Improving FTTC speeds

[cheesemp]

My FTTC speeds have slowly decreased from 30Mbps+ 5 years ago (when it was installed in the area and I was first on the cabinet to get it) to 20mbps. I'm still within the 'minimum' speed (right at the bottom of the estimate though) for my line so no one is interested in doing anything but i'm struggling to do anything when the family stream on the TV. Does anyone know any tricks I can use to speed things up/persuade openreach to do anything? All the broadband checks imply I can still get 30Mb but it just seems pie in the sky. I've got a year old EE smart hub (Same as the BT smart hub 1 I believe) so I don't believe a decent router would help and the faceplate is 5 years old from the original BT infinity install so should be fine. 4G is slower (~8Mbps) and no cable in the town. If I could just get back to 30Mb i'd be happy...

[PC-LAD]

Are the peeps you're signed up with not apart of ofcom. Surely you can receive some form of rebate or have an engineer check the line through your supplier. Other than that i don't know of anything you can do to sort it.

[cheesemp]

Are the peeps you're signed up with not apart of ofcom. Surely you can receive some form of rebate or have an engineer check the line through your supplier. Other than that i don't know of anything you can do to sort it.

Its above the 'minimum' so no option there and even if it did drop below minimum (a 2mbps difference) my only option is leave and take a different FTTC supplier who will use the same openreach line. I'm now being quoted even lower minimums for new contracts which implies its only going to get worse. I was just hoping someone knew of any tricks I could use. I remember scrapping an extension and fitting a new faceplate in my last property doubled my ADSL from 8Mbps to almost 16Mbps. I was just hoping for something similar but won't be surprised if I'm out of luck (Can't hurt to ask though).

[PC-LAD]

my only option is leave and take a different FTTC supplier who will use the same openreach line

If you don't mind paying a price for good service, I've been using Zen. I've heard good things about Vodafone too despite some of the experiences I've had.

[cheesemp]

If you don't mind paying a price for good service, I've been using Zen. I've heard good things about Vodafone too despite some of the experiences I've had.

But won't I still ultimately be limited by the slow sync speed to the cabinet? Switching providers can't help that can it - That's all down to my line?

I was digging round online last night and heard homeplugs/powerline can impact FTTC sync quite badly and as I use 3 for Wifi access points around the house I'm going to try removing them and see if that changes things... If I can just get speeds up 5 to 10Mbps i'll be happy.

[DanceswithUnix]

But won't I still ultimately be limited by the slow sync speed to the cabinet? Switching providers can't help that can it - That's all down to my line?

I was digging round online last night and heard homeplugs/powerline can impact FTTC sync quite badly and as I use 3 for Wifi access points around the house I'm going to try removing them and see if that changes things... If I can just get speeds up 5 to 10Mbps i'll be happy.

That's interesting, though I have a house littered with them and a pretty topped out line speed.

What does the router say your connection speed is to the cabinet? If that has dropped to 20Mbit then you might be able to pull some tricks your end.

If you have a short phone to modem cable, you could try unplugging the faceplate and plugging directly into the test socket underneath so you are removing any extensions, phones and filters and see what connection speed you get on a raw line.

[cheesemp]

That's interesting, though I have a house littered with them and a pretty topped out line speed.

What does the router say your connection speed is to the cabinet? If that has dropped to 20Mbit then you might be able to pull some tricks your end.

If you have a short phone to modem cable, you could try unplugging the faceplate and plugging directly into the test socket underneath so you are removing any extensions, phones and filters and see what connection speed you get on a raw line.

Apparently they can start to fail and produce RF interference in the same range as VDSL2. How true this is I have no idea but my older plugs are almost 5 years old now.

Both my cables are similar lengths so not sure I can do much there. I've also read that the 'DSL' unit in the openreach cabinet treats repeated disconnects as line instability and decreases the speed semi-permanently (using banding so the max rate you can hit goes down and it rarely goes up) so I'm a little nervous to experiment too much in case my sync goes even lower. I can probably run an ethernet cable temporarily to my PC so I'll ditch the homeplugs for a week and see what happens. If it turns out to be home plugs I can always drill a hole and connect my PC directly.

I guess worse case i keep unplugging the router from the phone line to force a sync lower than my minimum so can get it investigated by openreach!

