Slow broadband after BT upgraded exchange to ADSL2+

[markperetti]

BT recently upgraded our local exchange to ADSL2+. At our office about 6KM away from the exchange our ADSL went from about 1-1.5 MEG to 2.5-3.00 MEG, which was great. I therefore expected my BT Business Broadband at my home <1KM away from the same exchange to be very quick, given that it was 4-5 MEG pre upgrade. I was very surprised to find it had dropped to about 2 MEG, less than my two office connections which were 5KM further away.

I spoke to BT and they advised that I needed to have my lines re-graded to benefit from ADSL2+. I did this and was quoted an aprox download of about 17 MEG (give or take 2 MEG either way). After the re-grade the speed has improved to about 8-9 MEG, but still not the 17 MEG promised. I have rung BT again and they did an SNR reset, but that's made no difference. They tell me I have to wait for the 10 day stabilisation period. This sorry saga has been going on for over a month now.

BT have checked the line and said it's perfect, I am plugged into the front of the NTE 5 (face plate off), tried a new microfilter, bought a new ADSL2+ TP-LINK router (having tried two Netgear Routers), all of which has made no difference.

One of the people I spoke to at BT said they may need to get BT Wholesale to check the equipment at the exchange.

Is there anyone with some good advice? My neighbour next door got 14 MEG the day the exchange was upgraded (also with BT Business Broadband). Any suggestions or who I should contact at BT would be gratefully received.

[DaveA]

Hi,

Right it's not uncommon for a change from ADSL Max (up to 8 Mb) to ADSL2+ (up to 20 Mb) to go a bit wrong with the profile, so a profile reset is not a bad plan.

One thing tho.  The reset should have done it's job within 72 hours, although some people still quote 10 days to be safe.

If the Helpdesk have done all the diagnostics from their side and you've changed everything but there's been no change, then it looks like an engineer.  The reason is that there must be something causing the connection to slow down.  For example is theere noise on the line?  Does the connection drop a lot?

If you have an open case then stay in touch with the Helpdesk reasonably regularly, as the case will normally be set to close after three days of no contact, or if a couple of callbacks in a row fail.

Dave

[MHC]

What are the full line stats and also are you able to take a screen shot of the bit loading graph?    That may show a notch where a noise source is causing problems or a rapid roll off at the higher frequencies.

[markperetti]

Thanks for the reply - after a lot of calls to the helpdesk (some advisors telling me there was nothing else they could do) a very helpful BT (Openreach) engineer came out and found that a section of the cabling between two of the cabinets was in Aluminum. He changed the pair to a different cable and I'm now getting a sync of about 20 MB and download of up to 18 MB and upload of just over 1 MB - so I'm vet happy.

Thanks for your reply though.

[DaveA]

Hi,

Ah the joy of legacy aluminium.  The experiment that went wrong oh so many years ago.  😞

Well at least someone found it and managed to get you off it.  Hope it all goes well now.

Dave