Broadband speed lower with FTTC than with copper

[JonT69]

In 2017 I was enjoying speeds of 35mb with BT.

This dropped to 24mb in 2021 and I was told it was the best speed we could have which meant dolby atmos, dolby vision and UHD were all disabled making my thousands of pounds of AV kit surplus to requirements.

Since then FTTC has been enabled but no speed improvements and moved to EE from BT last week. Hey presto broadband speeds jumped to 35mbps and all the AV stuff was firing on all cylinders and streaming perfectly. A week later I am getting 23mbPS download and 2mbs upload. Feels like I have arrived back in the year 2000.

I'm being offered speeds of 37 mb plus and FTTC by BT Openreach but whilst some of their systems say we are good for FTTC others say we are not. I believe it's some sort of Openreach issue but EE refuse to involve them or an engineer. You can see the different systems saying different things below.

Speed is so bad today my boss has said I can no longer work from home from next week if the issue isn't sorted.

Can anyone help please?Promised speedsOpenreach confirmation

[XRaySpeX]

In 2017 when you were getting 35 Meg from BT you were already on FTTC. So I can't think why you went down to 24 Meg in 2021 & why since then FTTC was enabled when it was already there.

OR are only saying they provide standard uncapped up to 80 Meg FTTC which by advertising rules has to be quoted as up to 76 Meg. It's the ISPs that may put caps on that standard FTTC to offer various speed plans at various price points. 

Despite all that the BTw Checker confirms the fastest you can get there is about 37 Meg on SoGEA (which is FTTC BB w/out any landline). So BT & EE can only offer you Fibre 36 w/out any landline.

1. Post your full router stats:

• For a SmartHub: login and go to Advanced Settings > Technical Log > Information. Obscure your names & any numbers in the BB Username & also the SSIDs. Also post the Home > Status page.
• For a BrightBox: login and go to Advanced Settings > System > DSL Status. Also post 'System Uptime' from top of System Log page.
• For other routers: login to it according to the label on it as the admin user & navigate looking for its router/connection statistics.

Full router stats are key to any speed & connection issues.

2. Try a speedtest, preferably wired using an Ethernet cable supplied with the router, here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html . Click on the "Results Page" button at the bottom of the graph you first see and then copy to here just the "Link to this result:" link that you see below the next main graph.

[JonT69]

Thanks for taking the trouble to respond.

Definitely no FTTC in 2017. We built the house and were waiting for fibre so I was on the list to be informed and sought to upgrade when it became available but with no changes to speed.

Wired / ethernet speeds today are 25.9 mbps download and 3.52 upload. Anything above 34mb would be fantastic .. I'm not greedy ... just want to be able to enjoy UHD etc on AV and for me to use Teams for work without hacking my colleagues off.

Did you notice that the BT Openreach extract below  says that FTTC is unavailable (ringed in red?), contradicting all the other communications? That is where I think the issue is...

[XRaySpeX]

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@JonT69 wrote:

Definitely no FTTC in 2017.

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You said in your OP:

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@JonT69 wrote:

In 2017 I was enjoying speeds of 35mb with BT.

It is impossible to get 35 Meg w/out having FTTC. The fastest you can get w/out it is up to 24 Meg ADSL. So something doesn't make sense to me in your description of your circumstances.

The image you just posted is not a BT Openreach extract but it is a BT Wholesale Availability Checker which is the 1 that governs what ISP can sell, not OR. On that you should be looking at the WBC SoGEA Availability column which is all that ISPs are now able to offer you.

However as you should notice from previously your images that show your postal addy to the wide world will not be approved by this site.

[JonT69]

Ok so when our house was built in 2002 they brought a separate line down which I recall gave me better speeds.. I'm not an expert in this field so have no idea about WBC SoGEA etc, just a mug who pays £45 a month for a 25mb speed!

Short and long is that I was getting speeds of mid thirties 8 to 10 years ago and having upgraded I am now down to 24. Here's the speed tests from over the years.

Any ideas? Really appreciate your help here. BTW its not an internal thing as all checked out multiple times ....the EE Router plugs straight into the phone socket and we have no landline.What was weird was when the new router came 10 days ago we were enjoying speeds of mid thirties which enabled everything to work but since then they have dropped right back

Historic highest speedsFall off since new EE Router temporarily boosted the speed

[XRaySpeX]

Anything with a Up speed above 1.3 Meg is FTTC. So you've never been off FTTC. Any reduction in Down speed will not be due to the type of BB you have but to other factors.

It is interesting that in 2021 your speed dropped from 35 Meg to about 24 Meg & a similar thing is happening now. So the same factors must be in play.

Let's now concentrate on the here & now. Please address my points 1. & 2. in my 1st reply.

[JonT69]

Hi there.

I have run the test and signed up but no option of a link to them so have screenshot and posted below. Hope this is adequate and apologies if I’m being dim re the link but can’t see the option.

Thank you again.

[JonT69]

Here’s the link to the test. Thank you again.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1741777626726633855

EE engineer has been today and found an exposed wire in the BT Openreach socket which has been replaced. This test is post his work.

J

[Peter_W]

Thanks for sharing those results for us @JonT69.

I'm glad to hear that you've managed to get an engineer on the case with this, even if it doesn't appear to have immediately fixed the issues. 

Are you using WiFi or a wired connection when you're getting these speeds?

If it's WiFi, have you tried changing the wireless channel via your hub manager, or using a different frequency?

You can find all the details you need on how to do this via our help article here 😊

Peter

[XRaySpeX]

The speedtest is not much use w/out the router stats I requested & anyway the router stats will pin it down & make whether it's over WiFi or not irrelevant.