Q. When is a guaranteed download speed NOT a guaranteed download speed?

[Mission360]

Answer... when Vodafone tells you it's not!

I am out of contract with these charlatans and have been for 6 months now. Every month or so my d/l speeds drop horrendously and I have to go through the pain of Vodafone chat to try and get an Openreach engineer to do a line reset as this always fixes it according to the engineer. This time Vodafone have decided that there is nothing wrong with the line as it all checks out. I logged into my account online which quite clearly shows I should be getting 40 Mbps minimum download speed. I queried this as it hasn't been attained for best part of a year now. The operative on chat told me that it doesn't matter what it says in my account, the fact is that the guaranteed minimum download speed is 35Mbps and today I am getting 35.5Mbps so it's all good. They also told me that if I signed another contract then the speed it states in my account would be attainable. I wasn't convinced so went through to sales and they confirmed that it doesn't matter whether I signed another contract or not, the stated guaranteed minimum download speed would be 35Mbps. Why are they allowed to show in my account the speed they are guaranteeing, but refuse to honour it?

[Jayach]

---

@Mission360 wrote:

Why are they allowed to show in my account the speed they are guaranteeing, but refuse to honour it?

---

I have no answer to your question, but as you are out of contract you can always go with someone else.

However the first thing to know is what Openreach say your line should be capable of.

If you go here: BT Broadband (btwholesale.com) you can get some idea, if possible paste the results here so we can take a look. (Don't show any personal details)

[Mission360]

[Mission360]

Yes, i could go somewhere else but surely it's all the same equipment, cables etc. 

[Jayach]

Obviously the copper cable from the cabinet to you home won't change, but you may be put on a different fibre.

You will also get a new router and will be dealing with different support staff.

If you are needing monthly DLM resets then something is wrong and Vodafone are obviously not willing to fix it.

Your picture hasn't been moderated yet, but perhaps if you post your connection stats that may show something. Like this:

DSL Status Information

DSL Mode

ITU-T G.993.2_Annex_B (VDSL2)

DSL Uptime

15 days, 13 hours, 37 minutes and 45 seconds

Line Coding

DMT

Status

Connected

Number of Cuts

3

Link Power State

L0

Line Quality

  Downstream Upstream

Current Rate	79999 kbps	20000 kbps
Maximum Rate	83110 kbps	27980 kbps
Signal-to-Noise Ratio	4.3 dB	10.8 dB
Attenuation	DS1 9.2 dB, DS2 22.5 dB, DS3 35.0 dB	US0 2.0 dB, US1 15.5 dB, US2 25.2 dB
Power	12.8 dBm	4.6 dBm
CRC Errors in last 22417 minute(s)	1	7914
K (number of bytes in DMT frame)	0	0
R (number of bytes in RS code word)	8	0
S (RS code word size in DMT frame)	0.0647	0.3819
D (interleaver depth)	8	1
Delay	0 ms	0 ms

Are you on Superfast 1 or 2?

[Mission360]

DSL Mode
ITU-T G.993.2_Annex_B (VDSL2)
DSL Uptime
5 hours, 9 minutes and 37 seconds
Line Coding
DMT
Status
Connected
Number of Cuts
0
Link Power State
L0
Line Quality
Downstream Upstream
Current Rate 38031 kbps 11604 kbps
Maximum Rate 49787 kbps 11662 kbps
Signal-to-Noise Ratio 6 dB 6.1 dB
Attenuation DS1 14.3 dB, DS2 35.8 dB, DS3 53.2 dB US0 6.4 dB, US1 31.1 dB, US2 44.3 dB
Power 13.6 dBm 6.9 dBm
CRC Errors in last 309 minute(s) 21553 8
K (number of bytes in DMT frame) 0 0
R (number of bytes in RS code word) 10 16
S (RS code word size in DMT frame) 0.0217 0.6553
D (interleaver depth) 2803 1
Delay 15 ms 0 ms
Downstream Upstream
Super Frames 7600144 1890221
Super Frame Errors 21553 8
RS Words 3404684434 113377463
RS Correctable Errors 201888311 8
RS Uncorrectable Errors 71670 0
Downstream Upstream
HEC Errors 11780 0
OCD Errors 0 0
LCD Errors 0 0
Total Cells 1358660242 0
Data Cells 118531753 0
Bit Errors 0 0
Downstream Upstream
Total ES 4617 1132
Total SES 0 10
Total UAS 30 2831

[Jayach]

Your sync speed (which is what Vodafone mean when they say download speed) is currently at 38Mbs which is at the lower end of your expected speeds. However it was faster earlier today (44Mbs) but it has only been up 5 hours and has a lot of CRC errors. It does look like there are problems.

Have you tried with it in the test socket to eliminate any possibility of wiring issues at your end?

[Mission360]

Cheers, yes it's always in the test socket. I leave it there.

[Jayach]

In that case I would say Openreach definitely need to take a better look at it. Unfortunately they really only want to concentrate on the FTTP side of things as all the copper is being phased out.

Try seeing if you can convince Vodafone to call them out again, some Openreach engineers are more diligent than others, hopefully you may get one who is willing to look more deeply than just doing a DLM reset.

Good Luck.

[Mission360]

Why over the past 3 years i have lived here do you think the average speeds have decreased for my postcode. When I moved in it was 41 Mbps, now we only ever get quoted 34 Mbps max.