I've been with Plusnet since Feb 2010. My broadband speed since the beginning has been poor but tolerable. There were plenty of times when I lost internet access, or speed became sluggish, but it was never so bad I made a complaint. I assumed it was normal for my locatoion. Then, in late April 2011, the speed issue, coupled to more and more frequent connection dropping, became so irritating I complained. A fault was found in my line, a BT engineer repaired it, and for the next month and a half I enjoyed constant reliability and amazing (for me) speeds.
A week ago, this suddenly changed. My speed dropped to snail pace, and my connection seldom lasted more than a few hours. I complained, a fault was found in the line, and a BT engineer claimed to have repaired it. Unfortunately, the slow speeds and regular loss of connection are still there - actually worse now than before I raised the issue, as the down periods seem to last longer.
Prior to 20 June, a BT speed test would give me a DSL Connection Rate of 1696 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
My IP Profile would be somewhere above 1000 Kbps.
Since 20 June, my DSL Connection Rate has fluctuated between 160 and 1120 (DOWNSTREAM) and has stayed at a constant 448 Kbps (UPSTREAM)
My IP profile has stayed at a constant 135.
BT keep telling me they've 'fixed' the problem, although nothing has changed, at least not for the better.
Plusnet seem equally clueless as to what is wrong. They are now saying I should have 'interleaving' on. Since my line worked fine for several weeks without interleaving being on, I don't see this as a lasting solution, if it helps at all.
Talk talk have lulu at my exchange. Does anyone know if this would give me a better chance than currently to have a reliable, reasonably speedy connection?
Also, do I have any rights here? I mean, for more than a year I paid for a broadband 'service' and often had to pay extra for going above my usage - but am I obliged to pay for all the times the connection has been so slow as to be useless, or when there has been no connection at all?
If anyone from Plusnet is reading this, maybe they could confirm what a copper line test now reveals. I don't seem to be able to persuade BT to do another one. For their information, all my BT speed tests have been done using my normal router connection some distance from the master socket, and also with the router plugged directly into the master socket, and the results are identical.
They might note that on the Plusnet site users are advised to run the BT availability checker to see what line speed should be available for them. I did this and got:
“Our test indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL Max broadband line speed of 3Mbps; typically the line speed would range between 2Mbps and 5.5Mbps.”
Thanks,
