Trying to figure out how to solve my broadband issues. When FTTC was first installed in my village, I was the first to sign up for a 78Mbs line. However, when Openreach commissioned my new installation, I found I could only get 32Mbs. The engineer did some tests and swapped my line to a different DLM in the cab, but no improvements. I resigned myself to a lower quality of connection than I'd anticipated, and downgraded my broadband contract.
Over the next several months, the line speed gradually dropped. Initially I figured this was due to more of my neighbours signing up for FTTC, but soon my speed dropped below the minimum service level guarantee. And so started several years of regular visits from ISP and Openreach engineers, roughly every 6 months, all following the same pattern: ISP engineer eliminates any possibility of faulty in-house wiring in 5 minutes, calls out Openreach engineer, who does all sorts of line quality tests, ends up resetting/swapping the DLM, which restores speed up to 32Mbs for a few days, followed by gradual decrease and retrains.
After the last Openreach engineer's visit in November, the speed dropped to 26Mbs by Christmas, but I couldn't be bothered to go through the whole palaver again, so just kept monitoring it. Then, last week, multiple disconnects, retrains, 12Mbps when it worked, lousy SNR margin, almost totally unusable. Back to Plusnet, whose contractor came out and replaced the master socket (probably the 4th time) and said I'd need Openreach. Plusnet CS were, as usual, really friendly, sympathetic and helpful, and I only had to wait overnight for an Openreach engineer.
After regaling him with my tale of woe, to which he listened politely, he informed me that the FTTC cab to which I'm connected has been subject to regular flooding, and that they're currently in the process of waterproofing it. His tests also showed that there is at least one fault with my copper/aluminium connection to the cab, and it's quite likely that water has got into the cable and corroded it. It's also possible that the guys working on the cab may have disturbed some of the connections - he mentioned he'd been working at a house across the road just yesterday. He also mentioned that my neighbours are all able to get up to 65Mbs. He's returning tomorrow to complete his testing on the line and to reset the DLM.
I expect that I'm going to keep going round this cycle until I can get FTTP (not likely, our exchange is not even on Openreach's provisional list) or I can persuade Plusnet to tell Openreach to replace my connection. What are the odds of that?
