mbps.

When my contract ended they offered me an upgrade to “Superfast fibre +” for a lower price, so naturally I switched.

For the first 3 weeks I was getting perfectly reliable 60-63Mbps downloads and approx 20mbps upload speeds (same as I had with BT prior to switching to Shell a few yrs ago) 

Then for no reason I can fathom, my speeds plummeted to sub fibre speeds, averaging 15-17mbps download and a shocking 0.7mbps upload! It has now been like this for around 3 months.

Done everything sensible from my end, tried router reset, whole new router, plugging into master socket, replacing cables, filters etc. No change.

Contacted Shell, they say there’s nothing they can do, apart from send an openreach engineer to my property at a cost of £63 per hour, which will achieve nothing since the issue is clearly on their end.

I asked if I could just switch back to the previous  “slower” package since it was more expensive and twice the speed, but they want to charge me a large early termination fee.

I’m at a loss, and to add insult to injury, on my latest bill they charged me £35 for my own router (they never sent me a router when I signed up, I’m using my own fibre router).

Is there anything I can do at all, or do I have to wait out the 18Mo contract with barely usable speeds?

onomatopoeia99

When you signed up they should have told you expected speed and minimum speed (or "handback threshold").  If they can't get your speed above the handback threshold you should be allowed to leave penalty free.

Flintly

onomatopoeia99 said:

When you signed up they should have told you expected speed and minimum speed (or "handback threshold").  If they can't get your speed above the handback threshold you should be allowed to leave penalty free.

Sadly shell are one of the providers that don’t sign up to the minimum speed guarantee and as such don’t give any minimum speed expectations, all they promise on sign up is a maximum speed (in my case it was upto 63mbps).

I guess to some extent it’s my own fault, they do say the speeds are only “upto” the listed speeds, but it was my own expectation that it would be faster or at least equal to my previous package with them.

brewerdave

Are the speeds you quote ,actually the reported speeds in the router stats?? 
I know it sounds daft but - your connection speeds are more like ADSL2 @17Mb/0.7Mb - can you actually see the modulation type in your router stats - should be  G.993.2 Annex B for VDSL connection vs G.992.5 for ADSL2+.
Don't know if it's possible to use a fibre modem on an adsl2+ line

400ixl

What does the router say the actual sync speed is? This is the connection between it and the ISP, not your download speed at the PC.

Flintly

400ixl said:

What does the router say the actual sync speed is? This is the connection between it and the ISP, not your download speed at the PC.

Honestly can’t find where it shows my sync speed, I’m using a router from one of my old connections (post office zyxel model). 

Did try a shell fibre router after I requested one, but it didn’t make any difference so I sent it back as it was massive and about the ugliest router I’ve ever seen.

Flintly

brewerdave said:

Are the speeds you quote ,actually the reported speeds in the router stats?? 
I know it sounds daft but - your connection speeds are more like ADSL2 @17Mb/0.7Mb - can you actually see the modulation type in your router stats - should be  G.993.2 Annex B for VDSL connection vs G.992.5 for ADSL2+.
Don't know if it's possible to use a fibre modem on an adsl2+ line

Router doesn’t show me any connection speed stats as far as I can see, the numbers I’m quoting are from Speedtest on a laptop (using a wired connection). They match up with other tests using wifi, on a console and my phone, as well as my TVs built in test (which is a wired connection).

Flintly

Flintly said:

brewerdave said:

Are the speeds you quote ,actually the reported speeds in the router stats?? 
I know it sounds daft but - your connection speeds are more like ADSL2 @17Mb/0.7Mb - can you actually see the modulation type in your router stats - should be  G.993.2 Annex B for VDSL connection vs G.992.5 for ADSL2+.
Don't know if it's possible to use a fibre modem on an adsl2+ line

Router doesn’t show me any connection speed stats as far as I can see, the numbers I’m quoting are from Speedtest on a laptop (using a wired connection). They match up with other tests using wifi, on a console and my phone, as well as my TVs built in test (which is a wired connection).

actually scratch that, I managed to find it,

This is a snap of what bt/openreach says my line is capable of:

AstonSmith

Your line speed's been capped (banded) at the cabinet. The numbers are too perfect - almost exactly 18000kbps down/800kbps up, and the SNR margins are huge, they are normally around 6dB.

Normally this happens due to line instability, but those figures are so ADSL2-like that I wonder if someone applied the wrong profile to your account.

Either way, there's nothing you can do on your end to remove the cap. Shell has to send OpenReach to reset your port on the cabinet in order to remove the banding. Any competent ISP would already have seen those modem stats and realised this, but you might have to push those screenshots into their faces (so to speak) in order to make them do something.

Flintly

AstonSmith said:

Your line speed's been capped (banded) at the cabinet. The numbers are too perfect - almost exactly 18000kbps down/800kbps up, and the SNR margins are huge, they are normally around 6dB.

Normally this happens due to line instability, but those figures are so ADSL2-like that I wonder if someone applied the wrong profile to your account.

Either way, there's nothing you can do on your end to remove the cap. Shell has to send OpenReach to reset your port on the cabinet in order to remove the banding. Any competent ISP would already have seen those modem stats and realised this, but you might have to push those screenshots into their faces (so to speak) in order to make them do something.

Do you think it’s worth requesting a DLM reset?

Perhaps if there was some temporary interruption to the line it could have caused it to be capped (they’ve been installing FTTP on my street, which did coincide with the initial drop in speed)

400ixl

As AstonSmith says, go back to your ISP and tell them to investigate as the fault is not at your end. They should be able to see the same information from you are on the sync speed etc and see that there is a problem on the line or there has been a restriction put on it.