Fibre speed flummoxed (FTTP)
@mloverto wrote:
I'm still on Plusnet's FTTP "trial" service (no really!), and am having issues with a lack of speed on the service. Technical Support have been helpful, but are struggling since the trail ended before most of them started, so they were never trained up on it.
As are many of us @mloverto . Even if the trial was still open to new entrants you'd be lucky to find a telephone support bod who knew anything about FTTP as the official support channel was always this forum.
Since I first got the service, I have been getting around 36Mbit download, and 20Mbit upload. I understood for the purposes of the trial, the service was limited to the same speed as ADSL to provide a comparison.
I don't think that assumption can be correct as ADSL is not capable of those speeds.
If you're getting those speeds it looks like you were provisioned on a 40/20 Mb/s contract which was really a 80/20 Mb/s connection with the download throttled by PN. (Which is what I was on originally before requesting the full 80/20 Mb/s)
... I decided to speak to Plusnet to see if they could increase the speed for the same cost.
As stated above, the general PN support staff mostly don't know anything about FTTP so you'd be lucky to get any sense out of them.
After several calls, it appears that I should be getting somewhere between 55 & 77 Mbit, but they can't see why it's so slow. I understand that the upload speed is correct.
With FTTP it's a case of you get the speed you're provisioned at (minus a small percentage for overheads) so they shouldn't really be saying 'between' 55 and 77 Mb/s unless they're not sure what your provisioned speed is. It might be possible that your account has been mis-configured though.
Unfortunately since the trial closed to new entrants it's apparently not been possible to upgrade from 40/10 to 80/20 because the 'workarounds' that were available to PN FTTP staff such as @Gandalf to change things no longer exist, but as you seem to be on 40/20 (which would be a throttled 80/20 connection as explained above), you might be in a more fortunate position as the process may be different (although I guess some account changes would still be required as 80/20 is £5 per month more than 40/20 or 40/10 so that may be a deal-breaker).
Good luck! 
Edit: added words in blue
Hi Mat,
I'm sorry for the issues with your speed. I actually received an email from the adviser you spoke with last night about this.
Having looked into this, I've gone to great detail on your fault ticket 207228320 with a solution which I hope helps.
In summary, @RobPN is correct in that you were on our 40/20 package that was 80/20 capped down by us, but when we provided FTTP we manually changed the speed profile on your account to allow full speeds.
During 2016 when we decided to withdraw our 40/20 package in favour of 40/2, we moved those customers on to 55/10 as a compromise rather than significantly downgrade their upload speed. (As a side note we no longer offer a 40/2 package as that's since been converted to 40/10 a while ago)
Unfortunately this is where things started to go a bit wrong, as part of the process we didn't automatically downgrade your FTTP service from 80/20 to 55/10, instead we just changed the speed profile on our side to 55/10 rather than doing both.
This in itself didn't cap your speeds due to the way we changed the speed profile. Roll on to the time when we removed your phone, this triggered the 55/10 profile to be applied automatically to your account.
It would've been from around then or whenever your connection dropped after that change, that your speeds started to slow down to 55mbps. I can't explain why the speeds you're seeing are maxing out at almost 40mbps though...
Ideally you should either be on Unlimited Fibre Extra for 80mbps or fully on to 55/10 (what we should've done in 2016).
Due to the way our systems work it's difficult for us to change a fibre package when you're on FTTP, as our systems product change tool don't recognise FTTP and the workarounds we used to do now cause complications.
What I've proposed as a solution for a gesture of goodwill I've added onto your ticket.
Router is a Sagemcom 2704N. I normally have my system patched through wall plates, but have tested with Cat 6 between router and fibre modem to no avail. Several BT Wholesale speed tests later, managed to briefly peak at 44Mbit, but since then, always hovers in the low 30s.
Further to what @MisterW has said in the preceding post regarding the possibility of your router causing the slowdown, you could try connecting a PC directly to the ONT ('modem') with your Cat6 Ethernet cable and setting up a PPPoE connection using your PN login credentials (just to test your speed).
EDIT: It'd be interesting if you post back here with what speeds you achieve with a direct connection to the ONT. 
Thanks for getting back to us @mloverto
No problem. 
Do you have another computer or laptop you can try doing a PPPoE connection on?
Also can you try running a speed test Here to compare against the usual BT Wholesale one?
Finally when you're running the test, have you switched off any other devices connected to the router and making sure there's no background tasks open on the device you're using?
Hi @Gandalf,
Tested with a second laptop on PPPoE (proviso is that it's a USB3 to network dongle into a Surface Pro). On all attempts, nothing else was plugged into the modem.
I'm not really seeing much of a change bypassing the router. Could have been the time of day, but seems to be averaging around 40Mbit. BT puts me at ~42 - 44, and Ookla around 40. Other times, the think broadband test ran, it averaged around 40 as well. This was the best result, albeit briefly!)
Hi @mloverto
Based on the results you've got and the profile on our side showing at 80mbps there doesn't look to be anything capping your speeds below 80. Not sure there's much more we can do without arranging an engineer to investigate further.
Can you remember if you've ever had higher when we first provisioned the service?
Hey Mat,
I think it's worth arranging an engineer to check things out on Openreach's side.
Could you add a reply to the ticket 207228320 with when you'll be available for a visit?
(Obviously if you're happy with the speeds you're getting you don't have to go for it but if you do, fingers crossed an engineer can shed more light on the issue, and hopefully fix it)
Cheers,
Anoush