Been having a few issues - Want to avoid engineer callout
It's been around 1.2 - 1.4 Meg consistently for months and months. I have accepted the fact we will never get better speeds on this new build development. This is a consistent problem on many forums i've noticed, It's down to Open Reach, and a story for another time.
However, I think we will get the engineer out, but if we can't get the speeds back up to the 1.4 Meg mark I wouldn't even bother keeping the service. There's definitely no reason it shouldn't be able to get back to where it was.
--Rant alert
(This is what slow speeds do to people who went from having 20 Meg Virgin Media and slowly losing speed every time they move over the years)
It's a massive shame Virgin Media get no funding, as it means they can't afford to cable any new areas, even if they wanted to. If they had agreed to open up their infrastructure to other providers I don't think people would be in my position, as they may have got funding that way. Because they won't it means we just have to rely on Open Reach.
The infrastructure they maintain is open to other suppliers so I assume they get funding from somewhere, it's just a shame the infrastructure is rubbish in some parts.
We should have some sort of rule put in by Government around new build houses and fibre connectivity. No use building loads of brand new houses and then them only being able to get broadband speeds that were available around 8+ years ago 😮
---Rant over
dick:quote
However, I think we will get the engineer out, but if we can't get the speeds back up to the 1.4 Meg mark I wouldn't even bother keeping the service. There's definitely no reason it shouldn't be able to get back to where it was.
--Rant alert
(This is what slow speeds do to people who went from having 20 Meg Virgin Media and slowly losing speed every time they move over the years)It's a massive shame Virgin Media get no funding, as it means they can't afford to cable any new areas, even if they wanted to. If they had agreed to open up their infrastructure to other providers I don't think people would be in my position, as they may have got funding that way. Because they won't it means we just have to rely on Open Reach.
The infrastructure they maintain is open to other suppliers so I assume they get funding from somewhere, it's just a shame the infrastructure is rubbish in some parts.
We should have some sort of rule put in by Government around new build houses and fibre connectivity. No use building loads of brand new houses and then them only being able to get broadband speeds that were available around 8+ years ago 😮
---Rant over
dick:quote
To my surprise it was an Open Reach engineer they sent out today. I thought it was going to be one of the Plus Net guys.
Whilst the Plus Net engineers are as helpful as they can be, any time i've had someone out from the ISP (With previous issues), they've only been able to do pretty much what I had already done (Try different router, different phone etc).
The Open Reach engineer was extremely helpful. He was very willing to explain as he went through things and answered any questions I had. He changed something with the wiring in the External NTE, and he has fitted a different socket inside the house.
We had already disconnected the extensions, but he would have done that too if it wasn't already done.
It now has one of the plates with the filter inside the socket, and he removed some bits from the External NTE and made some adjustments.
The plate they fitted is the one i've heard plenty of people talk about before. He phoned in to report the work was done and said at some point the Sync would drop so the line could be reset, and that it would hopefully re-sync at the speed it was at before (1.4 Meg).
It has synced up again since he left and the Maximum Bandwidth has gone up to around 1.6 Meg, Actual Bandwidth has gone up to around 1.5 meg. Fingers crossed it now keeps synced.
It's 0.1 meg faster than before on download, obviously that's not going to be noticeable, but the fact it is now re-connected after days of being between 245kbps and 500 kbps is great.
There isn't a lot that can be done now (nothing in fact) until we get Fibre available here. Engineer did say that the copper connecting us to the cabinet is new and of really high quality, so if we eventually do get a cabinet upgrade, we should see decent fibre speeds (He's familiar with this development and has been out to many houses here, it's quite notorious now for having poor speeds (250kbps most people had when they moved in, removing ringwire gives around 1.4 meg))).
The service from Open Reach was excellent and the engineer couldn't do any more to help, it's all down to the planning people now, I need to try and campaign for our cabinet to be upgraded
Whilst the Plus Net engineers are as helpful as they can be, any time i've had someone out from the ISP (With previous issues), they've only been able to do pretty much what I had already done (Try different router, different phone etc).
The Open Reach engineer was extremely helpful. He was very willing to explain as he went through things and answered any questions I had. He changed something with the wiring in the External NTE, and he has fitted a different socket inside the house.
We had already disconnected the extensions, but he would have done that too if it wasn't already done.
It now has one of the plates with the filter inside the socket, and he removed some bits from the External NTE and made some adjustments.
The plate they fitted is the one i've heard plenty of people talk about before. He phoned in to report the work was done and said at some point the Sync would drop so the line could be reset, and that it would hopefully re-sync at the speed it was at before (1.4 Meg).
It has synced up again since he left and the Maximum Bandwidth has gone up to around 1.6 Meg, Actual Bandwidth has gone up to around 1.5 meg. Fingers crossed it now keeps synced.
It's 0.1 meg faster than before on download, obviously that's not going to be noticeable, but the fact it is now re-connected after days of being between 245kbps and 500 kbps is great.
There isn't a lot that can be done now (nothing in fact) until we get Fibre available here. Engineer did say that the copper connecting us to the cabinet is new and of really high quality, so if we eventually do get a cabinet upgrade, we should see decent fibre speeds (He's familiar with this development and has been out to many houses here, it's quite notorious now for having poor speeds (250kbps most people had when they moved in, removing ringwire gives around 1.4 meg))).
The service from Open Reach was excellent and the engineer couldn't do any more to help, it's all down to the planning people now, I need to try and campaign for our cabinet to be upgraded
We don't have any field engineers 
Any of the engineers that we book for customer visits will always be an Openreach one.
Any of the engineers that we book for customer visits will always be an Openreach one.
Quote To my surprise it was an Open Reach engineer they sent out today. I thought it was going to be one of the Plus Net guys.
Hi again,
We don't actually have our own engineers that visit customers. As we re-sell BT Wholesale broadband services that would mean that BT Openreach engineers would attend at visits like this as BTO are responsible for what's regarded as the "local network"
I'm glad to hear the visit did lead to some improvement on your connection speeds.
As for fibre I hope that comes your way soon, I can empathise as I'm still waiting for my exchange to be enabled too
It's frustrating isn't it, but I guess everybody wants theirs done yesterday, and not everybody can be first. I just hope it happens at all here.
If only it went on the basis of upgrading people are very low speeds (Less than 3 Meg) first, then I would be sorted
Our exchange is Manchester East and it's been enabled for quite a long time now, it's just our cabinet we are waiting on. The recent announcement of Open Reach enabling numerous Exchanges soon makes me worry that they are done with our area now and won't return to do the cabinets for years.
When you see areas that already get between 20 - 40 Meg, and then see them looking at upgrading those areas for 80+ it makes you lose faith that anybody is paying any attention to the people with some of the lowest speeds for a non-rual area.
The broadband we get is actually only around 3x as fast as the first ever broadband I had, and that was back years ago when NTL first rolled out their broadband service. Must be getting on about 8 years or so since then
If only it went on the basis of upgrading people are very low speeds (Less than 3 Meg) first, then I would be sorted
Our exchange is Manchester East and it's been enabled for quite a long time now, it's just our cabinet we are waiting on. The recent announcement of Open Reach enabling numerous Exchanges soon makes me worry that they are done with our area now and won't return to do the cabinets for years.
When you see areas that already get between 20 - 40 Meg, and then see them looking at upgrading those areas for 80+ it makes you lose faith that anybody is paying any attention to the people with some of the lowest speeds for a non-rual area.
The broadband we get is actually only around 3x as fast as the first ever broadband I had, and that was back years ago when NTL first rolled out their broadband service. Must be getting on about 8 years or so since then