# BT Broadband issues



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

BT Broadband Rant alert!

Has anyone else chosen BT as their ISP and is starting to regret it? Sign up here! 

We signed up for Option3 about six weeks ago and ever since have been plagued with repeated connection failure, erratic broadband speed from average (at best) to woefully poor. Constant static white noise also present when using the telephone. No improvement, despite three sessions where the call centre has acknowledged the speeds are very poor and then line has supposedly been 'reset' by them, then we wait the requisite 5-10 working days for the line to settle down, as we were told it requires (and I quote) a "stabilisation period", and still no joy.

We were promised "up to 17 MB/S". These are todays speeds. Same as yesterdays and the day before etc...










Anyone else had BT issues like this, and did the service improve with time or was an ISP change the only answer..?

Roll on optic cable broadband


----------



## andrew_s46 (May 23, 2007)

My connection with BT has been exactly as you describe for the past 2 years.

I know there are a number of factors which effect connection such as distance from the exchange, so I don't want this to appear like I am blaming BT fully for my issues.

I am out of my contract at the end of the month and will be changing providers - not because I feel I will get a faster connection, but purely because of the utterly sub-standard customer service provided by BT.

Rant over!

This probably doesn't help your situation very much :-( but hopefully helps knowing there is someone else waiting 15 mins to load a 3 min clip on youtube! (when I can get a connection that is!)


----------



## toomanycitroens (Jan 14, 2011)

That is a very poor download speed, mine is through the phone line with Sky and I have no probs getting around the 10.00 mark.
Gotta say, I had more problems and lower speeds when I was with cable.


----------



## PaulTheo (Sep 26, 2010)

I was with BT for a few years and very slow downloads. I am a fare way from the exchange but by looking at my modem readings knew I could be getting better than the 1 mb I was getting BT told me they had reset it and refused to look into it further. I changed to sky through exactly the same lines and got 4 mb straight away and it has stayed there for the last 2 years. BT have the most useless help and assistance I have ever come across anywhere. Whats even more frustrating is that the house 50m away has got Virgin Media 50 mb cable conection.


----------



## [email protected] (Jan 9, 2006)

BT option 3 uploads crap but not worried too much about it, speed is better off peek naturally


----------



## mattc (Aug 12, 2008)

Used to be with BT but ahd nothing but dropped connections and poor speeds and it never working.

Changed to sky about a year ago and never had an issue with it even though its the same line, and that what BT said it was the line fault and distance etc etc.

Yet with Sky get better speeds and no issues at all


----------



## Jai (Mar 16, 2010)

I used to be with BT but was never happy with the speed. I am now with Virgin and promised up to 10mb/s download speeds...This is what I got on test:



Much happier now!


----------



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

Well, I'm sorry to here some of you folks have had similar problems to the ones I'm experiencing. It really is very frustrating indeed and renders the net almost useless for bandwidth heavy traffic at busy times. I just don't know what the answer is? Very strange as the problems have only arisen since we upgraded from Option 1 to Option 3..? Prior, speed was never quick, around the 3Mb/s for download, but the current speeds make the older service resemble warp speed!

Anyway, I've just sent an email outlining the issues to customer services (sigh) and will see what they come back with. Planning on detailing all correspondence via email from here on in as I want the details recorded.

Frustratingly, the area where we moved from last June have just had the road dug up and are now fully equipped with fiber optic cable broadband. Sigh again :wall:


----------



## turboyamaha (Nov 18, 2010)

BT broadband = absolute rubbish!
BT customer service = even worse!


----------



## centenary (Sep 5, 2010)

It isnt just BT's service, its infrastructure is crap.

Im LLU but Im still dependent on BT's piece of copper cable from exchange to my NTE 5 box! OK speed is a little better than BT would provide but when the cable from exchange to home is crap, you lose virtually all performace.

There's no cable in my area and a search for BB speed shows massive variation. Then speed slows to a crawl because im just over 1.5km from the exchange yet someone who is 1km can get at least twice the speed I get.

BB in this country is crap.

I know there's an intermittent fault from the exchange to my NTE 5 but BT want 160 quid to come and check it then if they find nothing (which is likely cos its intermittent), will charge me.

Stuff that!


----------



## simonfoy (May 1, 2010)

I was on a £17pm contract. Mid contract they changed it to £23 without telling me, told me they could do that and if I didn't like it I could leave as they had cancelled my contract. Most I ever for was 6mbps. So i took them up on their kind offer and cancelled that day, much to the disgust of the sales person who passed me to 3 different people trying then to get me to stay. They then somehow managed to get it down to £15 for their Unlimited CAPPED service. I called Sky got connected within 3 weeks. Been getting 13mbps. It is truly unlimited they don't have a fair usage policy and because I have the tv and phone with them it is £7.50 a month. FAR better service. 

BT are totally ****e, they simply don't care. Vote with your feet, there are enough ISPs out there so you don't have to remain with BT.

