EE throttling connection to force switch to fibre?

lather30

For many years, my EE broadband connection has been pretty reliably around the 6Mb/s mark for downloads. However, since the work was done to get FTC fibre broadband into the area, my speed has dropped to 0.9Mb/s at best. Ironically, the upload speed seems not to have changed, so now the upload speed tests at 1Mb/s or above, which means that uploads are now faster than downloads! When I check on the EE website for the predicted connection speed for my location, it says the best I can get is 1Mb/s. This sharp drop in speed has made the connection pretty much unusable for anything like streaming video, and making it much harder for me to WFH running my own business.

So, does anyone know if EE have started to throttle older wired broadband connections (i.e. those over the normal phone line all of the way from the exchange) to try and force people to sign up to fibre broadband? It does seem very suspicious to me that, as soon as fibre becomes available in my area, my connection speed mysteriously drops to around 16% of what it was previously...

km1500

What does your contract say about speed - it should be stated your minimum and expected speed

lather30

km1500 said:

What does your contract say about speed - it should be stated your minimum and expected speed

According to the EE website, the line speed is 6Mb/s.

It also says "Estimated Line Speed between  Mb/Sec and Mb/Sec" - so it doesn't actually state a figure for either value...

[Deleted User]

So, does anyone know if EE have started to throttle older wired broadband connections (i.e. those over the normal phone line all of the way from the exchange) to try and force people to sign up to fibre broadband?

My first answer was going to be "only EE can tell you whether they throttle ADSL in VDSL roll out areas" but then I thought about it and saw you were on 6mbps at max anyway so would be no motivation to slow down something already so slow.

Even if the answer was "yes" there is nowt you can do about it anyway unless they are in breach of contract, but I cannot see any motivation whatsoever to do that.

Just sign up to FTTC and get a less slow internet.

making it much harder for me to WFH running my own business.

You can't really complain about that unless you are purchasing a business internet line, and given the difficulties it looks fairly obvious that you should sign up to something faster regardless.

Newcad

6Mbps is very slow anyway these days, particularly if you want to work from home, so I'd be wanting to upgrade anyway..

Just one question about your current lower speed - Are you by any chance switching off your hub/router at nights? (to save energy).
You shouldn't do that. If you do that then the automatic systems think there is a fault on the line and so cut down your line speed to compensate for that 'fault'.

But now that you have fibre available you will be better switching to fibre, it doesn't have to be with EE so look around what is available at what price from other providers.
(I'm on Universal Credit so qualify for BT Essentials at a cost £15 a month for unlimited fibre broadband at 40 Mbps plus a voice over internet phone with 700 mins calls a month included).

Krakkkers

If fibre is available then why not switch? I just switched from BT ADSL at 35Mbps to Youfibre Gigabit at 1000 Mbps and its £14 per month cheaper.
No landline but thats not a problem for me.

lather30

Newcad said:

Just one question about your current lower speed - Are you by any chance switching off your hub/router at nights? (to save energy).

You shouldn't do that. If you do that then the automatic systems think there is a fault on the line and so cut down your line speed to compensate for that 'fault'.

No, it's on 24/7 as one of the computers hard-wire connected to it needs it to be on all of the time.

The change in speed seems to have coincided with a team of engineers visiting the area putting in a thick cable linking the tops of all of the telephone poles. About the same time, we had a very noisy phone line for a few days - sometimes so noisy you struggled to hear the other person - but that has now cleared up again.

Any deal I switched to would have to have a landline with calls included, as that's a key requirement for the wider family for various reasons. And, unlike many people, I don't need it blazingly fast, as it isn't used for HD streaming video, video calling or online gaming, so normally 6 Meg is perfectly fast enough.

Krakkkers

Your need for a landline and satisfaction with low speeds makes you the exception so you are going to struggle.
Landlines are effectively dead so why do you want to persevere with that?

Newcad

lather30 said:

The change in speed seems to have coincided with a team of engineers visiting the area putting in a thick cable linking the tops of all of the telephone poles. About the same time, we had a very noisy phone line for a few days

Yes that all explains your loss of speed.
They will have been disconnecting and reconnecting things at each pole.

Only for seconds but the automatic system has seen all that disruption as 'faults' on your line and cut your speed to try and compensate.
Every time they disconnected for a second or two at a new pole that's a new 'fault' as far as the automatic system is concerned, and it would cut your speed a bit more.

If the work has finished now then you speeds should recover again - but as we say look around because you can do much better than 6 mbps for no, or little, extra cost.

And yes, many people are paying for 'speeds' (its actually capacity not speed) that they don't need and will never use.
From what you have said then I think that 20 to 40 mbps is all that you currently need.
That may change though, especially if you do more work from home and want to use Zoom and the like.

Newcad

Newcad said:

And yes, many people are paying for 'speeds' (its actually capacity not speed) that they don't need and will never use.

To explain that bit here's an analogy:

Say you have an arena and buy turnstiles that can let in one person each second.
If you buy 100 turnstiles then you have a capacity of 100 Pps. (100 people per second)
If you buy 1,000 turnstiles then you have a capacity of 1 Kpps. (1,000 people per second).

1Kps is great if you need to let in 1,000 people all at the same time.
But if only 100 turn up at a time then they are not getting in any faster, and you don't need the other 900 turnstiles.
It's the same with data - Kbps/Mbps/Gbps isn't speed, it's capacity - so work out how much capacity you actually need and stop paying for more capacity (speed) than you need.

Krakkkers

Faster fibre speeds are not more expensive than slower ADSL though.