Longstanding poor service with BT

[owngrfld]

As I'm now working from home exclusively, I rely on my broadband connection. I often deal with video and high resolution photographs - both uploading and downloading. Also I need video conferencing to work smoothly too. Outside of that, I enjoy gaming online, which is practically impossible with my connection.

I have called and spoken with BT numerous times over the years but have never received a satisfactory resolution. I have looked at Open Reach for a while to see if fibre will come to my property (it's offered to other properties on my street) but with no luck.

Note: Someone has commented recently that our line is noisy and a call to BT recently let a tech support guy to say the SNR margin was in the 30s.

I wonder if the issue is within our property, or something with the exchange or from the exchange to our property.

If anyone can help me get a decent connection, I'll be extremely grateful. I'm ready to investigate and act on any advice given.

I regularly run speed tests and get :

DL speeds of around 6Mbps

UL speeds between 0.1 and 0.4Mbps

The latest BT speedtest I did (with ethernet connection etc) was as follows:

Download Speed (Mbps): 6.17 

Upload Speed (Mbps) : 0.36 

Ping Latency (ms): 18

Broadband availability checker

The results for my landline are shown below

ADSL Products	Downstream Line Rate(Mbps)		Upstream Line Rate(Mbps)		Downstream Range(Mbps)	ADSL Availability Date	WBC SOADSL Availability Date	Left in Jumper
WBC ADSL 2+	Up to 14		--		12.5 to 15.5	Available	Available	--
WBC ADSL 2+ Annex M	Up to 14		Up to 1.5		12.5 to 15.5	Available	Available	--
ADSL Max	Up to 6		--		5 to 7	Available	Available	--
WBC Fixed Rate	2		--		--	Available	Available	--
Fixed Rate	2		--		--	Available	--	--
Observed Speeds	ADSL
Max Observed Downstream Speed (Mbps)	8.06
Max Upstream Observed Speed (Mbps)	0.45
Observed Date	2019-09-29
Other Offerings						Availability Date
ADSL Multicast	--		--		--	Available	--	--
Premise environment	Status
Bridge Tap	U
VRI	N
NTEFaceplate	N
Last Test Date	05-03-2020

And here are the details from my router/hub

Business Smart Hub

Serial number:

+088315+NQ73520739

Firmware version:

SG4B1B0092BE

Firmware updated:

06-Mar-2020

Board version:

1.0

Gui version:

1.132.0

DSL uptime:

2 Days, 1 Hours 29 Minutes 58 Seconds

Data rate:

448 kbps / 8.13 Mbps

Maximum data rate:

1260 / 9876

Noise margin:

29 dB / 11.9 dB

Line attenuation:

9.5 dB / 14.5 dB

Signal attenuation:

9.5 dB / 14.5 dB

VPI / VCI:

0/38 - 0/35

Modulation:

G_992_1_ANNEX_A

Latency type:

Fast Path

Data sent / received:

11 GB Uploaded / 31 GB Downloaded

Public wi-fi

Not active

2.4 GHz wireless channel:

Smart (Channel 1)

5 GHz wireless channel:

Smart (Channel 36)

Wireless security:

WPA2 (Recommended)

Wireless mode:

Mode 1

Firewall:

On

Software variant:

-

Boot loader:

9.2.0

[imjolly]

you are currently on adslmax which has a max connection of 8128/448kbps.  If you could upgrade to adsl2 that should increase your speed both up and down and as long as line stable should not cause any problems

if you have line noise then that is a problem  check   dial 17070 option 2  should be silent and best with corded phone

[owngrfld]

I also want to point out that I'm a BT business customer and know that next door, literally within touching distance of my property, has fibre available and my property does not. In fact lots of properties in my area do, but for some reason I can't sign up to it. I get fobbed off with "speak to open reach".

[owngrfld]

In all my conversations with BT, that's never been offered. Do you think there's a good reason behind that?

brb - looking for a corded phone.

[imjolly]

as a business customer you need to post here  https://business.forums.bt.com/ as this is a forum for BT residential customers

[owngrfld]

Sadly the business support seems to be a vacuum. The address is residential. We only have the business account because there was previously a business being run from this address. Would we get better service switching from business to residential?

[Carlusha]

Is your neighbour, the one within touching distance, with BT? If you're both with BT then you might be able to utilise his/her connection. If the neighbour is on Fibre, then you will certainly achieve a faster speed than you are currently.

See:
If you're a BT Broadband customer, you get free wi-fi with your broadband. By agreeing to securely share a portion of your wi-fi bandwidth through a separate channel on your BT Hub, you let others get online when your Hub's turned on.

That is, unless I am missing something!

[imjolly]

as a business user you pay more but have a better service level agreement than residential

[owngrfld]

If this is a better SLA, I can't imagine how bad it is for residential customers then.

[imjolly]

there is nothing forum can do or the forum mods as you are a business customer but you should get BT to upgrade you to adsl2 which will increase both up and down speed and does not need an engineer visit