Openreach Significantly Downgraded Linespeed After Fault

[#1]

From that snippet, I would suggest you have a badly 'impacted' connection, which ideally needs OpenReach investigation. Out of curiosity, have you switched off/rebooted your Hub recently - your DSL uptime is low?

[#2]

@jab1  / @ed5494 I've released the posts. 

[#3]

Thanks! I thought I was going slightly mad and I had imagined posting!

[#4]

@ed5494 Now we have the Help Desk page available, things are a little clearer. A few things - Your DSL uptime is low - as I asked earlier, have you recently rebooted/reset the Hub? Your attenuation indicates you are a distance from the cab, which means you will never get fast speeds on FTTC, although your current figures do appear on the low side. Are you doing masses of upload/downloads - your data sent/received figures seem to indicate you are saturating the connection?

[#5]

Thanks @JAB

I am around 1km from the Cab. (Check myself and confirmed by the Openreach engineer).

Between me and the cab is a large urban residential area which I am sure does not help.

I have to ask over what timescale the router measures data?

If it's over its up time then that does seem alot. If it's monthly for example then this would be what I would expect this deep into June.

In the end the speed I am getting now is usable (if not ideal). I am more concerned with how to get Openreach to update the underlying line speed so that I am not stuck with this 3Mbps min (I am just starting a new contract with Plusnet tomorrow which has these line speeds in the contract).

Many Thanks,

[#6]

OK, I suppose on an impacted line over that distance, with possible cross-talk etc. your current speed is 'reasonable', but not ideal.

The data U/L and D/L figures are, IIRC, based on the HUBs (not DSL) uptime, so I should have realised you haven't switched it off/rebooted for quite a while. However, the DSL uptime reported suggests that your connection is suffering DSL drops - in other words, the OpenReach equipment is not performing as it should.

Unfortunately, you will not get OR to change those figures. As I said previously, this is a national tactic by BT to 'persuade' people to move to FTTP (where available), but it does not recognise where the infrastructure is available.

[#7]

Thanks Jab,

The link up time was due to when the OpenReach engineer pull it out of the socket to do connections (but it was still on).

It does drop once a week or maybe fortnight (connection) usually for a few minutes sometimes longer so the DSL connection is probably up at most 3 weeks at any given time.

I appreciate you don't work for Plusnet but what is the view now then for example if my connection halves from 15Mbps to 8Mbps on my new contract.

My new minimum speed is 3Mbps so at that point no one is obligated to do anything until the speed drops to 3Mbps?

It does feel insane that Openreach are predicting a range of 2Mbps - 3Mbps when I am clearly able to get 14Mbps.

[#8]

So the Hub hasn't bee rebooted/reset for a long time then - that probably explains the high sent/received figures.

Purely in my opinion, it shouldn't drop that often, but given that the connection is impacted, then I suppose that is to be expected - but is not ideal.

If it did lose that much, I would be inclined to view it as a fault condition - and would press very firmly for an investigation, it simply shouldn't do that, whatever OR or PN say. That absurdly low minimum is a smokescreen/baffle the customer figure - without a fault, the connection should maintain at least above the hand-back threshold.

[#9]

@ed5494 

If your contract states a minimum guaranteed speed of 3Mbps then it is clearly an error on Plusnet’s part and needs updating. However this will have no relevance to your actual poor speeds..

Regarding your current speed, earlier in this thread I suggested that you tried the test socket. Did you do this? This sort of speed drop could be due to an external problem but equally it could be due to your internal wiring, especially if you have extensions. If your master socket is correctly wired then removing the faceplate and plugging your filter in to the test socket should disconnect all your internal wiring.

[#10]

Hi @Baldrick1 , @jab1 

Thanks for your continued help - I will have a test in the next day or so with the test socket. Still trying to locate a spare filter/splitter (or am going to have to grab one off the internet). Will be interested to know if I can actually get any higher than ~14/15 from my end.

Given the attached image is there view on what speed I might be able to get to?

Interestingly it looks like Openreach has now retested the line and upgraded the speeds on the wholesale page back to what they were which mean that other suppliers such as BT and Sky now offer me a 12Mbps min speed guarantee (when last week they would only offer me 3Mbps).

N.B. The 3Mbps promise was because BT had downgraded the line in the background clearly - when re-contracting with Plusnet last week I spent an hour arguing with 5 people and in the end had to accept 3Mbps being baked into my contract as there was nothing they could do. 

I will now have to get back onto the phone to Plusnet in the morning to sort this out. It feels fairly wrong and I suspect some people will get caught in this type of trap (in the end it's not specific to Plusnet but there should really be a way of reporting incorrect info to Openreach not just waiting on their monthly tests - which is what the date difference in the monthly screenshots seems to show). 

[#11]

@ed5494 

Your attachment shows that you are getting less than the BT handback threshold, so the line is not shown as being downgraded by BT, I suspect that the 3Mbps is just a Plusnet aberation.

You need to test using the test socket. There should have been one in the box with your hub. If your home extension wiring is correctly connected, removing the faceplate disconnects any internal wiring and removes the fixed filter (if you have a filltered faceplate), so if you are using the Plusnet filter elsewhere then temporarily swap it over.