Broadband and Ofcom

NightmareXX · 24 Jan 2009 at 01:33

I'm getting a little sick of my ISP and the continuing problems I'm having with my internet connection, let alone the speed of it. While the customer service gets things done, it never fixes my line.

After my line being stable for 3-4 months, I've suddenly started having dropped connections rather frequently even though my SNR is well above what it needs to be.

As a result of this and where I live, I don't even have the option to change ISP to try and get a better quality of service. Is there anything in Ofcom guidelines that states the quality of a broadband line that an ISP has to provide?

daveyp · 24 Jan 2009 at 02:07

This is what i found on another forum
MAX Home products have a downstream range between 288Kb – 8Mb, the upstream range is between 64Kb – 448Kb.
MAX Office products have a downstream range between 288Kb – 8Mb, the upstream range is between 64Kb – 832Kb.

Clairvoyant · 24 Jan 2009 at 08:47

What are your modem stats.

Do you have a noisy line, is it something BT should be looking at and not your ISP. (just a thought)

tolien · 24 Jan 2009 at 11:29

NightmareXX said:
Is there anything in Ofcom guidelines that states the quality of a broadband line that an ISP has to provide?

There's nothing that says you have to get broadband at all.

Beerbaron · 24 Jan 2009 at 11:33

if it is deemed by bt that the line cant support broadband you should get a refund. who is your isp?

tolien · 24 Jan 2009 at 11:40

If it's Hull, probably Kingston. BT don't (or barely) exist in Hull, and Ofcom let KComm have a monopoly...

Beerbaron · 24 Jan 2009 at 11:45

tolien said:
If it's Hull, probably Kingston. BT don't (or barely) exist in Hull, and Ofcom let KComm have a monopoly...

Should have looked at his location

Ignore my comment then. I only ever hear bad things about Kingston Communications.

Is mobile broadband an option?

NightmareXX · 24 Jan 2009 at 13:03

What tolien said basically. We can't change to another ISP without paying for another phone line which as far as I'm aware, is about £18/month.

I doubt mobile broadband would be an option as we (the household) regularly go over 50GB/month of data transfer and last time I checked, mobile broadband doesn't offer that sort of bandwidth.

As for line stats, yes. It's incredibly noisy and it doesn't help that we're a long way from the exchange.
Downstream speed (currently, changes depending on the time of day) 2242kbps, attenuation 45db, noise margin 5db.
Upstream speed (This is above average

) 908kbps, attenuation 14.5db, noise margin 8db.

It's especially irritating that my upstream is so good yet downstream fails massively.

Normally we can get about 4.5/5Mbps on the downstream with a noise margin of 6-8db but it's taken a nose dive recently.

pennywise · 24 Jan 2009 at 19:56

Your noise margin is terrible, check your internal wiring (router into test socket etc) and see if it goes up.

P.S. read

, line rental is normally pretty cheap, it's the installation that grabs you by the balls.

NightmareXX · 25 Jan 2009 at 11:38

I'm well aware that my noise margin is rubbish. I've checked our internal wiring and it's not that because 3 days ago we were at 4.5Mbps with a margin of 9db. Plugging the router into the master socket doesn't give any increase in noise margin either. They're sending an engineer around so hopefully they'll fix the problem.

NightmareXX · 27 Jan 2009 at 12:33

Just had an engineer around from KCom. He replaced some wire that was apparently faulty and everything is back to normal. No, it's better!

Got 4Mb down with a 16db noise ratio now and there's no more static on our phone line. I'm pleased that it was fixed