Broadband Related > ADSL Issues

A polemic: ADSL ruined by BT. Is cable better?

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hake:
From the tone of discussions in this section of the excellent Kitz forums, I perceive an underlying distrust of BT.  It seems to me that BT is deceitful and incompetent.  Stuff happens at telephone exchanges, often with negative results, and the end user has to lump it or leave it.  There is no accountability by BT and therefore no incentive to do any better.

My MaxADSL performance is slowly sinking into an abyss.  In April 2006, my SAR110 router synched at 6.3mbps.  This changed after 6 months when synch suddenly dropped to 4.5mbps.  It has since been progressively falling and has now dipped below 3mbps and sometimes 2.5mbps.  BT do not appear to give a damn.  My telephone line seems to be blighted by BT having rated it at 1mbps and showing no inclination to review that.  I am 1.28km from the exchange.

All this says to me is that BT are unfit to have monopoly control over a strategically important economic resource: a vital part of this country's infrastructure (or so we are told).  How are we to progress to high speed networks as enjoyed in many competitor countries when our infrastructure owner/operator cannot even provide acceptable performance at its lo-tech end.  I do not believe that 21st century networks will happen, in the UK at least, while the present régime continues to be responsible for the débacle.

I cast my gaze at cable.  Are there any decent providers?  I like the television features in cable and BT are pushing me in that direction.  The copper loop is not up to the job any more.

:flamer:

fudgem:
Actually I have no idea what all those facts and figures mean, and I certainly have no idea what mine are, but I have been with cable broadband since getting my first PC in 2001.  I click on the little e and google appears immediately, if I download anything I don't have to hang about waiting for it, so I'm happy.

Used to be NTL but now Virgin

mr_chris:
Are there any LLU operators in your area, might be woth a shot...

Have a check on http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/adslchecker.php to see if any of hte other operators like Be or Sky or UK Online are available...

UncleUB:
I wish I was in a cable area,used to be b4 we moved 8 years ago,which was only 1.5 miles away.Our old house was one of the first to receive cable back in the early 90,s 1993 I think.At that time It was Yorkshire Cable who was the provider. How come some areas get it and some don't.Even in Sheffield it depends where you live.

roseway:
It seems to me that there are some assumptions being made here which may not be justified. If your sync rate has plummeted there has to be a technical explanation, and not all of the possible causes are down to BT. They're an imperfect organisation but they're not responsible for everything that goes wrong.

Possible causes are:

- a line fault
- an internal wiring fault
- defective filters
- local interference

and only the first would be BT's responsibility.

In the first instance I suggest that you read http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/lowSNR.htm which gives a lot of information about diagnosing and fixing noise problems. Consider whether anything has changed locally, which could cause a large increase in interference. Disconnect your ADSL equipment from the line, then dial 17070 and select 'Quiet line test' from the menu which is read out; if you can hear audible hiss or crackling this probably indicates a line fault which you can report to BT as a voice fault (dial 150). They do take these reports seriously.

If you would like us to try to help further, then please let us see your router stats ( see http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.htm ) which will help the diagnosis.

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