Adsl speed variable dependant on location within town

[likwid]

I emigrated to Spain from Scotland four years ago and life is better here but for one thing, internet connectivity. I went from having 20mb cable connection to 1mb adsl. This might be acceptable but for the fact that neighbours a few streets away have 3mb. In this day of cloud computing etc. is incredibly constraining having such a slow connection, not to mention streaming video is a pain.

I hope that someone knowledgable in such matters might point me in the direction of why this is the case. Someone suggested it likely to be the local exchange is oversubscribed, if that is the case shouldn't the telecom invest in expansion?

 

[Uhtred]

The copper can take a completely different route from one street to the next. The longer the copper has to go the more signal loss. Also, the quality/age of cable is a factor and might vary between streets.

It's possible the wiring in your house is part of the problem though and there are things you can try - place your modem in the main socket in the house (the one that comes in from outside) and see if unplugging other phones/alarms etc helps.

 

[Tealc]

A few streets could be several hundred metres and ADSL signals degrade a fair bit in a few hundred metres. it could also be your internal phone wiring dragging the speed down.

And yes basically your location, with respect to distance from the telephone exchange and route the cables takes, has a lot to do with the speed you can get.

What's the fibre rollout like over there?

 

[likwid]

Thanks both.

I'm suspicious because where we are they've added more streets from ocean reclaimed land; our once beach front home is now two streets away from the sea. I believe this may mean our exchange is over capacity and 3mb adsl is being shared between three homes. All neighbouring towns have 3mb adsl and there is a waiting list for even a telephone here; it took us 10 weeks.

We have a problem with there not being any service other than adsl here. You can switch company but it's still the monopoly telecom who provide the telephone lines. Let me say I hate Telefonica with a passion. As far as cable, we don't have it here but it's in the city and larger towns.

 

[Tealc]

As far as I'm aware ADSL doesn't really work like that. Sure the ISP or telecoms provider can throttle the speed that you get but normally you would sync at the best rate possible.

How about you post your router stats? Attenuation, noise margin etc.

 

[likwid]

Thanks for the advice. I know that all our neighbours have the same speed so it's not caused by anything local.