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Uploading in 3..2..done! - I'm completely underwhelmed...

phil_o99
Dabbler
Posts: 21
Registered: ‎04-08-2007

Uploading in 3..2..done! - I'm completely underwhelmed...

Running several security cams at home and also monitoring my 95 yo Mum's place in Manchester, I appreciate every little bit of bandwidth I can coax out of my FTTC connection.

 

Prior to the recent upgrade I could just about achieve 15 Mbps down and 0.98 Mbps up.

 

After the upgrade and a router reboot I get 16 ish down and 1.01 up. (From practical experience the speeds will deteriorate to 15/0.98 Mbps over the next few days as the link stabilises)

 

I'm in an urban area and I'm 450 metres from the cab.

 

Conclusion - lousy cabling, but can't report faulty as I'm (just) above the threshold.

 

Does anybody know a good wireless broadband provider in South Cheshire?

 

Phil

6 REPLIES 6
MisterW
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 14,573
Thanks: 5,408
Fixes: 385
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Uploading in 3..2..done! - I'm completely underwhelmed...

Prior to the recent upgrade I could just about achieve 15 Mbps down and 0.98 Mbps up.

After the upgrade and a router reboot I get 16 ish down and 1.01 up

Yup!, unless you were getting the maximum upload of 2Mb prior to the upgrade, then you won't see any improvement I'm afraid. I'm not sure that PN have communicated that very well.

Your speeds do seem very low for 450m from the Cab. As you say it's either bad(aluminium?) cabling , or you're not actually connected to the nearest cab.

Again, if what you are getting is within the estimates there's not a lot that PN or BT will do.

Didn't know there was any wireless providers in SC (and I live there!) but these people seem to https://www.internet-central.net/products-and-services/ic-connect/ic-air-wireless-broadband/ . There's some coverage info in here https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/03/internet-central-brings-40mbps-wireless-broadband-to-c...

 

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

phil_o99
Dabbler
Posts: 21
Registered: ‎04-08-2007

Re: Uploading in 3..2..done! - I'm completely underwhelmed...

Thanks MisterW,

 

I'm connected to cab 2 off Congleton exchange and there is indeed a short section of aluminium cable present between the DP serving my house and the cab. Several customers of various ISPs are affected by this problem, but there aren't many of us and there's no competition from cable telly in this area to provide an incentive to BT/Openreach to act.

The estate on which I live was developed in phases spanning the 1980s and 1990s and somewhere in the early part of that date range there was a copper shortage which led to BT installing inferior aluminium cable to feed a number of the (then) new properties and the associated DPs. My place was built in 1984 and is fed by directly buried copper cable, but that connects to a DP at the subscriber end of the older aluminium section.

According to the last "friendly" Openreach engineer who took the time to investigate, customers just upstream of the aluminium section are getting 40 Mbit/sec.

In the early days of FTTC when providers were offering 20 Mbit based solely on the radial distance from the cab we were able to raise fault tickets, but the providers quickly "wised up" and dropped the predicted rate to 11 Mbit/sec thereby blocking further fault reports.

 

The annoying thing is that there could be an alternative routing which offers copper "all the way". We need Openreach to install a 36 metre long copper tie cable between our DP joint box and a joint box serving the latest phase of the estate where users are all getting full FTTC speeds.

Job done - happy faces - dream on....

Rant mode off.

 

Phil

 

 

 

 

 

 

MisterW
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 14,573
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Uploading in 3..2..done! - I'm completely underwhelmed...

Small world! I'm the other side of town on cab 29. Fortunately we're all copper and about the same distance to the cab. Don't want to upset you too much but that gets us a solid 40 down and (now) 10 up with a nice healthy 12db noise margin.

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

phil_o99
Dabbler
Posts: 21
Registered: ‎04-08-2007

Re: Uploading in 3..2..done! - I'm completely underwhelmed...

MisterW

Grrrrr!

We have the local cabling diagram which was supplied by the same friendly OR engineer, so we can see exactly where the problem lies. However, there is one property within the affected group of houses where the owner claims to be getting 25+ down and 2 up.

He is on a BT Business tariff, but I don't understand how the upstream aluminium problem has been overcome for him alone.

The copper cables between our serving DP and the premises are directly buried (i.e. no ducting) and the BT customer uses a pair within the same cable that feeds the rest of us along the road. Each house has a joint at the foot of their driveway and the individual 2 pair armoured cables to each property run under the driveway to the DLI box on the house wall. In our case the joint is buried rather than in a footway box, so every time there is a fault "downstream" of my premises, the driveway is dug up to enable OR to crack the joint.

Deep joy!

Thanks for your help so far...

 

Phil

 

 

 

MisterW
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 14,573
Thanks: 5,408
Fixes: 385
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Uploading in 3..2..done! - I'm completely underwhelmed...

You need a friendly JCB driver to accidentally go though the ali cableWink..

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

phil_o99
Dabbler
Posts: 21
Registered: ‎04-08-2007

Re: Uploading in 3..2..done! - I'm completely underwhelmed...

You're not the first to make that suggestion...

 

Phil