ADSL with BT = 88 Kbps

[Scougar]

Awesome.. not sure what's going on but since December my line speed has nose dived. I live on the moor, but I used to get upto 1.3Mbps but now it's stupidly slow and the official bt test is showing as 88Kbps. Not happy.

Have contacted BT and awaiting a reply. All I know is that is NOT acceptable for the amount of money I pay. Hopefully it's just a BRAS profile thing at work.. as I'm actually connected at 1056Kbps... so hopefully it will get sorted. (nothing's running in the background btw).

Not sure if it's worth noting, but this has actually only happened since my 18 month contract with BT expired.. and I'm a free agent as such, I just haven't switched to anyone else lol. I wonder if it's linked?

 

[Scougar]

BT contacted me after I emailed them. They have apparently increased the profile, and should now wait 11 days for it to 'stablise'. First impressions.... still stupdendously slow, and getting 80-130Kbps, so unless it connects, then continually reconnects to try and force my rate higher.... something is very wrong

 

[esK`]

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/index.php

Do an exchange search and see how far you are from the exchange and can you get your line stats?

 

[Scougar]

It is quite far from the exchange. bear in mind my neighbour who is two doors up in a terraced house in a village, uses exactly the same line as me (apart from, from the house to the post)... and he get's about 1.3MBps.

Also.. when I got one of those little boxes that helped remove the bell wire/interference on the phone line from BT.. I was getting about 1.3Mbps as well.. but it dropped down to about 350Kbps a few months later oddly. It might be that I need a new main terminal to master socket wiring.. as it's very very old.

I would point out that without a BT signal improver (or whatever the hell they are called), I get a very poor internet connection that keeps dropping out. It's very stable with the box of tricks.

EDIT: This is my exhange http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WWSHAU (Shaugh Prior), but I am not in that village I'm a few miles away.

 

[GJ02]

BT are utter w*** scougar
I got out of my 18 month contract within the first 2 months
had no end of issues, got nowhere with call centres, had 2 egineers come out
in the end i emailed their CEO Ben Verwaayen, lolz and within 20 mins i had is PA call me telling with A tech english support member would call me very soon, 10 mins i had a very very helpful lady helping me, after she couldnt help I was asked would i like to leave, the rest is history. I even had an email copied to me from Ben Verwaayen, telling support to get this sorted as a matter of urgent importance ! lolz
I can reccomend dslzone website, full of very helpful people

 

[marmalade]

BT are utter w*** scougar
I got out of my 18 month contract within the first 2 months
had no end of issues, got nowhere with call centres, had 2 egineers come out
in the end i emailed their CEO Ben Verwaayen, lolz and within 20 mins i had is PA call me telling with A tech english support member would call me very soon, 10 mins i had a very very helpful lady helping me, after she couldnt help I was asked would i like to leave, the rest is history. I even had an email copied to me from Ben Verwaayen, telling support to get this sorted as a matter of urgent importance ! lolz
I can reccomend dslzone website, full of very helpful people

Do this - OR it could be one a them big cats that are loose on the moor have been doin some chewin?

 

[Scougar]

lol.. impressive cats if so!!! Bit excessive to be mailing the CEO just yet

I'm not in my contract, I'm out of it. A random phone call last night offering me £3 a month discount if I signed up for 12 months to broadband again is appealing, but I might be moving abroad, so won't be doing that lol.

They guy did mention about having an engineer come out.. but I suspect that will end in a nice fee being paid to BT for some work, which is cack given I rent the place (From my sister so I won't be charging her for it).

 

[swinnie]

I believe if a fault is discovered on your internal wiring you're liable to pay for the engineer. But I would get this confirmed.

 

[GJ02]

lol.. impressive cats if so!!! Bit excessive to be mailing the CEO just yet

maybe so, but you have it as an option, and knowing BT your gonna be going round and round in big circles getting nowhere

 

[Scougar]

I did temporarily replace about a 1.5 metre wire from the master intake to the master socket as the dog ripped it off the wall, but it has been fine. So to replace that cable I would be liable for the engineer's fee's even though it's fine? (yeah I know the deal of not touching it, but I couldn't call out or use the net without it about 8 months ago.)

Literally just the cable btw, as the wolf chewed the cable to shreds.

 

[Scougar]

OK update. This evening, I have been connected for 2 days.. and speed is upto 700 Kbps. Serious improvement over the previous 88 Kbps ! Definately right to contact BT Hopefully it will improve further.

 

[Paul_Robson]

BT are so bad. They deserve to go bust.

 

[3dcandy]

BT are so bad. They deserve to go bust.

I guess you don't get how BT came about or the history then? There is no way BT will go bust, and if they do, the internet would cease to exist in the uk for the majority of us. The reason BT is good and/or bad is due to them having a monopoly for so many years, and then being forced to give other people access to their network. This process was always going to be a difficult one, and is still hampering the communications industry in this country and will do for many years to come!

 

[shotgunshand]

Honestly, BT aren't that bad. I once worked for BT broadband complaints department and then their ITSM desk many moons ago.

When it comes to Broadband troubleshooting I can probably help quite well.

