Reduced FTTC Speed

[#1]

I once had a crackly copper connection in the street cabinet that understandably caused my FTTC brodband speed to slow down.
Once the fault was fixed, the line speed never recovered and I suspected it was being capped by Plusnet for some reason. OpenReach came round, checked it with a meter and said the line was working at full speed and it was indeed being capped by Plusnet.

After a lot of comms, I finally spoke to a really helpful and nice Plusnet engineer who said he would reset it and within minutes it was perfect.

I have just had a line fault where OR accidentally disconnected me, but that is back and is of high quality, but the broadband speed is yet to return to it's original speed.

Rather than wait weeks like before, I wondered if anyone here is able to 'reset' my line or point me in the direction of someone who can?

[#2]

@SmiffyC I have done the reset now for you. Please let me know how it goes

[#3]

Thanks for your response.

It is helpful to know Plusnet's end is now reset - thanks. Initial tests show the line speed to still be a bit slow.

My HG612 Modem displayed the following consistent stats for a long period of time:
UP: 20000
DOWN: 78000
Oookla speed showed 18Mbps UP and 74Mbps Down

Post line fault and reapir, the modem shows
UP:20000
DOWN: 66900
with an Ookla of 60Mbps

So I'm down by about 14 or so Mbps.

It has been 3 days since the line fault was cleared, do you know if the cabinet should have recovered the speed to the original speed by now? I believe it takes a while but may be wrong. Can the hardware be reset in a similar way by OR or does it just have to be left to recover by itself?

Thanks again for your help.

Not sure if it will help but I have attached a screenshot of my cabinet stats from OR.

[#4]

It is helpful to know Plusnet's end is now reset - thanks. Initial tests show the line speed to still be a bit slow.

@SmiffyC it isnt Plusnet's end that's reset. I would assume that @willcutforth has requested a DLM reset from Openreach. This will take up to 24hrs to be processed. Only after that (and possibly a router restart) will your speed improve.

[#5]

Oh I see, thanks very much for the clarification. All very helpful.

[#6]

Latest update: My line speed has not recovered. I have reset my modem a couple of times over the last few days but everything is still about 13Mbps slower than it was. I'm not entirely sure the line was in fact reset by OR as my modem did not show any disruption to the DSL uptime other than each time I reset it and I assume if the link was reset by OR, the uptime would also reset (just an assumption).

I called to report this to Plusnet and was told that my line is above the minimum guaranteed speed. They were 'trying something else' but I never got the call back as promised.

I feared this would happen, as it is exactly what happened a few years ago. 
My line eventually became as good as it could get. I used to be a telephone engineer and the OR guy invited me to see where he had patched me on to brand new cables in the street cabinet ( as the Krone strips were virtually falling apart) and I had a new span from the pole to the house and new cable to the NTE. Once the entire run was renewed, the line as heard on a high-impedence test phone was as clear as I'd ever heard. No buzz, no crackle, no noise. This enabled it to eventually get to about 74Mbs after I pushed and pushed to get the low speed that it had become, 'reset'.

It is very disappointing that an unrelated fault can lower the speed but that it is not an automatic or or easy process to get it back to where I know it should be.

I'll call back and raise the issue with them again.

[#7]

Just for closure to this issue, I thought I would send an update.

Originally OR accidentally disconnected my line and got it back working again soon after. My otherwise excellent and very consistent FTTC speed of 74Mbps had dropped by 10% once it returned.

A few months later and it has never recovered. 

OK a few Mbps is no bother really but it is a bit frustrating. Twice this has happened to me now and providing the speed is above the minimum guaranteed rate, you are left in 'no man's land' where it is not enough to be a fault and warrant a fix yet you know it could be better. Just something we have to accept with the variables involved in FTTC provision I suppose.

On a different subject, I ordered a HUB 2 router (which I was never offered originally) to use purely in 'bridge' mode to replace my Openreach Huawei modem. That was consistently slower than the Huawei and I often noticed my ASUS router showing a brief red loss of WAN indication. That never happened with the Huawei. So I went back to that.

So with FTTP coming soon hopefully, that is the end of this moan 😆