Trouble with my Broadband
Trouble with my Broadband - also having trouble posting a comment here.
It’s good to talk…
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Sorry, people, I need to let off steam, and check whether I am being unreasonable.
About 2 or 3 weeks ago my phone line, and hence broadband, kept cutting out.
I phoned BT, and they were very good and arranged for Openreach to come and have a look.
That took nearly a week, but - you know - they are busy people.
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It took them two days to sort out the phone line from the first telegraph pole at the top of
the track to the bottom one, and declared it up to spec.Before this problem, I had a guaranteed speed of 1 Mbps.
I was actually getting (according to various broadband speed checkers) between 1.5 to 2.5 Mbps.
I am sure that many of you are jealous of me getting such incredible speeds. However, after the line had been fixed,
I was getting about 0.5 Mbps. I tried all sorts of things - rebooting the hub etc., but nothing helped.
I phoned BT
on 150, sat through 45 minutes of interminable horrible hold music, and after they found that they could not measure
the speed from their end, they organised one of their engineers to come out. One duly arrived, looked at the master
socket, did some tests and said everything was working fine in the house, and went away saying wait 72 hours for
the router/hub to sort itself out. I duly waited and still I was getting between 0.03 Mbps and 0.95 Mbps,
with a ping never less than 53 ms, and as much as 2458 ms. I phoned 150 - that well known music-streaming line,
and waited the usual 45 minutes or so. Eventually I talked to a guide who couldn’t get a reading of the speed of
my broadband, got me to run their speed checker, and it was about 600 Kbps. She said that I had an awful lot of
devices on the hub (I had no idea there was a limit).
So I unplugged the hub from my switch, and plugged my PC directly into the back. Speed was between 0.8 and 0.9 Mbps.
She eventually got a reading from her end, and said it read 1.1 Mbps, so was in spec., and tough luck, that’s
what I was getting. I pointed out that I previously got about 2.5 Mbps, and I was lucky, but now I didn’t but
all was fine. I gave up at that, then had another go a day or two later. Same story - they get a reading of
1.1 Mbps, so all is well. I tried a few more times (I think I could tell you all the ‘songs’ on their hold music)
and each time the measured it, it came out at exactly 1.1 Mbps. I still get between 0.3 and 0.95 Mbps.OK, I thought,
how about fibre? I asked them about that, and they said Nope, no fibre for you. I told them that 3 Openreach
engineers said there was fibre available at the top of the track, and a coil of fibre on the last pole.
No, not available. Having looked at the Openreach web site, I see that it says that fibre to the cabinet
is available, full fibre sometime in the next year. According to the BT guide, they can see that, but it is wrong,
there is some other web page to which I do not have access that says it is not available (I suspect they are looking
at what is currently in place, which says it is copper).
I don’t know where to go from here. It is so frustrating. My neighbours have full fibre, I am stuck on copper,
and BT are simply not interested in either providing fibre (they will have to at some point, of course) or fixing
the current problem.
Any suggetions on where I go from here? The broadband service currently is really poor.
I had better in the days when I used ISDN.
A few years I had problem and you know those letters you get through signed from the head honcho at BT - well I worked out what his email address was from other BT emails.
Whacked off an email and hit the bullseyes. Boy did that ruffle a few feathers and get a response tout suite.
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Hmm - I have never had one of those letters. I can only hope.
I have filled in a complaint, for all the use I expect that to be.
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Starlink or 5G now, EE satellite will be available soon.
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Move to the same provider as your fibre-based neighbour, or……. StarLink?
ATB, J
Ask your neighbour for his WiFi password?
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Seriously, 1 Mbps?
Do you have a 4G signal? If you do and it’s half decent I’d use a 4G router and ditch BT until they figure out they can get fibre to you.
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5G is definitely out - we hardly get any signal even with 4G. I had a booster installed, that picks up the weak signal, and emits a stronger signal, but when I tried using it for broadband it was poor.
The losses on the cable from there to here would be a bit extreme.
Yep, 1 Mbps. 4G and 5G not really practical here - without a signal booster I get nothing. With it, broadband is still pretty slow.