Broadband speed halving is 'acceptable' apparently?
Discussion
I was having major broadband issues at the beginning of the year (broadband slow and cutting out, crackly phone line) culminating in a BT engineer coming out twice. Second time he diagnosed an issue where the wire went underground (having left the house and gone across to and then down a pole opposite). He re-routed it via a spare wire going to where-ever they go, and the problem was solved.
Since then I've had reliable broadband and totally clear phone line.
It's still totally clear, but the broadband speed has recently dropped from the 5Mbps I was getting to anything between 1.5 and 2.5.
I've just had an hour on the phone with EE (my provider) trying different things but the upshot is that they can't get it back up to the speed it was at, and the BT minimum speed promised is 1.2Mbps, so they say there is nothing they can do as it is classed as 'acceptable', even though it's often half of what it was.
They can switch me to fibre of course, for an extra £20/month...
My contract with them runs out next month so I could change, but if all the providers rely on the BT wiring, and BT say it's within tolerance, presumably that won't change anything.
How a speed that won't even run a Facebook video can be regarded as acceptable is a mystery to me, but there it is. More to the point, how a speed half or what it was earlier this year is acceptable is also a mystery. A bit like having a car that would do 100mph and now tops out at 50mph and being told by the garage that's acceptable. It clearly isn't because it's clearly capable of far more.
So, short of biting the bullet and coughing up for Fibre, is there anything else I can do?
Since then I've had reliable broadband and totally clear phone line.
It's still totally clear, but the broadband speed has recently dropped from the 5Mbps I was getting to anything between 1.5 and 2.5.
I've just had an hour on the phone with EE (my provider) trying different things but the upshot is that they can't get it back up to the speed it was at, and the BT minimum speed promised is 1.2Mbps, so they say there is nothing they can do as it is classed as 'acceptable', even though it's often half of what it was.
They can switch me to fibre of course, for an extra £20/month...
My contract with them runs out next month so I could change, but if all the providers rely on the BT wiring, and BT say it's within tolerance, presumably that won't change anything.
How a speed that won't even run a Facebook video can be regarded as acceptable is a mystery to me, but there it is. More to the point, how a speed half or what it was earlier this year is acceptable is also a mystery. A bit like having a car that would do 100mph and now tops out at 50mph and being told by the garage that's acceptable. It clearly isn't because it's clearly capable of far more.
So, short of biting the bullet and coughing up for Fibre, is there anything else I can do?
hornetrider said:
BT are doing a fibre offer at the moment. Get on the blower and negotiate.
Thanks. Just had a look. Even with the current 'deal' it's still £40/month plus £50 connection. I know that's chump change to our powerfully built brethren, but over three years that's £1,500! Hell of a lot more than I'm paying now...zedx19 said:
Minimum promised speed = 1.2Mbps, you're getting 1.5MBps to 2.5Mbps. What's the issue? Previous speed is irrelevant, you signed up with a quoted minimum speed of 1.2Mbps.
The problem is that I know it can, and has, run much faster. So wondering if there's any helpful advice with suggestions of I can do to help boost it back up to where it was, in the light of the provider being unable to help.page3 said:
Speed estimates are worse than useless, especially when guaranteed minimum isn't within the estimate.
On fibre my estimate is between 9 and 27. That's such a wide range it is if no use whatsoever.
It is a bit of a get out of jail free pass isn't it? Bit like selling a car that should do 90-100mph flat out but with a caveat that anything over 50mph is deemed as acceptable. On fibre my estimate is between 9 and 27. That's such a wide range it is if no use whatsoever.
jamoor said:
Ari said:
The problem is that I know it can, and has, run much faster. So wondering if there's any helpful advice with suggestions of I can do to help boost it back up to where it was, in the light of the provider being unable to help.
By rerouting the line because the old one was faulty, they have made the line longer and this has had an impact of your broadband speed.It ran faster due to the line being shorter. They didn't repair your old line probbably due to the cost involved.
poing said:
Ari said:
Ha. Took the filter out, but of course the wire from the router has a smaller plug that goes into the special slot for it on the filter, and won't plug directly into the standard sized phone socket. Bugger.
Depending on the phone socket you have you can unscrew the face plate and plug directly into the test socket. You'll still need a filter or adapter to plug the modem cable into that though. See what difference that makes. 
I removed the bell wire and it helped mine by about 50%, it's fine as long as you don't have an old fashioned phone, done easily http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm
jmorgan said:
Crumbs. Are you sure? Is that the speed they say the line should be?
On Broadband (which was reliably getting 5mbps a few months ago), after it slipped down to about 2Mpbs and after EE were unable to resolve it, they announced that BT guarantee a minimum of 1.2Mbps. Thus there was nothing they could do, I'd have to upgrade to fibre if I wanted more speed.This is the result of that. I don't know what the minimum fibre speed guarantee is - knowing BT it'll be 1.5 or something I expect.
Pathetic, isn't it..?
WinstonWolf said:
Ari said:
WinstonWolf said:
It won't be that, I'm guessing you're about 1200m from the cab OP?
I'm not sure what that means, sorry. 
Mattt said:
Then something is massively wrong or that's not your cabinet.
I suspect that there's something massively wrong given that I was getting 5Mbps and it dropped in a matter of weeks to less than half that. The problem is that since it was still above the quoted minimum guaranteed, it seemed the only option open to me to actually get a vaguely reasonable Internet was to upgrade to fibre for a fairly crappy fibre speed which equates to an pretty average broadband speed.
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