Broadband Related > Broadband Technology

Is there ANY real solution to slow speeds with a long line length?

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danieltharris:
Hi,

I'm new to the forum so first post here.

Sorry if any of this comes out as a rant, as it's quite frustrating but just really need to see if there's anything I can realistically do to help us, and our neighbours.

Me and my girlfriend recently bought a new house, a new build and we have major issues with our broadband.

We were with Talk Talk, but just switched over to Plus Net as i'd heard bad things about TT so switched during the 14 day period.

We get rediculously slow speeds, aparently due to us having a very long line to the exchange. However, the speeds we get are plain rediculous, we get 25 kb/s download speeds...MAX!

This is horrible for me, as I am a software engineer and general geek, so I obviously make a lot of use out of our internet connection. We can't get Virgin Media in our area, as they either didn't have the hindsight, didn't know, or didn't think it worth the cost to cable our area when all the new houses were being built, so that option is out of the window :-(

Very frustrating as I know the closest road to us not part of the new development can get get up to 30 meg broadband, as opposed to our 270 odd K ADSL.

It seems a combination of long line, and cheap materials used by BT are the cause of the slow speed. Are we doomed to slow speeds until Virgin Media cable our area? Or is there anything realistic we can do?

All the other homeowners here have the same problem, and we are trying to get together to somehow convince Virgin Media it's worth cabling the area (If that's even possible at this stage).

Both technical, and non-technical people are frustrated by the speeds, streaming anything from YouTube, iPlayer or anything like that is a no-go, reasonable size downloads take forever, it's really not that much faster than Dialup was, I remember getting 3.5 kb/s speeds back in 1997!

With all the talk and advertisement you see for up to 50Meg speeds in some parts of the country, and with me never getting lower than 4Meg speeds (That was in the city centre and max speed!)  I never realised there are still parts of non-rural areas where people genuinely have problems with broadband. It seems getting the entire country onto decent speed broadband is either never going to happen, or will take another 10 years if in some areas we are now only getting speeds around 6-7 times faster than we were 14 years ago.

Any answer to the problem, or just pray that one day Virgin Media cable the area? Because if BT have used the cheapest wiring possible now, on brand new properties then I don't see them doing any upgrade works in the next 10 years.

2 properties ago I was on 20Meg Virgin Media with reliable speeds, and that was in a much less populated part of the country. Really hoping they decide to do it at some point, they would clean up in this area because everybody is ready to switch to them.

roseway:
Hi and welcome,

So we can get a handle on the condition of your connection, could you copy your router stats here.

danieltharris:
ADSL Mode:    ADSL2
Interleaving:    Off
DSL Line Speed
Up: 443 kbps    Down: 207 kbps
Line Attenuation
Up: 45.0 dB      Down: 63.5 dB
SN Margin
Up: 7.3 dB  Down: 4.1 dB
Total Errors Seconds:    0

These are the stats from the router. Line Attenuation could indeed be higher, but as far as i'm aware most routers won't show anything higher than 63.5dB, even if it's higher in reality.

If you need anything else please let me know.

burakkucat:
Hi Daniel,

Those statistic look terrible. :(

What modem/router are you using? Can you set it to G.Dmt (the original ADSL1 mode)?

To which exchange are you connected? Perhaps you would input your phone number and postcode into Kitz' ADSL Exchange and Line Checker, then copy/paste all the relevant output (eliding any private information)?

As a new build development, do you have an External NTE (bottom of the page)? If that is the case, then all your internal wiring will be by the builder's electrician and not necessarily of the standard required for an ADSL signal.

AdrianH:
You should definitely get better throughput than that , even on the old lines across the Purbecks people are getting nearer 2mb , 4km from the exchange.

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