[ubuntu-uk] What to do about black hole of broadband

[Rob Beard]

On 11/08/10 16:51, Gordon Allott wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> So I'm moving house and taking a look at the broadband speeds in the
> local area shows something... suspicious.
> http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/broadband_speed_in_my_area_v2.aspx?postcode=cw26jn
>
> namely that in the area I'm moving to there is a paltry less than 1mbit
> and often around 0.33mbit. whereas just up the road 4/5mbit is fairly
> common.

Looks like it's down to line length.  I've done a check with the 
postcode on SamKnows.com and it appears the distance from the exchange 
is nearly 2KM, but chances are the line length could be much longer (or 
maybe it's something like an aluminium rather than copper line?).

>
> I'm wondering if its a problem with the local lines, and if so, who I
> would call about it? is it worth asking the engineer that connecting my
> line next week to take a look? I'm not really looking for a miracle, but
> I know that I used to live in the same area and got around 3mbit, until
> it dropped to 2mbit. eventually suddenly shifting to 1mbit one day.

Well, if you can hang on until about March next year, SamKnows suggests 
that FTTC is coming to the area so in theory you could possibly get up 
to 40Mbit/sec assuming you're connected to a cabinet which is upgraded 
and not too far away from it.

SamKnows suggests that the speeds you'd get on FTTC (based on the 
postcode) is:

Downstream Min: 21.2 Mbps
Downstream Max: 29.5 Mbps
Upstream Min: 9.5 Mbps
Upstream Max: 13.3 Mbps

So a tad faster than under 1Mbit.

In the mean time there are some LLU providers at the exchange, so you 
might find you might get a bit better speed from an LLU provider using 
ADSL2+ (although maybe not that much).  Saying that, if FTTC is coming 
to your local exchange maybe you might want to stick with a non LLU 
provider which might help you moving over to a FTTC product.  You may 
also be able to get ADSL2+ at the moment from a non LLU provider, I 
guess the best bet is to speak to a provider such as Zen, PlusNet, 
Andrews and Arnold etc.

Rob