Is BT doing a 'Volkswagen' on speed testing?

[The Byre]

Is BT/Openreach doing a 'Volkswagen', i.e. sensing and reacting to a test of their system, but outside of that, not providing the advertised performance.

I tested our broadband for speed and it came up with 7+ megabits/sec download and 200kb/sec upload. Slow, but within the broad figures that they promise.

However, if I actually use the service, the upload speed falls from 200kbs to 9kbs fairly rapidly. In other words, it may be that when the modems sense a test is being done, they give those few seconds of test data priority, but outside a strict test protocol, the data rate falls to a tiny fraction of what it should be.

If this is what is happening, that would ofcourse be consumer fraud.

At the moment, our customers are amazed to discover that I cannot send them evn a couple of gigabytes via the internet! I recently had to send 3GB to New Zealand on a DVD, as sending it via BT would take two months!

It would be intersting to see if others experience the same. Test you line the usual way and then try sending a lump of data via an FTP service and see at what REAL speed the data goes through!

 

[BRIDGREGORY]

Hi

I'm not an internet techi but I recently moved from the old bradband to fibre.

As you say the speed as measured on the connection looks good but many of the things that I use do not look to be any faster.

I appreciate thet this could be the site that I'm connecting to but when you still get buffering on movie suppliers it makes you wonder.

When is Mr Cameron going to put his complaints about UK fibre speed into some possitive action.

Brian

 

[Faevilangel]

no issues here, my line is constantly at what I was expected to get but I am on fibre and close to the exchange (if I stood on my roof I would see the exchange just over a mile away).

The issue with BT and broadband is the latency / speed decreases the further it has to travel, so someone 2 miles from the exchange will get a better speed than someone 3 miles away, there of course loads of other reasons for the speed differences.

A friend who lives around half a mile up the road, connected to the same exhange is only getting 45mb on his line while I get the 70 I am due, which can be partly down to my equipment being better too.

When we were on ADSL our line was always so slow due to the number of people in the area using the net, once we upgraded to fibre, we haven't had this issue.

Do some googling and you will see loads of ways to improve your line including replacing filters, replacing the BT router and replacing wires to the hub and to the computer(s).

 

[The Byre]

Do some googling and you will see loads of ways to improve your line including replacing filters, replacing the BT router and replacing wires to the hub and to the computer(s).

That sort of stuff hardly accounts for a fall from 200kbs upload speed to 9kbs!

 

[Butterflyj]

samknows.com This site might be of interest to you.

I stupidly changed provider for my business in March 2015. The speeds before (non Fibre) were 18Mbps and on a bad day 14Mbps. The new provider at best was giving me 14Mbps but mostly @ 6Mbps and variable at that.

I was able to provide evidence from repeated speed tests that I was not getting the speed that they had advised and was able to move in the first 3 months. (I had originally been led to believe that I only had the initial 14 days to move).

 

[roydmoorian]

Got this call last week " Fibre is available for your postcode now" .

A few searching questions from me later and I discover that they expect 3.85Mps as it is only FTTC and the cabinet in question is 2 miles from our premises. A speed test actually shows up as 6.68Mps as I write (on copper) 4g with my mobile as a hotspot gives us about 15Mps.

I am however tempted to look at swapping my broadband to BT so that I can have access to the BT WiFi network on mobile phones but I will only do that along with the installation of a extra new line so that I have no interruption to internet and can run two providers side by side for at least a full month.

The final 500 metres to our premises is via an underground SWA 5 pair which is not ducted and runs through 3 other folks properties 2 of whom also get their telephony services from the same 5 pair SWA cable.

 

[Faevilangel]

That sort of stuff hardly accounts for a fall from 200kbs upload speed to 9kbs!

There are so many variables but some of them can help alleviate issues, there could be a damaged wire which can cause the massive slowdown, but my first port of call would be to the ISP as they can do some checks on their end (line tests) which might explain if there is an issue but the most common reasons are over saturation in the area and distance from the exchange.

 

[Voicebooth]

What speeds do you get from http://www.speedtest.net/ ?

 

[Alan]

I get 97MB up and 97MB down on BT at the office all the time. I guess you are on an ADSL service.

 

[SamWhittle]

Don't think so

 

[simon field]

Complain and they turn the tap up.

For a while, then it's down down you go.....