Firstly you do need to rule out your internal wiring like touched on above. To do this you'll have a master socket. (This will help you identify the socket http://www.thinkbroadband.com/tools/bt-master-socket.html)

Undo the two screws on either side of the socket and remove the face plate, the socket behind the faceplate and beyond is BT's responsibility - assuming it is a BT line - so if you test with your router (Remeber the filter) from this point and it is still faulty then it's deffinately BT's responsibility.

If this has happened since December I'm willing to bet it's to do with water leaking into the line. Water in the line is one of the most common reasons for a sudden slowdown, usually if they do an in depth Whoosh test (I dunno if they still use that tool but they did when I worked there) and pass the noise and attenuation details to BT Wholesale they can usually tell if that's the issue... but owning up to it is something else.

Do you get any background hissing, buzzing, clicking on your phone line when you use it as a phone? What do you have connected to the phone line?

 

[Paul_Robson]

I actually know a few people that work BT ( including a family member ) who is high up in the list of employees. Even they/she doesnt like the company.So many things in the company that could be put right. At the end of the day, history or not, BT can NOT compete with the likes of Virgin for its broadband service. Even just for the telephone side of things, virgin offers me a lot better service, lower price and a top notch high quality product. I think BT only exist not because a lot of people do not live in a cabled area, otherwise they would loose millions more customers.

 

[3dcandy]

I actually know a few people that work BT ( including a family member ) who is high up in the list of employees. Even they/she doesnt like the company.So many things in the company that could be put right. At the end of the day, history or not, BT can NOT compete with the likes of Virgin for its broadband service. Even just for the telephone side of things, virgin offers me a lot better service, lower price and a top notch high quality product. I think BT only exist not because a lot of people do not live in a cabled area, otherwise they would loose millions more customers.

Exactly...thus my post about the history. If BT goes in this country, the internet as you and me know it goes with it. They are involved in so much of the infrastructure side due to historical reasons they can't go. Virgin we lucky, they bought up several companies and tied them together, companies that were allowed to lay their own networks and bypassing BT's problems. It's the way of the world, however Virgin will never come to my part of the world, it's simply not worth their time, money and would never turn a profit. That's how things turn out. Wish them bust if you so want to...and your lovely Virgin connection would be next to worthless!

 

[shotgunshand]

I suppose at least with Virign it's on their network - assuming it's fibre. If it's any other ISP ultimately you go through BT Wholesale.

If I had to pick another ISP on the BT network though it'd be either Plusnet or Nildram. I heard Nildram were bought over but when I used them years ago they were really good. Plusnet generally get good reviews though.

Check out www.thinkbroadband.com for more broadband info.

 

[AWPC]

Had a similar nightmare with BT recently like so many of these issues most of it is down to BT upgrading majority of UK exchanges to 21CN which can force you back onto a lower IP Profile until the line sorts itself out (way ADSL max work unfortunately).

First time it happened took 10 days to increase IP Profile.

2nd Time it happened took 18 days to increase IP Profile.

3rd time it happened I just bought a new Router from OCUK as no way can the BT Home Hub handle ADSL2+ BT tell you it can but that's BS unless your line is superb the minor difference between SNR/Attentuation for 992.3/992.5 means you will yoyo between the 2 circuits at your local exchange which is why your speeds suddenly drop as you get put back to the back of the queue automatically then must wait up to 10 days for the line to autosense the optimium speed. My advice is:

1: As soon as this happens buy a better Router than the one BT provide. Plug it in then do not under any circumstance unplug or reboot it you must leave it for at least 3 days uninterupted before it will increase speeds (or decrease speeds if your line is really bad).

2: There is a 10% ish speed difference between using a Wireless Router connected straight into the BT master socket vs using an extension cable into your PC as this line difference can mean a big difference purely down to line noise however minute as ADSL2+ is way more sensitive to this.

3: Obviously if you buy a better Wireless Router also buy a decent wireless card with at least 2 aerials so it can connect with a strong signal.

It sounds like overkill but if BT book an engineer to come & your internal wiring (even a short extension cable) is not up to scratch they will charge you £200 for the engineers time as you can see its easier to just buy the best wi-fi setup you can straight into the BT master socket then if you still have a problem its BT who have to sort at their costs not yours!

 

[Alpherah]

BT are idiots.
After the last troubles i had, eventually an engineer came out and replaced the master socket (The one in the house originally was so old it didnt even have a test socket inside).

Anyway, he did such a shoddy job it fell off the wall and one of the wires came out! After like 2 hours of the job being done.

So, another phone call, and another Engineer comes and fixes the shoddy work-man-ship of the original guy.

Bill comes, billed £349.99 which was about £120 higher then usual. Call up .. yup, been charged £120 for 'home owner damaging the socket resulting in having to send a second enginner'.

Dispute is about to go to small claims in a few days, which should be interesting.

 

[cameraheaven]

BT line speed fix

I had a issue with BT broadband recently fixed, with a line speed descending from 4Meg down to .3Meg over a three month period! To keep it short, every time my line got dirty(moisture, water in the line casing) and my ping got to long, the exchanges have an auto correcting feature that throttles you back a bit until you get good signal again, and resets your line speed to that new value. Once this happen several times as your line gets moist and dries out over time, your max line speed gets lower and lower. Ring BT (Nicely) and request your line to be reset, this has to be done manually by BT techos and takes about an hour to take effect, could save you a costly service call!!!

Aussie Allan