Simon


----------



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

Well, I did another speed test this morning and the same appalling low speed. I started downloading a small low res Autocar video review on Youtube, that was only 3m 57s long - twenty minutes later and the little red bar has finally finished edging across the run window at a glacially slow pace, in fact I actually grew a three foot long beard from being clean shaven in the time it took to download. Sigh. :wall:

As I do not have the optic cable option (yet) in the area, I would still be dependent on the BT tel line connection. I'm wondering what the alternatives are?

Are there any non BT cable dependent satellite broadband options available, where the end user can literally bypass BT's network? 

Any ISP alternative must be Mac friendly though (guessing all are)


----------



## Techgeek (Jun 7, 2007)

A lot of my customers use bt and the dsl uptime is a joke, you need to power cycle the modems at least weekly. I find sky much better, although your using BTs copper it's skys line cards and racks at the exchange and barring a noisy line from a faulty port on changeover day it has been 100% dependable.
When you say about the hissing though, you could have a dodgy microfilter or signal reflections from too many internal extensions star wired. You could try a filtered nte5 faceplate on the master so all your internal extensions are filtered and the dsl only goes to your modem, that often helps.


----------



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

Thanks Techgeek. Interesting info regarding the Sky set up. That does sound like a much better set up given their independent use of equipment at the exchange.

There are few extensions in the house, but not installed by us. We have just inherited the installation as is, so I have no idea if they are star wired or not? Who would I need to contact to take a look at the set up? I'm guessing either BT themselves or some sort of independent engineer?


----------



## Techgeek (Jun 7, 2007)

An independant, bt charge an arm and a leg and its a hit or a miss as to the quality of openreach guy you get. 
As a guide I would charge roughly between 35-110 depending on if it was a straight faceplate swap, or rewiring the lot and fitting all new sockets but I only cover central Scotland.
No guarantees it is that as over the internet its hard to diagnose but yoir internal extensions can wreak havoc with dsl.
You could try a known good microfilter directly into the test point in the back of the master to confirm.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.


----------



## McClane (Dec 9, 2010)

yetizone said:


> BT Broadband Rant alert!
> 
> Has anyone else chosen BT as their ISP and is starting to regret it? Sign up here!
> 
> ...


Our speeds aren't too bad, about 6mb/s... but the connection failure yes (well certainly the last 2 months or so)... and the white noise.... holy  I thought that was just us (thanks to a shoddy install or similar)!!

There must be grounds for some action based on this. Thank you for your informative post!


----------



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

Thanks again Techgeek. Just wish you were a bit nearer! :thumb:

So it looks like I'll need an independent engineer to come out and take a loot at the installation as it stands and then go from there. I'll wait a week and see if the (promised by BT) speed increases and the line connection remains constant. To be fair, there have been zero connection failures since yesterday morning. :doublesho

If anyone else are having similar ISP issues, the Gadget Show have a speed test on their web site, along with all of the contact details of the main UK ISP providers, and if all else fails, a link to Ofcom as well 

http://fwd.channel5.com/gadget-show/blog/isp-contact-details


----------



## simonfoy (May 1, 2010)

I am on PC and MAC mate, SKY works just fine for me. AIRPORT found the hub. entered the password and hey presto not a problem since. HTH



yetizone said:


> Well, I did another speed test this morning and the same appalling low speed. I started downloading a small low res Autocar video review on Youtube, that was only 3m 57s long - twenty minutes later and the little red bar has finally finished edging across the run window at a glacially slow pace, in fact I actually grew a three foot long beard from being clean shaven in the time it took to download. Sigh. :wall:
> 
> As I do not have the optic cable option (yet) in the area, I would still be dependent on the BT tel line connection. I'm wondering what the alternatives are?
> 
> ...


----------



## centenary (Sep 5, 2010)

Unless you are fortunate to live in an area with a cable infrastructure such as virgin, even if you go LLU you are still stuck with BT's ****e infrastructure from the exchange to your home.

So, the service is only as good as its weakest link which is usually BT's infrastructure imo


----------



## GR33N (Apr 5, 2009)

Ive recently signed up to Orange home broadband at my mums, which was activated on Friday, when I managed to get online I saw 0.2mpbs down and 0.35mbps up. 

I cant even get my connection to load google, its a complete joke. I was told to give 10days for line testing. Surely they cant expect me to pay for a third of months internet bill which isnt working! 

Surely 0.1mbps isnt classed as an acceptable speed by any ISP?


----------



## simonfoy (May 1, 2010)

It will change. Mine was 2mbps on Sky for the first 10 days. They line test. Then it will get faster. Bear with it and things will hopefully improve. I know what you mean about paying for it, with you on that one. Slower than bloody dial up.


----------



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

Well, I hope it improves. The line was 'reset' early last week and still no improvement yet. And no response from BT regarding my first email notifying them of the problem. So I'll email again later in the week and see if that brings any help. Hey ho.


