Finally, Fibre in area but really slow speed estimates

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This is what we currently get on ADSL



After years of waiting, our cabinet went live for Fibre today. But, the estimated speeds are really poor - download only slightly faster than ADSL and upload potentially slower! Our cabinet is approximately half a mile away, but obviously I don't know the path the cabling takes.

Estimates here:



My current provider uses the lower of the ranges as their estimate and does not suggest attempting to move to fibre Clearly after all this waiting and expectation this is a real blow!

I'm really looking for an increased upload speed. Download speed is OK. If however I end up with 0.8 upload compared to my current 1.1 I'll be stuck for a year on a poorer service. Fibre is around £5/month more, but is unlimited (200Gb cap right now).

Anyone been in a similar situation? Was it worth upgrading?

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rossmc88 said:

My village has recently had Infinity installed, I've went from 4 Down 0.5 Up to 70 Down 20 Up

My broadband cost has doubled from £20 per month to £40 per month excluding line rental, but I'm happy to pay it. I can watch all my youtube videos in 1080p with no lag Accessing my home server remotely is much faster with the huge upload speed increase too! Sorry to rub it in

Well yes, that was my expectation based on all the advertising. If the speed estimate is to be believed the reality would be very different and there appears to be nothing that can be done. I'd take the risk, but it appears it's a one way move for 12 months.

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Rosscow said:

Our improvement was even better - 1mbps download and 0.3mbps upload to full blown 76mbps download and 20mbpd upload!

It's fantastic!

Downloaded LOTR Fellowship of the Ring in full HD in about 8 minutes the other day.

THIS IS NOT HELPING

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This is my current ADSL connection. Cabinet is 0.6 miles via road, half that as the crow (or Red Kite round here) flies.

Don't think this is bad at all for ADSL and cabinet doesn't see that far, so surprised the fibre estimates are so poor.

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Alex106 said:

Are you suggesting you could switch back to copper broadband afterwards?

I used to work for BT who would not switch people back to copper once fibre had been activated at their property. Ask the question before you commit, if you do.

In other news:


ADSL broadband from BT. Not complaining! Cabinet is about 250metres away though.

Edited by Alex106 on Friday 19th December 18:56

That's what Zen told me, but I didn't get it in writing.

I'd be very very happy with 20/2 (upper scale of the estimate) but not with 14/0.8 (the lower). Unfortunately, the estimate is too wide a range to help me make an informed decision. Zen only quote the lower of the range, so I would have no comeback if I end up with 0.8 upload.

Imagine being sold a car and being told it might do 60 or 90 but you have a buy it to find out.

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Did some further exploring and it seems the problem is my house is nearer to the exchange than it is to the cabinet!

Cabinet is around 1km by road, exchange is around 750 metres.

Therefore ADSL is probably going to be a better solution until FTTPoD possibly becomes available in the far flung future.

At least with tweaking I now get 13mbps/1.3mbps which isn't too bad for most needs, only really precluding cloud backup.

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Just to add closure to this - three years later and www.dslchecker.bt.com had nudged up the estimation a bit. Zen were still not keen on me upgrading, so I moved to IDNet and took the risk.



I'm really, really happy with the result.