Hi all
Had one of those sails type telephone conversations this evening with Bt, so I brought up my broadband speed. it was sold to us at upto 8meg, now i know its slow but couldn't believe that it less than 1meg.
Now I know we have to pay for things but paying for something you dont get?
I realise this is down to cable age/size/ distance from the exchange or server.

Anyone else got this sought of problem

Virgin here. I get the full 10 meg on good download sites. I do a lot of work for BT and there exchanges/network is a mess.

What exchange you on.?

I would cancel your BT contract while it's in its taster period and get satelite or cable broadband.

I presume its BT, I suppose we are semi rural but only 2 miles from Wrexham

It could be a problem with cabling inside your house, I've heard that iplate's can help.

Sorry zaskar, when you say satellite is tht the same as sky

Paying for 8Meg, fastest we get is 2.5Meg… About par for the course from what I've heard! Doesn't help that the exchange is almost 4 miles away though I suppose.

Used to live in a house 400 yards from an Exchange though before, and was paying for 8Meg and getting between 6.5 and 7Meg as a download speed! Seems you really do need to move house to get faster broadband…

Tested our broadband speed through the self test function on BT's own site.

No wonder I've got the time to walk the dog and mow the lawn prior to video footage buffering to a standard/advance so I can watch.

so here it is 934kbps, wow welcome to dial up!!!

there was agreat piece of video on Dirt, Transition Transam fantastic scenery etc, it took 15 mins to load.

I will never moan about my speed again!

I know sky had fast downloads but slow upspeed-dial up speed?

Also in London you can get satelite direct broadband or even setup your own and charge people for it.

If you are miles from the phone exchange then ADSL is always going to be pretty bad. You'd be better looking at cable.

I get pretty close to 8 on my 8Mb line, but being in a small village the exchange is only a few hundred yards away. 🙂

Being the sad geek that I am, this was actually one of the criteria when I bought the house 😳

Smartay, dial up is 56Kbps, so i wouldn't moan too much.

Broadband is totally dependant on the actual cable length between you and the exchange and also the quality of the line. the longer the line the slower the broadband will be.

You may only be 2 miles from the exchange, but the line length could be quite a bit longer.

I've got a problem with my ADSL line and have done for months. Last Sunday morning i recorded a 10KBPS download speed for my line!

Bt are on the case but sadly going round in circles at the moment. I've had an engineer out twice and he says the line is fine (getting a healthy 6000-7150 KBPS theoretical max)but something in BT land is falling on its @rse. apparently i'm on the 21CN too, so it should be better than it is. Not happy.

However, the Bt engineer did fit a new front plate to the master socket and I did notice the therotecical max going from 6-7.1 Mb so I think the iplate will make a difference in most cases.

I've now got 50meg from Virgin

About best part of a mile form the exchange here in a rural town, get around 7mb+ here least it drops to is 6mb. Due our upgrade this quarter to 24mb so looking forward to that.

get about 512K at home but paying for 'up to' 8 Meg

i like the way they tell you what speed you are able to get by a line test then only offer speeds above the average for the UK and way above what your line is capable of

Bear in mind that line tests only cover the line to your house. If your internal wiring is made of damp-string then you'll still get a crap signal.

Always a good idea to see what the reported noise margin is on your modem, then take the face off the BT master socket, plug into the test socket (that bypasses your house wiring) and see if you get a better result.

Also can help to disconnect the redundant bell wire.

the line test is accurate, we were told we'd get 512k then sold there minimum package

8mb

which we can't get

Okay, but most ISPs don't carry anything other than "up to 8Mbps" these days.
Instead they use Rate Adaptive DSL (RADSL) so it's not really any cheaper for them if you can only get 512kbps

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.html

20mb VirginMedia here & its very good.

We are worst then. We only get max 120 kbps when it is fast. Mostly it is only about 80-85 kbps! Still pay for the 8Mb which is highly unfair. There has already been someone fighting a battle with BT about it but with no success so we just try and ignore it. Shame we can't use any of the services though such as iPlayer/Skype/youtube etc. but there are more important things in life!

We are 3 miles form exchange, rural are & have two broadbands, one personal one business & the business is almost twice as fast as the personal.
Nothing to do with internal wiring as we run both wireless.

We rarely get above 900 on the business which is a real pain when up loading info

THS do you have any extension sockets wired into your domestic line? Even if you don't use them they can cause bother.
Oh and that iPlate thing, I am glad it explains how it works, if you remove the front of the main socket it is as easy to pull out the ringer wire (in the "socket" labelled 3) as it is to plug in an extra front. And a tenner cheaper, if your phones on extensions don't ring then slot it back in with the back of a Stanley knife blade (assuming you don't have a Krone tool).
Used to love working out what people had bodged with phones when I worked for Bradford cable/Yorkshire cable/Telewest (delete according to timeframe).

Im about 3 miles away from my local exchange, but due to the lack of fibre optics and old copper wires i could only get 1mb from any service at the best of times.

I then decided to have a sat dish system installed, was a bit costly but it works great. The system is running at 25mb now but in a few weeks will go up to 50mb with a new bit of equipment. Only problems is in lighting storms it cuts out, and for some reason if it's very very windy.

Just switched to O2 and get 14Meg on line from 20meg package. You can check the max your line is rated for; so you can get an idea if it's the line/exchange or the provider.

Virgin here – no complaints. What a turnround from NT Hell

Only problems is in lighting storms it cuts out, and for some reason if it's very very windy.

lightning is fair game & will kill it for a while but windy weather shouldn't
Two possible reasons

1. There's a tree that moves in & out of line of sight to the satellite when the wind gets up
2. the dish was poorly installed & moves in the wind

I'd get them back to look at it in both cases to either look at moving the dish or install it correctly

I'm on an up to 8meg package – usually get around 6 according to speed tests.

We moved to Sky and they throttle like anything at weekends and evenings. Working from home during the day I'll get 5+ on download and near 400K upload. In the evenings that can drop to anywhere from 800K>1.2 download and 100K upload.

Wish I'd stuck with Zen where they don't limit you artificially but just can't justify the £25 a month difference in price…

No problems here 8)

Seems to be running a bit slower than usual too…

Working from home during the day…….

Wish I'd stuck with Zen where they don't limit you artificially but just can't justify the £25 a month difference in price…

Won't your employer allow it as a legitimate expense & allow you to claim it back? – mine does