Is it possible to accurately guage telephone line quality in a property before buying

[Spudgun]

We are considering moving at the moment and broadband speed is very important to me. Whilst I am aware that I can get the current phone number of the property and put it into one of the various databases, I am also aware that this is not 100% accurate and what I'm trying to avoid is buying a house and then finding out that the internet connection is awful (and i do realise that this will be a sujective term for everyone concerned!). ADSL products are the only option here by the way, as only about 50% of the village that the property is in has cable available.

The only other real solution that I can come up with is to ask the vendor (who doesn't have a broadband enabled line at the moment) if I could plug a filter and my modem into the master socket and then to login in to my router wirelessly with either my phone or laptop to see if i can get an attenuation reading which should give a fairly accurate reading of line quality.

However, what I am not sure of is whether a modem will be able to get this stat if there is no broadband connection enabled on the line?

Does anyone know if this will work, or can recommend a better way to make sure that I don't spend the next 10 years or so living in the broadband slow lane?

Many thanks

Spudgun

 

[tolien]

You won't get an attenuation reading without a working ADSL service and there really is no accurate way of determining what sort of connection you'll get without there being one.

 

[Azuse05]

Easiest way to find out is an isp with 1 month contract, although download limits are a little low.

 

[Spudgun]

You won't get an attenuation reading without a working ADSL service and there really is no accurate way of determining what sort of connection you'll get without there being one.

Cheers Tolien, I feared that would be the case.

What are your views on the accuracy of BT's database as i don't want to spend the best part of half a milliion on a house and then end up with a 2mb connection or less, especially when i spend half my week watching NFL games via their gamepass service

Spudgun

 

[tolien]

What are your views on the accuracy of BT's database

You'd be very naive to rely on the planning database.

If you're spending that sort of money, it seems like small change to ask if the vendor minds having an ADSL service set up.

 

[PistolPete]

Easy solution to get a reasonably accurate figure.

Google the postcode and STD code and find a phone number in the same street/bit of the street. If you get no luck, try ajoining streets until you get phone number for the properties.

Take their phone numbers and run them through the normal checkers, rinse -> repeat.

You'll get a fairly good indication of what the lines in the area are like.

 

[Zarf]

Why not try talking to your prospective neighbors? Even if they arn't techy they'll probably let you use their computer to run a quick speedtest.

 

[D18241]

Cheers Tolien, I feared that would be the case.

What are your views on the accuracy of BT's database as i don't want to spend the best part of half a milliion on a house and then end up with a 2mb connection or less, especially when i spend half my week watching NFL games via their gamepass service

Spudgun

i did a BT test thing on my line i was told i would only get 6.5mb max... i am currently with 8mb with aol receiving 8mb

 

[tolien]

Easy solution to get a reasonably accurate figure.

Google the postcode and STD code and find a phone number in the same street/bit of the street. If you get no luck, try ajoining streets until you get phone number for the properties.

Take their phone numbers and run them through the normal checkers, rinse -> repeat.

You'll get a fairly good indication of what the lines in the area are like.

Never mind that using the number for something nearby is hardly going to give you a "fairly good indication", it's totally pointless:

Whilst I am aware that I can get the current phone number of the property and put it into one of the various databases

 

[PistolPete]

Never mind that using the number for something nearby is hardly going to give you a "fairly good indication", it's totally pointless:

Care to explain why it's "totally pointless"? Trying a single number for the property would get you a single result - which may or may not be correct. When I moved into my current house the number check said I would not get ADSL at all. Had I gone on that alone I would not have bothered trying to get ADSL and not the 5Mb average of the properties around me.

@Zarf - I tried that too and not a single neighbour wanted to help out.

 

[tolien]

Care to explain why it's "totally pointless"?

Neglecting that the checker is woefully inaccurate, the surrounding lines could be in a different binder or anything. You can't make any judgement how accurate the result is for those or how relevant they are to the property in question.

Trying a single number for the property would get you a single result - which may or may not be correct.

But will be the result for the property the OP wants to buy.
As I've already said a number of times (and said in a sticky), the checker is virtually useless. The only way to know how good a service you'd get is to have one activated.

