Sky Broadband are trying to shaft us - help!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am really livid with these people. My family has been on them for over 18 months and to be frank they have been utterly pants!! They were using the free "2mb" package and had something like 0.3mb to 0.5mb on a good day on off peak hours. I had a whinge at them at Christmas when I visited and lo and behold it went upto 1.3mb. to 2mb. Well everything was fine for a few months until the last 6 months or so it went down to the crappy 0.3mb to 0.5mb!!
So my family upgraded to the unlimited tariff which has speeds of upto 4mb to 5.5mb in our area.
Initially CST said it would take around three days for this to happen but it didn't. Talked to the technical people and they said it would take upto 10 days for this to happen. The advisor suggested that we should reboot the router if the connection speeds were low.

I started doing some research on the internet and I realised that it was some sort of 10 day extended line test to find the best speeds and that we should not have rebooted the router!!

On top of this the download speeds have not changed after 10 days!! In fact our upload speeds are HIGHER than our download speeds.

I suspect they have the DLM they have is causing this. Is there a way of getting Sky to reset this or disable it??

Here are the line stats:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 379 kbps 518 kbps
Line Attenuation 39 db 19 db
Noise Margin 14 db 8 db

The router says the following too:

DownStream Connection Speed 379 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 518 kbps

This is a blooming joke and the worst thing is that our neighbours with Virgin(cable) and ADSL24 and 02 are getting much better speeds from the same exchange too!!

I have tried both wireless and wired connections with no luck and the router is connected into the main socket with no extensions.

What can I do in the short term??

[abaxas]

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 379 kbps 518 kbps
Line Attenuation 39 db 19 db
Noise Margin 14 db 8 db

Those two things dont marry up, have you checked your internal wiring?

Follow this guide.

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/socket.php

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 379 kbps 518 kbps
Line Attenuation 39 db 19 db
Noise Margin 14 db 8 db

Those two things dont marry up, have you checked your internal wiring?

Could you please explain??

I tried the master socket with no success!!

[DeludedGuy]

Firstly, from a legal point of view they are not providing the advertised service therefore you are able to terminate the contract under the services and goods act - mention this to them next time.

Have you tried plugging in a new ADSL filter, it seems daft but it solved my constant disconnection issues I had with o2.

The noise level seems ok; maybe ask whoever is supplying your telephone line to do a noise test.

Are you using any telephone line extensions or do you have any spare routers you could use to test the connection?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Firstly, from a legal point of view they are not providing the advertised service therefore you are able to terminate the contract under the services and goods act - mention this to them next time.

Have you tried plugging in a new ADSL filter, it seems daft but it solved my constant disconnection issues I had with o2.

The noise level seems ok; maybe ask whoever is supplying your telephone line to do a noise test.

Are you using any telephone line extensions or do you have any spare routers you could use to test the connection?

I tried another Sky supplied microfilter and nothing happened! There is another hard-wired phone extension upstairs but I thought using the master socket negated this issue?? It also does not explain why we got nearly 2mb on the free tariff last Christmas when we whinged at them last time.

The line was originally BT but is now handled by Sky themselves as we use Sky Talk too. Thanks for stating the act which covers this too!!

We do not have another router at hand ATM and also Sky do not give you access to any of login settings either!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Managed to get through to the Tier 3 technical people who said the line should be fine upto 4.5mb! With some fiddling the speed is now around 2mb and hopefully once the line stabilises it should be a bit higher(hopefully).

[DeludedGuy]

Good to hear, I used to be with SKY about a year ago, I was on the 8mb deal and was getting about 6mb, customer support was generally good, its a shame they have gone down a little.

[Blitzen]

This indeed is DLM.
They say 10 days but it can run for up to 40.

I had SKY until last year...my speeds were:
Before DLM: 14mb down
After DLM: <8mb down

I told them to shove it and went to O2. SKY used to be good but their product and service are totally shoddy.

[Barry]

They can remove the DLM straight away by just phoning them.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This indeed is DLM.
They say 10 days but it can run for up to 40.

I had SKY until last year...my speeds were:
Before DLM: 14mb down
After DLM: <8mb down

I told them to shove it and went to O2. SKY used to be good but their product and service are totally shoddy.

They can remove the DLM straight away by just phoning them.

I will wait until early next week and have a word with them about this.

[WhiteGiant]

I'm with Sky (not my choice), and about 6 months ago I kicked off as we had constant disconnects. Got through to a very nice and helpful Scottish chap who offered me loads of advice, but made little difference.

They sent out a new router, but that had a very poor wireless range compared to the old one (and made little difference to the stability), so another phone call and they limited to the connection to 2meg. Shame really as we were flying along at around 5meg before.

I'm not too hot on the router stats, does this look normal?

ADSL Link------------Downstream------Upstream

Connection Speed----2045 kbps--------605 kbps
Line Attenuation----- 65.5 db----------40.1 db
Noise Margin---------4.9 db------------9.9 db

[Barry]

You would be very lucky to get anything over 2 MB with a attenuation of 65.5 DB

[WhiteGiant]

Okay, thanks for the info, and apologies for the slight thread hijack!

*edit - I assume there is little I can do to change it?

[Barry]

No, attenuation is more to do with distance from the exchange than anything