WBC FTTC 18x2 Sim Availability Positive story alert!

[#1]

My house is in a unfortunate location in between 2 villages that are fibre enabled but it is too far from the nearest street cabinets to benefit from this.

I have had years of poor adsl speeds and was once convinced (at least 2 years ago) to switch to fibre as it was now available on my line by PN as they told me i would get a decent speed. I did not and the next week was put back on adsl.

Just for info my speeds on adsl were between 5-7 mpbs and fibre 5-6 mpbs.

Fast forward to present day and once again PN convinced me to go to fibre as my adsl was driving me mad i was put on a contract that was more expensive than adsl (which was free) and although dubious agreed. My speeds were as they were the first time round but slightly better on the upload so i decided to just live with it. I did have a few engineers round as PN thought that they could better it but alas nothing changed. Now this is the positive part of the story, a couple of weeks ago something changed and i noticed my router had re synced at 10mpbs.

I thought that this was strange so kept an eye on it, the next day it lost connection and came back at 3mpbs, dismayed i rebooted my router and it came back at 10.5mpbs!

I decided to go to the BT adsl checker site to see what it reported and it now shows this:

WBC FTTC 18x2 Sim Availability with a yes and with the estimated speeds at 8-11mpbs which is the highest i have ever seen it. 2 weeks and still at a decent speed, i can download at a meg+ a second, kids can use ipads without whinging etc

I have no idea what the above means but i like it.

If this continues im happy if not this message will self destruct.

[#2]

Glad to hear that your connection is now running smoothly, still jealous they can't install fibre in my area.

Let us know if you have any issues down the line.

Matty

[#3]

The "WBC FTTC 18x2" bit means is your line is eligible for a trial which Openreach (the wholesaler that sells to Plusnet) is offering - a fibre product with a maximum 18 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up. They're doing this to encourage users such as yourself with a poor line and for which Fibre does not offer a great improvement to switch from ADSL.

However it seems that a) you are already a Plusnet Fibre subscriber, and b) Plusnet isn't offering this service as a product - so for both reasons, this doesn't exactly apply to you right now.

However, if in the future Plusnet does offer a maximum 18 Mbps down fibre-based option (hopefully for a lower price), it might be a good idea to downgrade to it from your existing fibre service, because its theoretical maximum is still above the level which your line can achieve - you'd basically be getting the same service for less. Alternatively, you could use another provider which offers it. Sky is trialling it, but I understand it is currently only for existing customers.

None of this explains why your speed has improved now, but perhaps Openreach figured out why it sucked, or whatever the engineers did actually improved the line but it took a while for the system to be sure the line was stable. If they'd improved it to the extent that the ADSL maximum was >10Mbps, your line would no longer be eligible for the 18Mbps option.

[#4]

What does the BTWholesale checker currently say about your line.

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html

Brian

[#5]

Not sure who you mean, but here's what I get - I'm eligible for this myself. I'm currently on Virgin cable… at 150/10 Mbps.

I had ADSL before (from Sky) and managed to squeeze 9/1 Mbps out of it by removing the ring wire, so I reckon I'd easily hit 18/2 on VDSL - probably more, but the question is whether I need more and what price. I mean, I could theoretically get FTTP On Demand at 330/30, or more - but the cost would be significant, even if anyone offered it in my area.

As it is, Postgres database replication only takes ~3Mbps of my download bandwidth most of the time, and while it's nice to be able to download from Dropbox at 18MB/sec, it's not a hard requirement on my part, so I might switch at the right price.

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Post released from Spam Filter

[#6]

Strictly speaking, Plusnet get their broadband from BTWholesale, not directly from Openreach.