Very slow broadband

[#1]

Hi there,

After some advice if anyone can help.

Just reached the end of a 12-month (paid upfront) line rental and standard broadband contract with Plusnet, so now paying monthly.

The kids have always laughed at how rubbish the broadband speed is and the signal often seems to drop out (web pages won’t load on our phones, Netflix freezes etc). Broadband speed test shows download speed of 4.2mb/s. Is this acceptable on standard broadband? Or rubbish? Could there be a fault if it keeps dropping out?

I’m a very un-tech savvy person, but am trying to figure out what’s going on!

Thanks in advance for any assistance

[#2]

@Lahratyndall4  Welcome to the forum 

How fast your connection can be is dependent on how far you are from your telephone exchange. If you put your phone number in here it will tell you what speed you should get and any other services such as fibre that are available  https://my.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s_cid=ws_furls_adslchecker

When looking at drop outs it depends on whether the line is dropping, which will be indicated by lights changing on your Hub or wireless problems. Which are you experiencing?

[#3]

Hi @Lahratyndall4,

I'm sorry that you're experiencing problems with the performance of your broadband. I've had a look into this and the estimated speed for your line is 3.5-7.5mbps. Having tested your line today, it's currently syncing at 8.2mbps - so slightly above the estimates, but there are a number of underlying errors on the line that will be affecting the performance of the connection on your side.

The signal to noise ratio (SNR) is too low for the length of your line. The SNR helps the line to remain stable and unaffected by noise or interference on the line. The higher the setting for SNR, the higher the level of noise can be tolerated. The SNR for your line was set too low for the amount of interference we'd expect to see, so by increasing this we expect the connection to now stabilise and for the information to be received without interference. Please keep an eye on your connection over the next few days to see if it settles down.

Fibre broadband is also available in your area with an estimated speed of up to 67-80mbps, if you require something faster than the 3.5-7.5mbps connection.