Not getting minimum download/upload speeds

[av709]

Hi all,

Apologies in advance for the lengthy post!

I signed up for Vodafone Fibre 38 at my new address after previously having its fibre service at my old address (house share) just across the road. Had a new phone line installed on 14th Sep and the speeds that day were the full 37.5 down 9.8 up with 9ms ping but the engineer did a poor job and used white internal cable between the telegraph pole and my property. As the speeds were good I didn't bother complaining. Next morning around 8am had a call from Openreach saying they'd like to send an engineer round with regards to a fault with my broadband. I was having a lie in and having no knowledge of the fault, I declined the appointment. Later that day I noticed the speeds had degraded significantly, download speed was now mid 20s and upload around 5, with the ping sat around 40ms and spikes up to and over 100ms. After speaking to Vodafone about the fault, they weren't able to tell me who had logged the fault, but that one was open quoted "unbalanced cable". They arranged for an engineer to come out today who has changed the cabling to the telegraph pole to the correct black external cable, but the speeds and ping are still the same. The Openreach engineers were unable to say what the problem was and that there was nothing more they could do since I'm getting the minimum download speed of 27Mb. This contrasts to Vodafone's figure of 35Mb guaranteed minimum.

Now I know there is a fault on the line somewhere as I live in an apartment above a shop (which is served by the same fibre cabinet aprox 150m up the road) and the owner of the shop has BT infinity and gets 60Mb download speeds. I keep in contact with my ex-housemates across the road who have now taken out Vodafone Fibre 76 and get download speeds in the mid-late 50s. This leads me to believe there is no reason I shouldn't be getting the full 38Mb download speed and of course an acceptable ping value.

With Vodafone and Openreach both reluctant to investigate further, I'm not sure what to do next. To me it seems clear there's a line fault causing the DLM to throttle the speeds and increase the ping. Why the ping is shooting up to 100ms I don't know. Am I the only one who thinks the figures don't add up? Am I entitled to leave since I'm not getting the quoted minimum guaranteed speed? If I decide to stay and they can't provide the quoted speeds, should I receive a monthly credit to my bill?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Stacey87]

My guess would be that the engineer didn't reset DLM after fixing the cabling, so it's still capping the line at fault level. In theory it should automatically re-asses and adjust back up within 24-72 hours. It's weird that Openreach are quoting you a different minimum speed to Vodafone, but as your contract is with Vodafone, they're obliged to either meet it, or acknowledge that they can't and let you leave without penalty. Given that, as you say, your speeds were fine on the first day of connection, it shouldn't be the case that they can't supply that speed. I think it's more than likely just down to the poor install and will rectify itself sharpish, but Vodafone definitely need to be passing it back to their tech/fault team to make sure that happens for you.

[av709]

Thanks for your reply! That makes perfect sense, the speeds are exactly the same as they were with the old cabling so it would appear no re-adjustment has taken place. How is the DLM reset, would the engineer have needed to go to the street cabinet to do this? How long will it take to do it on its own and will it put me straight back on 40/10 or will it increase the speed in stages? Sorry for all the questions, not well up on Openreach FTTC.

I spoke to Vodafone a few hours after the engineers left but they said they hadn't received the engineer's report yet and when they do level 2 tech would contact me which was supposed to be today as that was the deadline set apparently. They never did so hopefully they'll call tomorrow.

Thanks again.

[av709]

These are my router stats for the last 12 hours. The upstream FEC corrections are increasing very rapidly. Do these figures indicate a fault is still present despite the engineer putting a new telephone line in yesterday and are they a cause for concern? Ping is still sat in the 40s. Thanks

[Mark]

@av709

Have our tech team contacted you regarding this issue?

If not you can get in touch with our Broadband support team here: 08080 034 515 they'll be able to provide more information on the engineers report and help perform any follow up action needed.

[av709]

After having another engineer out who fixed some line faults and reset the DLM, I was put back on the 40/10 profile which lasted all of 2 days. I'm now back to 31/8 with interleaving on high. Pings are not great and the FECs on the upstream are off the scale (billions in a 24hr period). Despite this, there's still a significant number of CRC errors as well.

I was supposed to be getting a call back from level 2 tech to check on things but this never happened and I'm now going to have to chase it up again. Fed up with this issue. I wouldn't mind but I was told I would get the full speeds which I had no reason to disbelieve as everyone else in the area is getting 50Mb+ down including my neighbours.

[av709]

Starting to think it's the router causing the issue. After rebooting it my sync speed went up to 36.1/9.0 and the FECs are coming in a lot slower at around a few hundred per minute as opposed to 10,000 per second. It seems to be the longer the router is on for the faster the errors start coming in. Could it be this causing DLM to throttle speeds and apply interleaving?

[Alex]

@av709 It could potentially be an issue with your router. 

Did you raise this with our Broadband team? If not, please contact us using the link in the private message I've sent and we'll be able to get you in contact with them 🙂