Fault in my line, nobody cares

[Realscot555]

Changed to Vodafone broadband from sky a couple months ago now. Previously speeds were mid to high 40s sync speed. Since switching to Vodafone im now down to 38mb sync. 10 years ago I had 65mbit sync in this house, its gradually been coming down the last few years, and disconnects have became more frequent.

I have had BT open reach engineers out at least once a year from sky, and now an engineer with Vodafone. My cabinet is at the entrance to my street, and I'm the 6th House in line from it. The cables go under each house. The most recent bt engineer told me all this and he said the cable will probably need renewing but they wouldn't be doing it till the street gets fttp by digging up the pavements in the future. What a rubbish service.

Engineers device was syncing at 49mbit, my router synced at 41mb that day, using same cables. Vodafone tech lied to me and said that the engineer said 41mb was my max line speed even though I have a photo of his device getting 49mb.

Also, I told Vodafone I wanted my discount for not meeting minimum speed of 58mb they guaranteed, and 2 months later the discount still hasn't been applied.

I have 2 mobile contracts and Internet with Vodafone, and I'm sick of them. Might take all my business elsewhere and they can whistle for their money. 

[Jayach]

I can understand them not wanting to dig up the road, as you are getting what they would consider an acceptable speed. There are many people who can't get even that. (no comfort to you I know)

If you check here, you may get some idea how long you will have to wait for FTTP.

https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/where-when-building-ultrafast-full-fibre-broadband

[lionatus]

OH shut up bandwidth is money. My line used to get 112, I'm now throttled to 44 despite the fact I can BUY NEW for a guaranteed minimum of 59, GUARANTEED. I'm already top tier on Vodafone and they advertise GUARANTEED on my own line 15 meg above the paltry 44 they give me now. I tell this to the CS guy and he reverts to mny contract, fine I say show me my contract as I don't actually have a copy, he says go here and its my online account. Guess what every mobile, tablet etc. account you can wish for but NO broadband... I complained to Openreach that wons the lines no Fault my min is 60, I complained to my old supplier they said no fault here and did a test MIN is 59-60. Query VODA you're contracted min is 33 feel lucky we're giving you 44. I'm paying more than DOUBLE what I used to for -40%???? GFU Vodafone

[Cynric]

.@lionatus I wonder if all these references to the "contract" may actually be to this bit of fineprint. This quote is from here, https://www.vodafone.co.uk/broadband, and is found in a "folded" section labelled "Broadband". Frankly Sync Speed is "snake oil", it is a measure of what the line could provide in ideal conditions and is nothing like your daily experience.

Average speed claim: 73% of customers on Superfast 1 receive download speeds above 35 Mbps and 61% of customer on Superfast 2 receive download speeds above 63 Mbps. For all other plans, we estimate a majority of customers will receive the relevant download speeds specified above. We base our average speeds on sync speed (the speed of your line from the street cabinet or telephone exchange to your router). Speeds may vary significantly by location and are dependent on all equipment meeting minimum specifications, being fully functional and working at full speed. The range of wireless equipment can vary according to the layout of your home. Other factors can also impact internet speeds, such as distance of your home from the network exchange, the number of people using the internet, the level of use of the internet and other environmental and technological influences.

---

[Jayach]

@lionatus If you don't quote the post you are replying to, nobody knows which one it is. (unless you are replying to the directly previous post, and then it would be assumed)

Like this:

---

@lionatus wrote:

My line used to get 112, I'm now throttled to 44 

---

It seems unlikely you were getting 112, as the maximum sync on FTTC/VDSL is 80. (unless you were on G.fast)

[lionatus]

@Jayach ok np, but I was on a monitoring whitebox at the time for some broadband research company. A...

@lionatus If you don't quote the post you are replying to, nobody knows which one it is. (unless you are replying to the directly previous post, and then it would be assumed)

Like this:

@lionatus wrote:

My line used to get 112, I'm now throttled to 44 

It seems unlikely you were getting 112, as the maximum sync on FTTC/VDSL is 80. (unless you were on G.fast)

[Andy]

Hi @Realscot555 👋 I am sorry to hear this. So that we can look into the issues you have been facing and the situation around your discount could you please contact as by following the instructions here, as we don`t have account access on this platform. When contacting us if you pop in the link for this thread which will save you the time of explaining the situation again.

[VFbroadbanduser]

@Realscot555 the first thing you should be checking is the BT Wholesale ADSL Checker website to see what they say your line should sync at to give you a rough idea:- https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

Just put in your phone number and the Captcha and it will show you all the details held.

The reason the sync speed drops over the years is caused by two things. You were one of the first to be connected on the cabinet and will be connected in the top ports, also the more properties that are added to the cabinet, the more line attenuation will happen. Which causes more noise on the line which in turn degrades the electrical signals which causes the sync speed to lower.

This is because the pair of jumper wires in the copper PCP cabinet are not shielded they are just a piece of copper with plastic on them. Openreach were going to add noise cancelling around 5 years ago to the lines this would of stopped the line attenuation but that didn't happen.

Fibre to the cabinet broadband isn't perfect technology it has limits down to the amount of copper on a line. Like with any copper line it is all down to the distance between the DSLAM and the customers property. The longer the line the more it will degrade and the slower the speed will be. VDSL2 has a limit of around 1000m of copper on the line from the street fibre DSLAM cabinet before it will really degrades.

For you to get a line sync of 65mb/s 10 years ago you are around 500 metres away from the cabinet. I have had exactly the same problem as you, I am around 600m away from my cabinet and was the first person to be connected to the cabinet I am on 11 years ago, which had a line sync of 72mb/s. For the last 6 years my line has degraded continually and I now sync at between 43mb/s and 47mb/s with Vodafone. The last time I had a sync of over 60mb/s was 6 years ago.

FTTC isn't perfect and one of the flaws with it is the line will degrade the more people that are connected in the cabinet. They have anything from 200 to 400 ports in each copper PCP cabinet. So if you are one of the first to be connected the top ports will degrade over time.

The reason I know all this is because I was an Openreach engineer from 2010-2012 who used to install FTTC.