[DanceswithUnix]

Apparently they can start to fail and produce RF interference in the same range as VDSL2. How true this is I have no idea but my older plugs are almost 5 years old now.

Blimey, I don't think I have any that young

Can you get your router to tell you connection speed? I'm wondering if you are seeing contention on the backhaul or if your speed to the cabinet has dropped. You should be able to ask for a line reset to start a new negotiation to the cabinet.

I haven't had a powerline plug go on me, but I have had the PSU for the router go bad and that shaved quite a lot off the speed. They are switched mode, so can inject a lot of RF noise right where it hurts. Or Hertz, sorry I'll get me coat...

[cheesemp]

Blimey, I don't think I have any that young

Can you get your router to tell you connection speed? I'm wondering if you are seeing contention on the backhaul or if your speed to the cabinet has dropped. You should be able to ask for a line reset to start a new negotiation to the cabinet.

I haven't had a powerline plug go on me, but I have had the PSU for the router go bad and that shaved quite a lot off the speed. They are switched mode, so can inject a lot of RF noise right where it hurts. Or Hertz, sorry I'll get me coat...

The router is showing a sync speed of 22Mbps down with a 'max' sync speed of 28Mbps. I tend to see 19Mbps on the various speed testers. Since monitoring this I haven't seen the actual sync speed break through 22Mbps. I've taken out the homeplugs and no immediate improvement but I'd expect it to take a while to retrain anyway. The router is only a year old so I'd hope its PSU has not started failing this quickly but who knows. How do you get your line 'reset'? I'm above 'minimum' (17Mbps woo hoo - I'm supposed to be superfast!) for my line so I'm not sure EE (ISP) or openreach will do anything.

I guess worst comes to it in June when my contract expires i'll sign up with Vodafone who at least have a 25Mbps guaranty or 15% off - might as well save some cash...

[moose82]

Hello Cheesemp,

I'm not normally one for posting round these parts much, but your predicament is similar to one i suffered on my FTTC with BT last year. So I hope what I add here will help you.

I suddenly had my connection go from around 50Mb down/9Mb up to around 45Mb down/1.5Mb up and was struggling to do anything on the line too. Working from home with large files the upload speed was killing me...

Firstly dial 17070 and select option 2, there should be no noise between the announcements. Next, try connecting your router directly to the test port, which is under the BT faceplate. Use a RJ45 cabled connection from your computer to the router to do some speed tests to rule out internal wireless issues. When i tested my speeds via the test socket i got 62Mb down and 20Mb up which was of course way faster than anything i'd got before even. This helped me identify that there was an internal fault with my house wiring. In a new build house with sockets in many rooms and no exposed wiring, fault finding/repairing this was going to be a nightmare.

To resolve my issue, I had my master socket moved somewhere more useful for me and using a second set of twisted pair in the cable they managed to reconnect the house circuit via the old master socket. The new master socket is one of the latest which has filters built in so I don't need additional filters in all the other phone sockets around the house.

Since then my speeds have further settled down to 65Mb down and 20Mb up and I am a happy camper. However I will mention it cost £ to get it fixed. In my case it was £75 to have the master socket and cabling done. For me that was money well spent.

Hope that in someway helps you on the way to faster speeds.

All the best,

moose82

[cheesemp]

Hello Cheesemp,

I'm not normally one for posting round these parts much, but your predicament is similar to one i suffered on my FTTC with BT last year. So I hope what I add here will help you.

I suddenly had my connection go from around 50Mb down/9Mb up to around 45Mb down/1.5Mb up and was struggling to do anything on the line too. Working from home with large files the upload speed was killing me...

Firstly dial 17070 and select option 2, there should be no noise between the announcements. Next, try connecting your router directly to the test port, which is under the BT faceplate. Use a RJ45 cabled connection from your computer to the router to do some speed tests to rule out internal wireless issues. When i tested my speeds via the test socket i got 62Mb down and 20Mb up which was of course way faster than anything i'd got before even. This helped me identify that there was an internal fault with my house wiring. In a new build house with sockets in many rooms and no exposed wiring, fault finding/repairing this was going to be a nightmare.

To resolve my issue, I had my master socket moved somewhere more useful for me and using a second set of twisted pair in the cable they managed to reconnect the house circuit via the old master socket. The new master socket is one of the latest which has filters built in so I don't need additional filters in all the other phone sockets around the house.

