BT have long used to practice of changing the speed estimate for those who make a justifiable complaint regarding the VDSL speed obtained.
I can't say I'm surprised to hear that Walter, although the difference here is that BT appear to be doing this 'wholesale' and not just for those who have (yet) to make a justifiable complaint.
By doing so, deliberately or otherwise, BT are making it more difficult, as you imply, for
anybody who's estimate has been
reduced to make a complaint.
E.g. an extreme example where the line length to the FTTC is over 2 Km had an estimate of 19 Mbps which had been reduced to "Up to 2.3 Mbps" and has now been reduced to "Up to 1 Mbps".
That actual sync speed started at 1.88 Mbps but that has now dropped to 0.74 Mbps and BT will not investigate the partial fault.
Meanwhile another ADSL line to the same property still remains with a VDSL estimate at 19 Mbps.
Yes. So with the original actual sync it would fail the >25% reduction for >14days threshold, but no longer since they have reduced the
estimate. It goes without saying though that IMO, and no doubt in yours and many others, that BT should not be allowed to use these aribitrary estimates, and should be compelled to examine the records from WHOOSH instead. Again, IMO, those records should be available to the EU. After all, they are a record of the service received. An estimate may be OK to manage
expectations prior to installation, but post-installation, reality should prevail. Of course I understand why it is not in their interests to do so, but that is not the point, and perhaps this is a matter for Offcom, although I wouldn't hold out much hope.
I think BS suggested that the estimates are not based upon the total line length from the property to the FTTC but only from a DP to the FTTC.
Whilst this might be acceptable for an urban area where most lines are likely to be within say 1 km of the FTTC, the same cannot be said for rural lines.
Well, I certainly understand the difference in the overall length of the average D-side will make, but I'm not sure if you think this then affects the
estimate negatively?
Some examples,
1) Overall D-side is 1.2Km, DP is 0.2 Km from the property, estimate is based on 1km, so over-estimates a little
2) Overall D-side is 1.2Km, DP is 1Km from the property, estimate is based on 0.2Km, so over-estimates a lot
3) Overall D-side is 150m, DP is 10m from the property, estimate is based on 140m, so overestimates it a bit.
Perhaps you are pointing out that all of these are
over-estimates, but (2) will set unrealistic expectations?
In my experience though, and this will come as no suprise to anyone, all of these estimates (being exactly that) are generally conservative. I've seen BS state here on Kitz (and I would agree with him) that anybody with a PCP-premises length of <250m
ought to get 80/20 easily, and yet my
estimate, as reported above has been reduced from the already conservative 69Mb/s to 61.3Mb/s, while it continues to
max out the 67Mb/s profile max, with an attainable of 91.5Mb/s.
So, have the estimates been reduced because BT think that their DPs are now further away from the PCP than they were previously?
I think we all know the real reason.
[Edit] If
everyone's estimate had been reduced by, say 7.5Mb/s, I might have been suspicious that this was to make allowance for a 7.5Mb/s multicast IPTV stream that
may have to come over the same D-side, thereby reducing the amount available to GEA-Data. See
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,12501.0.html.
But that would be misleading.