Upgrade to fibre disaster

[#1]

Hi all, on the 9 Jan we had the upgrade to fibre. Sadly we were then without any broadband for a week. The problem seems to be related to the line length to the cabinet since we are in a rural area. Previously we were marginal on ADSL with a best download speed of about 1.6 Mbps with the exchange about 4.6km away. However the fibre cabinet is 2.9km away and the postcode checker etc says we are fibre enabled. The estimate on fibre from PN was 4-9Mbps download, while not as good some people get it was clearly looked like an improvement for us and worth a go. However after an openreach engineer visit although, one router (out of 3) PN hub1 will now connect, the download speed is hopeless at 0.17Mbps and upload is 1.2 Mbps. The BT BRAS profile checker shows 0.18 Mbps and 2Mbps respectively. Is the profile incorrectly set limiting the download speed as the upload looks ok and better than we ever had before.

I have a Billion VDSL router that I would like to use since it has more line stats data available but so far this can't connect at all so I am a bit in the dark. 

What I am disappointed about is the Openreach eng only visited the property and no attempt was made to improve the speed he just swapped in 3 routers and was on the phone to base most of the time, no visit to cabinet etc. Sadly I was at work so my partner had to host him. His gear synched at 2Mbps so the conclusion was that we are wasting our time with fibre and should go back to ADSL and that was it. He even said since we don't have mains gas and water supply why should we expect to have broadband! So I don't think we were given a fair crack at sorting this, albeit within the constraints of distance to the cabinet.

Based on what is oulined above does anyone think we could expect better performance or is to revert to ADSL the only option.

thanks

David

[#2]

Sorry to hear what's happened.

The only thing we could do really is book another engineer to see if anything further can be done but at 2.9km it's unlikely I'm afraid.

[#3]

Matthew,

Thanks for the reply, I had a long chat with a techie at PN yesterday and it seems our only option is to revert to the ADSL connection, albeit a slow but stable connection. The VDSL dropped yesterday and still not connected  - so have to drive 4 miles up the road to get a 4g signal on the phone to send this!

I think the big problem is that the estimates are too optimistic which leads you to think its worth a go, the reality is everyone is now saying after the event this would never have worked. Also it seems bizarrre to me that a switch over can happen and you get (or not!!) to say that you are all up and running on fibre, but it is not checked and didn't connect on day 1, so you then have to wait an engineer visit 5 working days to say it wont work! then another 5 working days to revert back. So basically 2 weeks with no internet.

David