Since then my speeds have further settled down to 65Mb down and 20Mb up and I am a happy camper. However I will mention it cost £ to get it fixed. In my case it was £75 to have the master socket and cabling done. For me that was money well spent.

Hope that in someway helps you on the way to faster speeds.

All the best,

moose82

Cheers Moose82 - Useful info. Unfortunately I had my master socket moved and replaced when I got FTTC after moving into my house 7 and half years ago so I don't think its wiring (on my side). I have no extensions connected either. I guess the faceplate filter could be ageing - I know the ADSL filters had a lifetime... It may just come down to too many users on my cabinet (its 500 properties so crosstalk is definitely an issue as more people switch to FTTC) and crappy 70s underground phone lines. I will try the phone number though just in case I can blame the phone call quality enough that openreach replace it as a final roll of the dice.

[paulwilson2813]

FTTC speeds are likely to decline as take-up of fibre broadband increases due to crosstalk
Because of the higher frequencies used, broadband signals are susceptible to a particular type of interference – known as ‘crosstalk’ – from other VDSL2 broadband signals being carried along adjacent pairs.
Sadly, this issue can result in significant declines in broadband speeds as the penetration of fibre broadband increases. What is particularly frustrating about crosstalk is the fact that it is essentially impossible to predict the extent to which a particular broadband user will suffer degraded performance. This is because the level of crosstalk interference depends on the position of the pairs carrying VDSL2 signals with respect to one another. So, one broadband user could experience significant degradation whereas another could be unaffected. This makes accurate predictions of broadband speeds impossible. The only thing that is certain is reduced speeds from crosstalk will become more significant as the penetration of fibre broadband increases.
Speeds will increase with vectoring, and bonding is an option
To provide flexibility for telecoms operators worldwide, a number of so-called VDSL2 profiles have been defined, which differ in the width of the frequency band used to transmit the broadband signal. Secondly, an advanced technology called ‘VDSL2 vectoring’ could be applied on a more widespread basis, which is a noise cancellation technology designed to reduce crosstalk interference on copper cables (where broadband signals carried on neighbouring copper lines interfere with each other).
FTTC will never match the performance obtained by Fibre-to-the-Premises FTTP due to the limitations of copper cables. However, for many consumers, FTTC will adequately (and cost effectively) deliver the speeds and reliability required provided they are located relatively close to their fibre street cabinet.

I hope this information will be helpful!
Paul Wilson

[DanceswithUnix]

For those wondering, the above is from:

https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.c...ainst-distance

and is more useful with the missing graph included.

[beebub]

True, I noticed my fibre speeds go steadily down over a period of 5 years.

[cheesemp]

Not too sure why this old thread of mine got reopened but I never did provide a final update so why not...

I ended up switching to Vodafone to take advantage of their minimum 25Mb speed guarantee as I figured I could at least save some money. After switching my line went from 20 to 35 again

Hey not complaining but surprised switching supplier could make such a difference on FTTC line. Even more so when you think I was on a EE smarthub (which is the same as the BT smarthub) which you'd figure would give the best speeds with BT lines... Still waiting for any sign of FTTP in my area (2025's promise I think will pass my little town by)

[virtuo]

I've been having the same issue with Plusnet, and you can add frequent disconnections to the list of issues. When I first signed up with them they were maxing out the 80/20Mb line with no issues, it's just gotten worse over time, to a point where I'm lucky to get half those speeds and stay connected for 12 hours. The minimum guaranteed speed for my line has steadily reduced over time, so if I switch, the new supplier won't have to try as hard to reach an "acceptable" speed.

From the symptoms and tons of research, there's certainly an issue between my house and the cabinet/exchange, but every time an engineer comes out they "fix something", but the issues come back in less than 24 hours.

Every time I complain I get the same thing, latest excuse is setting my profile to "stable" mode, that runs slower and doesn't disconnect. In theory. But it's just as bad.

There's an argument that "crosstalk" froim increased numbers of connections would hit the speeds, but I'm in a pretty quiet town with aging copper lines, it just desperately needs an upgrade.

And to add insult to injury, the towns either side of mine have been scheduled for FTTP by 2023, I'm not even on the radar yet.

Guess I'll look at switching and pray for a speed bump, but I'm sure as the line calibrates it'll end up the same. Edit: vodafone seem to have good guarantees/prices - any issues with them?