----------



## centenary (Sep 5, 2010)

yetizone said:


> Well, I hope it improves. The line was 'reset' early last week and still no improvement yet. And no response from BT regarding my first email notifying them of the problem. So I'll email again later in the week and see if that brings any help. Hey ho.


If your connection has been unstable in the past and a BT engineer has intervened in the exchange to increase the target SNRM, you'll have little chance of getting BT to reduce it.

Your ISP (if they are not BT) can ask but the response tends to be unhelpful.

BB is crap as I've said before. Using this tool here you can enter your postcode and see who around you is getting what speed. You need to click on the 'detailed report' link under the map when it displays.

I can see some people in my area who are 629 meters and 621 meters from the exchange get wildly differing speeds. Two people near me on the same street, one gets 6 meg the other gets nearly 11 meg. And they are both with sky!


----------



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

Contact! BT have finally made contact. I KNOW..! I needed smelling salts to bring me round. The upshot of the telephone call was the instruction to make sure that all of the supplied BT hardware, ADSL filter switch and phone line to be inserted into the main BT socket in the property, and not use any extension leads. BT will now test the line for 24 hours, monitoring speed and connection stability. Then will be able to assess wether a visit from an engineer is necessary. Progress to a point.

The woefully slow speeds continue though :wall:...


----------



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

Centenary - Thanks for the link. According to the Top 10 Broadband site basic map, I should be getting a healthy 8Mb/s for Standard Broadband and up to 24Mb/s for High Speed Broadband. Cable Broadband unavailable.

And the detailed map states that my ISP is providing speeds ranging from 2.1 to 6.8 in the immediate vicinity. Having 0.13 Mb/s I'd be happy with a paltry 2.1 Mb/s at the moment!


----------



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

Update: Persistence pays off it seems? BT have been monitoring the line and sure enough they spy a problem! A BT (Openreach) engineer came out today, tested all the wiring and found that there were issues from the BT box in the house to the rest of the internal wiring. 

He concluded that we have 21CN line (ADSL2 I believe) and get a decent 14 Mb/s to the property and theoretically the throughput (our actual BB speed) as he called it should be not far off that mark. He disconnected all of the extension cables and sockets and re-wired and fitted a brand new cable. Said it should take a few days to settle down, but initial test speeds are optimistic. The only issue that could arise being the BRAS Profile (?) may need to be reset if the connection slows further or becomes unstable.

Current speed:










If any of you guys are having problems with BT, I found the best approach to get things moving is to email them rather than go through the call centre. Then its a registered complaint and they seemed a little more eager to address the issue. Here's the linky...

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact/c/2702

So at last, we are getting a decent sort of connection. Early days yet so time will tell - just hope our BB speed now remains stable.


----------



## Des (Dec 25, 2008)

I'm getting decent d/l speed but the wireless connection keeps dropping off!!!

Tried changing every channel on the hub but it is still very frustrating, having to repair connection all the time on the lap-top.


----------



## MARKETMAN (Aug 22, 2006)

I was with Bt woeful speeds and always disconnecting ... kicked them into touch now with Virgin Media up to 30 mb package now this is what I'm getting 


... very pleased..... so far :thumb:


----------



## yetizone (Jun 25, 2008)

MARKETMAN said:


> I was with Bt woeful speeds and always disconnecting ... kicked them into touch now with Virgin Media up to 30 mb package now this is what I'm getting
> 
> 
> ... very pleased..... so far :thumb:


Very good speed - I assume the Virgin package you have subscribed to is fibre-optic?


----------



## centenary (Sep 5, 2010)

yetizone said:


> Very good speed - I assume the Virgin package you have subscribed to is fibre-optic?


Yeti, mate, how far did the website say you were from the exchange? Im 0.9 mile (which is under 2km) according to google map and sam knows yet my isp claims Im 4.5km away!

I just dont believe my line goes all round the houses by a factor of 2!


----------



## MARKETMAN (Aug 22, 2006)

yetizone said:


> Very good speed - I assume the Virgin package you have subscribed to is fibre-optic?


yes it is fibre optic :thumb::thumb:


----------



## Superspec (Feb 25, 2011)

If your connection speed is so poor you'd be better off with a mobile broadband connection and a MiFi router (So you can share the connection.) Or if you have an Android phone, 2.1or higher, you could use it as a wifi tether (if you have unlimited data otherwise it might get expensive.)


----------



## Jai (Mar 16, 2010)

I was already getting a reasonable connection with Virgin, but just upgraded and thought I'd share my results...


----------



## Ninja59 (Feb 17, 2009)

doesnt help not having virgin here did at uni and tbh the speed was good but because of there traffic shaping in the evening it does slow....

with Be here and getting about 10 -12

we nearly had BT and erm it never worked from day one.


----------