 

[PistolPete]

Well, you are entitled to your opinion of course, but using terms such as "totally pointless", "woefully inaccurate" and "virtually useless" are far from the truth. Yes, the checker is based on poorly kept BT plant records, associated phone numbers and can't take localised problems into account yet it's still able to give you an indication.

Whilst there will be specific cases where there will be results that fall short of the averages stated by the checker, even some in excess of the checkers estimate, for the very large majority of cases it's accurate enough. For someone trying to locate property and basing the decision partly on availability of good ADSL then getting a property and activating the ADSL to find out if it's any good is a foolhardy and potentially expensive mistake to make.

Take my parents house... according to the checker you can't get ADSL. Wrong. From my old bedroom I could look directly in through the windows of the exchange and they get full whack connection on BE. Check the other houses in the street - all return good results. My current house, again, told no ADSL, average around the street reported 4-5Mb.... I got 3.5->5.5Mb depending on the weather. My Father-in-law, 400m from the exchange, got good results yet barely synced at 2Mb. Others in the street got good results... ended up being a localised fault which BT repaired.
Friend in Northern Ireland. Told 512Mb if you are lucky despite being a short distance from the exchange, checked the other around him... all came back with the same result... got installed and sync at around 750k.

 

[muon]

If you're getting poor results while also being close to an exchange, it could be that you are connected to a different exchange.

I know in london, some exchanges seem to overlap.

For example, try using the exchange mapping tool available here

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

Find your area click on an exchange and let it show area covered. This isn't perfect, you sometimes get the coverage randomly spiking off somewhere. Must be a misinterpretation of a street which isn't actually connected to that exchange or wrong address entered.

The worst exchange in London is probably the Poplar exchange. It covers the whole of the Isle of Dogs and all of Poplar. There is no LLU capacity left at the exchange, due to so many new houses/flats which were unplanned for.

 

[tolien]

You're curiously defensive about the virtues of the estimator - you didn't assemble it, did you?

Well, you are entitled to your opinion

It's a bit more than an opinion that using phone numbers from neighbouring streets to estimate what speed you'll get from a line, when you know that line's number already, is pretty stupid given the inaccuracy of the estimator in the first place. Your anecdote doesn't exactly prove the value of what you suggest either.

yet it's still able to give you an indication.

So is straight line distance, but no one's recommending that.

getting a property and activating the ADSL to find out if it's any good is a foolhardy and potentially expensive mistake to make.

The OP's talking about spending "the best part of" £500k on a house. You're seriously saying that ~£60 (the cheapest Enta tier plus the activation fee) is "foolhardy" compared to a pretty rough estimate?
No one's suggesting buy the house then try it and see here...

Take my parents house... according to the checker you can't get ADSL. Wrong.

That seems to reinforce my assertion that the checker isn't accurate.

 

[z0mbi3]

I was in a unique position where I was able to get the line of someone up the road from me checked, granted this isn't won't reflect the quality of the internal wiring, but it gave me a rough figure to work with.

 

[PistolPete]

Not defensive over the estimator at all, it's simply a tool that does a job - however I did spend a large amount of time working with it doing data dumps and mapping RAG results in a town for the local broadband action group (which also included being an ADSL "long reach" trialist which lead to BT relaxing the 60dB service limit), so I'm full aware of how wrong it can be (especially when taken in isolatation) but also how it can be very useful.

I'm curious as to why you need to constantly attack it. To make the data as valueless as you repeatly claim seems to suggest that you think every single record in the database must be wrong.

No-one has mentioned straight line distance as this can only give you a very wild guess with little accuracy, only that the further you go the less likely you are to get a decent service.

You suggested you can only get an attenuation figure from a work ADSL line, this is true - But as the OP said he wouldn't want to spend £1/2M on a house to get 2Mb.
If all the other properties in the street get 512kb from an exchange 6miles away, do you think the OP would be likely to assume he'd get a 20Mb connection on the offchance that 100% of the database isn't wrong? I doubt it, he'll probably either look elsewhere (if that's possible) or resign to the fact that he won't get the service he wants.

At the end of the day, had the estimator thrown up lots of random results or even a high level of inaccuracies then I would not bother to suggest it, but it doesn't.
Even if it was 25% inaccurate, then checking 1 number give you a 1 in 4 chance of getting incorrect data. Checking 4 houses in the same street you've got a 1 in 256 chance of them all showing incorrect data.