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Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

robaltech
Dabbler
Posts: 10
Registered: ‎07-03-2015

Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

I've had Plusnet unlimited fibre since July 2013. When it was installed I had a throughput down of 75Mbps (speedtest.net) and an upload of about 18Mbps. Over the past year the download has dropped a little, however since November 14 we've experienced lots of little local power outages which has caused the BT vdsl modem (ECI) to reset. Ever time it has reset it's dropped a little in speed, and is now down to 59Mbps throughput. This is a drop in speed of over 20% from the beginning.
I've installed a UPS yesterday for the modem, to ensure that when the power drops, the modem remains connected.
So I decided yesterday to call up Plusnet (spoke to Adam) to ask them to get the line reset. He gave me a cock and bull story about BT capping the lines because they are oversubscribing the cabinet, I'm pretty sure that it's the IP profile has dropped due to the frequent retrains and it just needs a reset. Can't budge them so I ask for my MAC code.
I have been with them nigh on 2 years and had no intention of leaving prior to this as the service has on the whole been good; I can't believe that rather than get this sorted they'd prefer to lose a customer!
Is there any hope of getting this resolved - I would even consider a contribution to the cost of an Openreach engineer visiting the cab to get it reset? Am I correct in thinking that the profile has dropped as a result of the frequent retrains?
Thanks.
47 REPLIES 47
picbits
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

It is more likely that the crosstalk has increased as other subscribers have taken up the service - a common problem and not a lot anyone can do about it (unfortunately).
Some interesting reading here :
http://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/2014/vectoring-crosstalk-crisis
My speed has fluctuated between 73Mb when I was first connected down to around 50Mb at its worst. It is currently sitting at around 60Mb
*Edit - bung your phone number in here and see what the speed estimates for your line are : https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/
Oldjim
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

It is likely that it has dropped due to cross talk as more users come on line and fill up the cabinet (filling up isn't the factor - it is the number of connections running down the wires from it)
What does this say about expected speeds http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.TelephoneNumberOutput
As a further check you could try the address checker putting in a neighbours address and see if there is any difference
picbits
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Registered: ‎18-01-2013

Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

It appears we were on the same wavelength Jim !
MatthewWheeler
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

Sorry to hear that your speeds have dropped.
We aren't able to request resets on fibre lines as this can only be done by a Openreach engineer after fixing a issue with the line. There's no way we can send a engineer out just to reset a line.
Your issue isn't caused by DLM either as your current profile is "40M-80M Downstream, Error Protection Off - 10M-20M Upstream, Error Protection Off". It's going to be hard to convince our suppliers to investigate as the drop isn't severe enough and could be due to crosstalk as others have mentioned.
If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Matthew Wheeler
 Plusnet Help Team
dnpark38
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

"We aren't able to request resets on fibre lines as this can only be done by a Openreach engineer after fixing a issue with the line. There's no way we can send a engineer out just to reset a line."
Sky send OR out to do just that, when BT DLM does a nasty and sync. speed drops below BT estimate.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/1476198475230638155-mini.png
AndyH
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Registered: ‎27-10-2012

Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

Even OR engineers can only reset lines in certain circumstances, i.e. they cannot reset a line whenever they want.
DLM works for a reason - to provide stability. If DLM intervenes, there will be an underlying cause.
deathtrap
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Registered: ‎23-04-2013

Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

DLM acts under the guise of stability IMO It often over reacts in reality It's always been there to save spending on fully trained tech support staff , the other problem is that ity takes too long before it restores the connection to the previous state where you have a line that suffers the occasional bursts of errors ect, that where in no way affecting performance or stability in lots of cases  DLM imo is the enemy it always has been, there needs to be an off switch
thunderer
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

Where's a like button when you want one?  Smiley
I've had the same experience, so has a next door neighbour. The DLM needs a good seeing to around here. I got another disconnection the other night at 21.02 for about 7 minutes, this has been going on for sometime now and is becoming an unfunny joke.
I've even gone to the expense of changing my Draytek router for a Billion 8800AXL and the Billion now reports that the Attainable Rate (Kbps) Dn = 80421 & Up = 24168, OK I know I can't get that but I should still be able to get within 20% of it which still make it: (D/L) = ~ 64336.8 Kbps & Up ~ 19334 Kbps.
Estragon
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

(Edit - When I posted this I didn't notice the intervening other problems. This post relates to the OP's).
The thing is the likelihood is that there has been DLM intervention because of the disconnections caused by frequent power cuts. Nothing to do with crosstalk.
If it is just that interleaving has gone on it will auto-correct. If it is banding, which Plusnet should be able to check, then as I understand it an engineer is needed to request its removal.
From his thinkbroadband thread the sync looks very close to 75,500kbps. If this table is up-to-date then he should be OK in a few weeks.
Terranova667
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

I don't believe that DLM works in the favour of anyone other than BTO the stability angle is just a convenient excuse  Not once has a BT engineer found a problem with my line when sent to investigate yet DLM has banded it and at times put interleaving on it, i'm still banded for some insane reason yet nothing is showing in GEA tests or Engineer visits why that is, and all because the almighty DLM THINKS there could be a issue not that there IS a issue those are completely different things it's like the minority report acting on nothing but probability with nothing in reality to back it up.
it's been over three months now since my last drop due to whole profile change issue which i wont go back over again, has DLM done anything to improve my speed or remove the banding nope not done a thing yet it was happy to drop it by 6Mb and band the line in a matter of seconds, Its a system i could do without and the fact that DLM can't be overruled is a joke no system in the world is totally 100% error free yet BTO and it's supporters deem DLM to be just that,  to me that's just insanity.  
 
MatthewWheeler
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

@thunderer
There's a REIN case raised on your fault. The interference will have caused DLM to intervene and its put Interleaving on quite a high level.
Once the REIN issue has been resolved and the errors drop down DLM probably take off interleaving or at least set it to a low level.
If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Matthew Wheeler
 Plusnet Help Team
Terranova667
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

@matt any reason why my line is still banded and any chance i can get it removed ? 
Starmans
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

Only an OR engineer can request DLM profile is reset and generally only after a fault is found and rectified.
NedLudd
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Re: Plusnet Speed Drop - and fobbing me off

Just to add another angle for the benefit of the OP.
I used to use speedtest.net a lot to monitor my speed until recently.
It was reporting my downspeed at c.73 megs for months. Then I noticed an apparent drop in speed to c.60 megs!
But, download speeds seemed to be unaffected?
Then, my SamKnows report card came in showing that my max was still in the high 70's and my min was in the very high sixties!
So, I put the lower speedtest.net results down to the fact that the server being used was affected and not my end!
Geoff,
York.