Reading about users not being able to stream makes me laugh. We can never do that at any time.
I was one of the first in the area, (1980’s), to have the internet, old dial up system, perfectly adequate for information gathering, and emails. Then when adsl arrived, it was more than good enough with considerable speed increase. We are about 2 miles from the exchange, but speeds have always been adequate. 2 years ago a new housing estate was built between us and the exchange, and from then on speeds have fallen rapidly. When it is good, speeds are at a maximum of 3.16 Mbps download, and 0.35 Mbps upload, which is adequate. At night and during peak times, speeds will drop to 0.13 Mbps and 2.73Mbps upload, so we can’t look at emails or do banking at those speeds. I am annoyed that BT have been pushing people to sign up for films and TV on the internet without upgrading the infrastructure. So we are now paying higher prices for ADSL which is often not up to the old dial up speeds.
Looking at our speed results it would seem that upload speeds are high, because our modem is applying full power from our end of the line, while the exchange, to cope with the surge in users, is pushing up the switching speed to the point where the’ on’ period of the signal is too short to overcome the line attenuation before it switches off again. So our signal strength drops away till it goes below the critical point. Am I wrong to find this unacceptable. BT says it’s because of the line length, but we have always had the same line length, so why is it suddenly a problem now? Unless for the reasons above.
Is it impossible for BT to boost the signal? We do that on long private networks. Or can’t they slow down the switching speed, by grouping the longer lines together and switching them at a slower speed? It seems very unfair that we are paying for a service which is not what it used to be, yet still being changed the same price as those TV and streaming habits are causing the problem.
