Slowish internet, will Fibre make a difference?

phil675

phil675

phil675

Soldato
Joined
15 Jan 2005
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UK
Hello,

So we've had Sky Unlimited for a while now, they quote the maximum speed as 17Mbit but I get no better than 6Mbit, as I understand lots of things can contribute to this.I live in old flats so perhaps its the wiring?

Anyway so I was considering upgrading to fibre as a way to get faster speeds, but what is the usual extent of the fibre line? If it's only to the exchange and my wire from the flat to the exchange is the problem, will it make any difference at all?

If I did upgrade and it turned out to be a minimal difference, can you just phone them up and go back to the old package?
 
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You won't be able to know for sure if there's a problem with the wiring from the cabinet to your premises unless you can get access to your cabinet, and unless you're a BT engineer that is unlikely! You could get an idea by asking the speeds achieved by people in your building, and comparing it to what people served by the same cabinet achieve outside of your building. You could, alternatively, use uSwitch StreetStats

Beyond that, it's sort of guesswork. It might be helpful to find out how far you are from the exchange. Finding out your straight line distance can be done through SamKnows, however working out the distance your cabinet is from the exchange/you are from the cabinet isn't as simple a task.
 
Another thing to check is your master socket, if there are 3 wires connected then you have a redundant ring wire which can cause interference and affect your speeds.
 
phil675 said:
Hello,

So we've had Sky Unlimited for a while now, they quote the maximum speed as 17Mbit but I get no better than 6Mbit, as I understand lots of things can contribute to this.I live in old flats so perhaps its the wiring?
Click to expand...

Is 6Mbps download speed or your sync rate on the router?
 
As far as I'm aware SamKnows only looks at what is available at your exchange, so if it says you can't get FTTC, I'm pretty sure it'll be because the exchange doesn't offer it at present. The fact that BT/Sky offerings are around 20Mbps is a good confirmation of this, as 20Mbps sounds very much like ADSL. Unlike almost every other ISP, Virgin don't make use of BT's exchange - premises infrastructure. This means Virgin have cabled parts of your postcode, but not necessarily your street/building. You'll have to get in touch with Virgin directly to find out exactly, I had an experience with this where my postcode was confirmed as being served by Virgin Media, but they didn't get all the way up the street to my place >_<
 
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