How is this remotely possible?

[Sweeney47]

"Just a shot in the dark but I wonder if the railway line between you and the exchange is the problem.  Instead of trying a direct crossing they have gone left or right to an existing bridge and an existing cable to connect your new home."

This could be a valid point and is the reason I originally thought we had low speeds but the point is, both my friends phone lines have to go over the railway too... the exchange is the other side of a railway line for all of us, there is no avoiding it so they would be at the same disadvantage as me along with living 4 times further away...

The thing thats really annoying about this is that the whole "can't do anything about it" argument is a load of **bleep**, they can the thing is they probably wont. So while people get faster and faster speeds, our bill will go up and up, yet our speed will remain stoneage at 2.5MBPS...

Sometimes when I stream on the BBC Iplayer it has to stop and rebuffer at low quality (we're talking lego sometimes) because our bandwidth is rubbish... this is how we're going to have to remain, in Digital Britain, while others in the country can download HD movies in a few minutes...

When you can get faster broadband using a mobile dongle, you've really got to ask questions and I expect a much better service...

[john46]

BT may be able to re route your line at a cost to you but it will not be cheap in past cases several thousands of pounds have been quoted

[Sweeney47]

What about the several thousand pounds given to them in line rental and other costs which are meant to pay for maintenance and improvement to the service?

[lmosley]

You have thearetically got a working service so thats why (It may be not the shortest route to the exchange or the fastest ADSL speed) But it is working Untill it breaks I doubt anything will be done about it .

It may be annoying I know but getting it changed will be hard 😉

[Sweeney47]

yeah I do but its a service that people were getting 5-10 years ago and will remain like this for years to come. And its not like we inherited this service from infrastructure placed 30 years ago...

How would you feel in my position? How many houses on my estate are being screwed over by the 'cheapest way possible' policy that BT seemingly have? They must be making masses in profits a year (judging by bonuses) yet they can't be bothered to supply a semi-decent service?

[raymie67]

While line length is a major factor in connection speed and stability it is not the only thing, other factors could be affecting your line and not longer ones such as :-

Conductor size, I believe that these are normally 9mm, 7mm and 6mm

type of cable, I understand that some old lines include non copper parts

dodgy connections, corrossion and the like

Quaity of cable insulation, could be breaking down in parts perhaps

[Sweeney47]

as previously said, this house was built a little over 6 months ago, so if its any of the things you listed then BT have screwed up...

[raymie67]

Sadly it does happen, for example a few years back on my line a length was replaced, the engineers however replaced the .7 conductor with .6 (or whatever the non .9 ones are) and this lost me broadband totally, evetually however I got another section of my line switched to a new length of .9 near the exchange that was being laid for a vodaphone mast and that remiediated it.

Additionally just a few months ago the cable that runs overhead along my driveway was replaced since one of the dozens of engineers that tested it finally saw "inconsistent" readings and just that 200m length even when replaced by the same core size improved my line by enough to take my connection up 1 IP profile band.

IN my case I was told to keep doing quiet line tests and raising a fault each time that noise was heard on the line even when intermittent, since doing that my "no fault" line has had at least 6 different faults fixed on the 9km length.