What options are there when Fibre Broadband isn't fast enough?

[rjlucker]

Hi there,

I have BT Fibre broadband but where we live this maxes out at around 20Mbit/s down and 6Mbit/s upload.  Under normal circumstances this is okay, but with four of us at home working or studying over it concurrently with VPNs, Teams / Zoom calls etc. we all keep running into problems with video and voice call quality.

My first plan was simply to connect myself via my BT Mobile connection (and thereby free up capacity on the home broadband connection for the rest of the family) but unfortunately, even though I can connect to my work VPN over the mobile connection and some services work, I cannot connect to my work email server or network drives.  I don't know why this would be (especially given that I'm connected over a VPN), but it's entirely consistent and my IT team haven't been able to  work around this yet.  I could set up my wife or kids to use a mobile broadband connection instead of me, but that would take them off our home network so they'd be unable to print, cast to other devices etc.  so it's likely that this won't stick.

I'm left slightly at a loss as to how I can get more bandwidth for the family as there are no alternatives to Openreach in our neighbourhood.  I could get a second Fibre line, but BT's only option would involve committing to £30/month for 24 months , plus I'll still only be getting half of the bandwidth that many BT Fibre customers get from a single line, which is a little galling.  It might be worth it if BT offered some kind of channel bonding solution but they don't, so I'd need to run two separate local networks which would be a pain.

I'm going to look at alternative mobile broadband solutions on the basis that my connectivity issues might be specific to BT Mobile, but that has much of the same downsides as getting a second BT line (although it would probably be faster with shorter minimum terms available).

Any thoughts or suggestions anyone has would be gratefully received.

Kind regards

Richard

[Keith_Beddoe]

@rjlucker 

Welcome to this user forum.

Have you checked what is available?

Enter your phone number into this form and display the results here, but edit out your phone number before you post the results.

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

You may be able to allocate the bandwidth a bit more equally, using a different router which has traffic controls. Its usually upload bandwidth limitations that causes the problems, especially if you are using video calling.

[imjolly]

 please can you post the stats from your router (if hub enter 192.168.1.254 in your browser) and if  HH5 then go to troubleshooting then helpdesk and if HH6/SH2 then advanced settings then technical log information . 

Someone may then be able to offer help/assistance/suggestions to your problem

[rjlucker]

Thanks for your reply @Keith_Beddoe,

Following your suggestion I've attached the report.  This appears to indicate that my VDSL performance is poor for the area, but I've had VDSL for about 10 years (initially with PlusNet before moving to BT and it's never been anywhere near 38Mbit/s).  The highest download speed / sync I've ever had is around 24Mbit/s but this tends to deteriorate over time with sync speed settling down at around 20 (on BT - with Plusnet it would keep decrementing downwards until I raised a fault).

I've had various engineer visits over the years when performance has dropped below 10Mbit/s (or below 1Mbit/s on one occasion) and the line from my house to the pole was replaced a couple of years ago, but all this ever does is revert performance to the sort of level I have now. 

Kind regards

Richard

[Keith_Beddoe]

You were showing a connection speed of 24.7Mbs on 14th January, which is only just above the lower limit for Range A.

Its possible that your internal wiring may be affecting the speed, or even a noisy phone line.

Is there any noise on your phone calls? Dial 17070 and select option 2, there should be no noise between the announcements.

What does your master phone socket look like?

[rjlucker]

Thanks @imjolly - router information screen attached below as suggested.

[imjolly]

checker shows speed range 39/24mb and you could get anywhere inbetween

hub stats will help

[Keith_Beddoe]

@rjlucker 

Something is not right there. I would suspect an internal wiring issue, or a very poor quality line.

You need to prove your wiring first.

[imjolly]

from looking at your stats your noise margin is already down at 3db showing G.INP active and boosted you speed so doubt there is anymore

are you using the master socket?  have you tried using test socket with filter

[rjlucker]

Thanks @Keith_Beddoe ,

Noisy lines do appear to have been a problem historically in our area (I believe it may be related to interference from the radio transmitters about 2 miles from here), which is possibly the underlying reason for the suppressed performance - although I understand that we're also quite a long way from the cabinet.

Our master socket is like illustration 6, although the phone line passes through a small (filter?) box on the way into the master socket.

I have one phone extension which runs about 5 metres to a telephone in the same room, but disconnecting hasn't made a difference in the past (although I'll give it another try as I haven't tried it recently).

Cheers

Richard