rubbish

[#1]

Good to see an explanation Chris - not such good news for the OP but confirms it's not an ISP issue.

[#2]

Quote from: thomasoes

Maybe you should mind your own business you have no right to put links on this site to forums from talktalk so go and play with your toys

Actually I have every right to post the links.
The TalkTalk forum is public forum, the Plusnet forum is a public forum and all information posted is freely available to the public.
The post above is also directly relevant to your problem (which you gave very little information on).
My toys are being played with and still firmly in my pram

[#3]

Quote from: chrispurvey

It's due to the length of aluminum line to the property, we're currently checking over things to see if there's anything that can be done.

Well, now we have an explanation TG!

[#4]

Anyway - back on topic and some suggestions from a totally unbiased IT support engineer of 20+ years
Your options as I see it are :
1. Work with Plusnet and squeeze every last byte out of your line and try and get it as stable as possible. Unfortunately if you have aluminium cable and BT Openreach have said there is nothing more they can do then you may not get too far with this.
2. Move back to TalkTalk or BT - again, if you have line issues or internal wiring issues then you won't be much better off.
3. Wait until FTTC or FTTP is available to your property - this will cut out a lot of the line length but with aluminium cabling to your property you may still have issues.
4. See if there is some kind of radio broadband available in your area - something like this : http://www.w3z.co.uk/ - a friend has just had to take this up because of similar issues to you and he's quite happy with it although it's a lot more money.
5. Move to a provider like AAISP ( http://www.aa.net.uk/ ) or similar who are pretty expensive but are highly recommended for persistent line issues. Obviously speak to them first to make sure you can get out of contract if they can't fix your issue.
6. Use a mobile broadband provider like 4GEE - http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-broadband/ - I've not had any experience of this but it does seem a potential solution to customers in slow or problem areas. Obviously watch any extra charges for going over allocated bandwidth etc.

[#5]

What a shame about the aluminium - that's a real pain! I'd be annoyed in your position too. Work with the DCT guys here, they're brill and they'll help you get the absolute best from the line.

Quote from: picbits

6. Use a mobile broadband provider like 4GEE - http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-broadband/ - I've not had any experience of this but it does seem a potential solution to customers in slow or problem areas. Obviously watch any extra charges for going over allocated bandwidth etc.

4GEE near me is faster than fixed line broadband - I can easily get 25Mbps in BOTH directions.
It's £15.99/month with no contract for 5GB if you can get a modem from eBay, and there are no charges for going over - it will just stop at 5GB.

[#6]

Quote from: townman

Chris, Is that down to the line being very, very long or just very, very poor? If it is the latter then someone needs to twist BTw's arm to fix the line - accepting the best of a bad bit of infrastructure is not acceptable.  BT are making good money - it needs to be spent on improving marginal areas. Who do we the paying customers need to complain to / champion to have BT improve their infrastructure?  This users problems ( which he perceives to be a PN issue) is a good illustration of how all ISPs are hampered by the poor state of some BT lines. Cheers, Kevin

this is exactly the problem.poor quality internal wiring can kill the speed also.try taking a connection from the master socket test point and see if that improves things,if it does you know its the internal wiring.if thats the case the best advice is ideally to replace it with better quality cable.
cheap extensions are terrible at killing speed,mine went down to .5 of a meg when this was connected i pulled the whole lot out fitted a nte ads faceplate to avoid those individual filters installed the router downstairs and used network cable around the outside to the pc.
you can only do what you can to improve things,i am only getting around 3meg but on skys router previously it was touching 4,for £5.99 a month its fast enough for me.

[#7]

Quote from: chrispurvey

It's due to the length of aluminum line to the property, we're currently checking over things to see if there's anything that can be done.

I have been getting 1 mbt with you and now its down to 700kbts with talktalk after all the trouble I had they did manage to keep me on 1mbt

[#8]

For goodness sake thomasoes, stop looking backwards and start looking forwards!

[#9]

Just to clear up any misunderstanding, it's not because it's aluminium cable per se, it's because it's degraded significantly. Once aluminium cable has defects that allow moisture to affect it, the BB performance goes down the drain. Copper cable can degrade as well, but not normally as severely because it's construction is different. Generally the older aluminium cable was a much cheaper standard of construction.
What gets up my nose is the fact that Openreach persistently send out engineers to continue to bodge up a multitude of subscribers lines which at the end of the day will work out more expensive than replacing the cable in the first place 

[#10]

Quote from: picbits

Anyway - back on topic and some suggestions from a totally unbiased IT support engineer of 20+ years Your options as I see it are : .....

8, Move house

[#11]

Quote

Just to clear up any misunderstanding, it's not because it's aluminium cable per se, it's because it's degraded significantly. Once aluminium cable has defects that allow moisture to affect it, the BB performance goes down the drain. Copper cable can degrade as well, but not normally as severely because it's construction is different. Generally the older aluminium cable was a much cheaper standard of construction.

Having some aluminium on my line (between cabinet and house) I know well what problems you can get. A frequent issue for me is the crimps used are not water proof and moister enters it causing an electrolytic effect between the copper and aluminium which results in a high resistance connection. This results in crackling on the line and dropping BB connections.

Quote

What gets up my nose is the fact that Openreach persistently send out engineers to continue to bodge up a multitude of subscribers lines which at the end of the day will work out more expensive than replacing the cable in the first place

I agree with this, I've had around  5 calls over 10 years for line issues.
Dan

[#12]

Quote from: Anotherone

Openreach persistently send out engineers to continue to bodge up a multitude of subscribers lines which at the end of the day will work out more expensive than replacing the cable in the first place

Anotherone,
Thank you for the 'key' to unlock the deadlock with my line problem.  Will play this back to my problem manager.
Kevin

[#13]

Quote from: Grumpy

Having some aluminium on my line (between cabinet and house) I know well what problems you can get. A frequent issue for me is the crimps used are not water proof and moister enters it causing an electrolytic effect between the copper and aluminium which results in a high resistance connection. This results in crackling on the line and dropping BB connections.

Yes that is another problem altogether and is again related to bodged jobs. Old crimps (whether on copper or aluminium) were not waterproof - modern ones are. There are also special crimps for aluminium to avoid not only the electrolytic effect, but to minimise the risk of fracturing the wire - a common problem which I have experienced on my own line, when they replaced a section of aluminium riser and fracture several wires at the top of the pole. One of my neighbours was off for 3 or 4 days as a consequence.
A decent engineer investigating a noisy line involving aluminium cable would have replaced as many of the accessible old crimps as possible, unfortunately a lot don't