My Fibre Experience, so far

[#1]

I initially went onto Plusnet's site and did an availability check, and got a result of 55mb down, not bad I thought, so I signed up for the 80/20 package.
On the day of the installation, I got an e-mail from PlusNet saying my package was now swapped over and ready to go, and that the speed on my line should be.... 40mb    So, it's dropped 15mb so far.
I've got a PM installation, and at around 2pm the Open reach guys calls, does his bit in the exchange, and knocks on the door.  Takes a look at the box, grabs his gear and cracks on.  He doesn't mention mounting it to the wall, bt says he'll stand it on the back of my unit, and put the router on top.  I think he was just saving time by not wanting to mount it, but i'm not too fussed.
He plugs his modem in, and says apparantly they aren't allowed to use some of their test gear anymore, and he usually "gets the customer to browse the web".  Doesn't sound very professional to me, but I plug a router in, configure it up, hard wire the laptop, and get an initial test of around 60mb. However, within minutes that was down to around 30-35mb, where it seems like it's stayed. (Tested on various speed test sites).
Ok, so it's only 5mb less than Plusnets second estimate, and may not sound like much. But when you consider I only had around 4mb anyway, so the difference alone is more than I was getting for my broadband previously, which is quite a bit.
The Open reach guy notes the speeds down for his paperwork, and i'm sure he put something like 50mb down. Due to the first initial speed test being high, and then the rest being lower, he took the difference.
Interestingly i've just done an estimation for my line at my work place (a line that is currently with plusnet and syncs at a dizzy 2mb), and they claim I can get 55mb here too.  I'd be willing to be that won't be anywhere near that if I upgrade the line here.
Where do yoyu guys get this 55mb estimate from?  Direct from BT wholesale I think believe.. It's 20mb more than i'm seeing, so not exactly anywhere near what I've ended up with.  I notice that page also says "This is accurate to within 1Mb".  Hmmmm,
Had I known that I couldn't get speeds above the cheaper package, I may have gone for that one instead. The speed estimate before signing up is something that needs to be more accurate.  How else are people to make decisions on what to go for if they are told they should get a different speed.  I bet the speed estimate are rarely underestimated.
Unless of course this is all because the line is only 1 day old, or plusnet need to set something that their end and haven't yet.  I doubt it, as with all packages, i've rarely seen amazing speeds. However, If anyone wants to take a quick spy, my username is griffonline.
All in all, a trouble free installation, no problems from plusnet or openreach (thanks plusnet), just slightly dissapointed with this new amazing "super fast" broadband that gets me less than half of what's possible for the technology.
Incidently, is there a way I can see what the modem is syncing at? Or does it not work like ADSL and give a sync speed?
Griff

[#2]

Our line checker that provides estimates draws information from BT data which can also be found here: http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

Quote

The speed estimate before signing up is something that needs to be more accurate.

Estimates by nature aren't accurate I'm afraid but we've found that in a lot of cases they have been on the low side, I'm just sorry if that hasn't been the case in your experience but let if there's anything we can do to help.

Quote

Incidently, is there a way I can see what the modem is syncing at? Or does it not work like ADSL and give a sync speed?

Not strictly and I'm not aware that you'd be able to check at your side, we can run diagnostics to dig deeper but can I ask you to perform a specific speed test for us first?
Can you perform a beta speed test at http://www.speedtester.bt.com and let us know what that reports please?

[#3]

Thnanks Adam,
I'll take a look at it when I get in tonight.

[#4]

Adam,
Results of the beta test are:
Download speed (Mbps): 36.90
Upload Speed (Mbps): 14.99
Ping Latency (ms): 42.88

[#5]

Quote from: Griff

Incidently, is there a way I can see what the modem is syncing at? Or does it not work like ADSL and give a sync speed?

You can get it in an indirect way...
If you perform a different BT test, you can get the IP Profile values (both up & down), from which you can calculate the sync speeds.
The tests are either at:
http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ but NOT the beta test
or
http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/ then run the test (very like the beta test ), but then ask for the Further Diagnostics.
Once you have the IP Profile value, you can accept the upstream value. However the downstream value should be multiplied by 1.033 to get the sync speed.
One further check you can make is on PN's limit. Login to the portal, then take a look at this page: https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=data_transfer_speed
The "current line speed" should be no lower than the IP profile value displayed on the BT.
Ironically, our line is also predicted at 55Mbps. The predictor can be very pessimistic (to allow for crosstalk interference as take-up gets higher in the future), and we actually get an 80Mbps sync at present:

• [tt]Estimated line speed:
  55Mb (Accurate to within +/- 1Mbit) - Checked on 2012-08-19 12:58:41
  Current line speed:
  77.4 Mb[/tt]