Networks BT Infinity half speed for my friend, BT don't care

Yup, he's been on the 76 smeg BT infinity for some months and it has been great... Until a couple of weeks ago. Ping has shot up to 50 and stays there. Bandwidth is now halved (in fact he gets 32mb download which is less than I get on my 36 smeg BT infinity).

Engineers have twice been to his house and said they'd fixed it both times. No difference.

He's spent several hours on the phone and the latest is that he was told "it's within acceptable limits and we can't do anything".

So let's get this straight... he's paying for 76 smeg and getting 32... That's acceptable is it?

He seemed to be defeated yesterday and was talking like he couldn't challenge them.

I told him to post on the BT forum, he did and it seems others are also having similar problem.

I told him I'd had a similar problem on o2 a few months ago. I had an o2 engineer on the phone telling me the drop in speed was something I was doing at home...

I had already been posting on the o2 forum before my chat with the o2 engineer and many other people were having the same issue. o2 forum staff read our posts and got things fixed. So I told my friend to do the same with BT.

I told him if it was me there is no way I would pay for 76 smeg and accept half that speed.

 

Yes basically - it's advertised as 'up to XXmeg' everywhere you look. It depends on how far he is from the cabinet not what package he's paying for. It's only when the speed drops under 15mb does BT consider it a fault

Edit: If you look here it gives you an idea of the speed dropoff as you get further away from the cabinet

Edit 2: And please stop calling it smeg

 

The cabinet is right outside his house. Outside his front gate.

He said the cabinet is 4 metres from his house.

So if they're not going to fix it... why would he continue to pay for the 76 xmeg?

o2 used to monitor the speed and they would contact me and put me onto a lower package if I wasn't getting what I paid for.

 

Well he should be getting faster then but like I said BT don't actually raise it as a fault unless you're getting <15mb unfortunately for him.

 

Just tell them you want to drop down to the lower package then.

See what they say.

Maybe a massively over subbed cabinet.

 

Low ping is paramount to him... A ping of 50 isn't acceptable. Nor should he be paying for the fastest BT infinity and not even be getting Infinity 1 speeds.

I have told him if it was me... if BT refused to fix it... I would cancel the direct debit and go back to virgin.

 

Is a possibility. Could also be the wiring in the house at fault.

 

That is logical... but I don't think he will be happy with his ping of 50.

Ping is precious for him.

 

Something certainly doesn't sound right - I'm ~300m from my cabinet and I get ~45meg and a ping of ~12ms

 

He's been with BT for 5 months now and it was full speed with ping in the 20's for all that time until a few weeks ago. Now it stays at 50 and his download and upload rates halved.

He lives in Manchester.

My Infinity 1 is full speed where I live in the south west of UK. Just tested my ping: 16ms which is quite astonishing considering I'm using a wifi stick instead of LAN cable at moment.

 

I had a similar issue, basically when there is a noisy line, CRC errors in transmission etc, the line retrains to a lower profile to ensure connectivity.

I had to have an engineer on site 3 times before they identified a noisy line and rewired a new one (i'm 23m from the exchange, so it was no sweat for openreach at the time), after that I was capped at 36m for a week and then back up to full speeds after a quick call to their tech support.

You need to drill into BT Support that:

1) An engineer has been on site and informed you that you are on a lower profile than you should be
2) said engineer informed you to request to be placed on the correct profile
3) Line fault/noisy line problem identified and fixed some time ago.
4) If engineer on the line doesn't have a clue, KINDLY ask to be passed to someone more senior. A line manager is more likely to talk to someone agreeable than someone ranting.

 

what is he using to test his ping, I just did a pingtest on my adsl2+ line and got 23ms

 

That is rather poor speed considering the distance to the cab.

Your friend should be getting the full speed, and as suggested I would say there is a problem with the line and it should be fixed.

If I was in that situation I would be trying to get some of the money knocked off the bill.

 

BT don't care Stanley.

You'll get passed around from call centre to call centre and have engineers not turn up, do nothing or tell you what you want to hear.

They get away with it because most don't notice or care. An advert today in the paper for instance made out that 99.9% availability was a good thing... 8.7 hours a year on average without service if you care. That isn't good, but 99.9% looks good to the laymen.

Change provider. You may still be at BT's whim... but you don't have to talk to them and stand a 99.9% chance you'll get better service.

Also; BT killed my cat. They haven't even tried to deny it.

 

He says that the line was tested and not noisy. He's been using speedtest.net for the bandwidth and ping tests. 32mb down, 49ms ping on his Infinity 2.

I did the BT line speed check today as you do when you're signing up for Infinity. It said his phone number can expect 79mb download and 20mb upload.

He's going to post on the BT forum again tonight I think. If it's not fixed he will sign up again with Virgin and cancel his BT direct debit. I'd do the same if it was me.

 

What provider you use?

 

I use ADSL24 for FTTC - they obviously use the Openreach engineers for installation and stuff but customer service is a huge amount better imo

 

TBH lets make it clear that it doesn't matter who your with with an "Infinity" connection.

You will always have issues as only Openreach can fix them.

So the OHHH BT WONT HELP ME SOB SOB SOB stories can be put in the bin.


I hardly believe it's down to over subscribed cabs as OR are very picky about them and how many users are allowed on. They will even stop orders (around 85% full) until a new cab is placed to cope.

Your mates problem is likely to be inside his home. (I had a similar issue with line speeds after a week - It turned out to be a faulty phone putting noise down the line)

As it had been on for a full week it downgraded me from 60meg to 20.

Once it was removed in a couple of days it was back up to full speed (You need to give time for the DSLAM in the cab to slowly bump you back up the stability till you top out)



Take everything out go back to the basics.
Test socket
Unplug all your phones etc

Usual broadband fault finding.....


Let us know how he gets on

 

Tell your mate to try the Thinkbroadband speedtester and also to download the drivers for a Nvidia graphics card from the Nvidia site, and see what speed he gets.

Speedtest.net for the last 2 weeks was only giving me speeds of up to 70Mb max on my 120Mb connection, however the thinkbroadband was giving full speed.

The Nvidia site always gives full speed as well.

Might be worth while checking just incase it's the speedtest.net site not working properly again.

 

If the line is not noisy it's a house problem.

Most likely using extension leads for extra phone sockets each one adds noise to the telephone line and that would lower his ping. Could also be not plugged into the master socket.

Speedtest is not a great ping checker.

Takes up to 3-7 days for your speed to slowly go up to max on fiber.

Also to those asking for cash back read the small print. It says up to 76mb with a minimum of 15mb as the guarentee. He gets 30+mb no way will bt give him cash back for it.

The higher rate packages usually come with more bandwidth before your connection is capped during the day that's what your paying for mostly that extra usage.

Virgins is very similar in that reguard.