FTTC Broadband speed after pole replacement

[chrisjp]

A contractor for Openreach (Morrisons) has just replaced the pole that carries the copper cable that supplies my FTTC broadband. This is good because the old pole was covered in ivy and leaning at a bit of an angle. 

The replacement job of course required the temporary disconnection of my supply cable. It has now been reconnected, but my broadband download speed is now around 46Mbps, whereas before the work it was about 69-70Mbps. Upload used to be 13Mbps and is now struggling to get to 1Mbps.

I dimly recall reading that this will "settle" after a few days or weeks use, and my previous speed will be restored. Is this true or has Morrisons left me with a noisy line that is limiting the speed (I'm on DV so can't do a quiet line test)?

[imjolly]

I would. Expect your speed to return after the line settles down.  Check the hub stats and see if attainable speed is up at 70/80mb and noise margin probably high with normal being about 6db

[iniltous]

As stated a check of your router stats should indicate if the speed will recover once the line remains stable , but unfortunately I suspect unless they disconnected and reconnected your ‘pair’ several times in quick succession then it may not be DLM that’s intervened and it may be the contractor has left your dropwire dis 1 leg or something similar …you could test your line via My BT , see if it picks up any defects if it does  it may also report the issue to Openreach 

[chrisjp]

I went to www.bt.com/exp/engineer-booking to investigate a possible fault and sure enough the system detected one.
To my pleasant surprise I could book a BT engineer to come and investigate the next day (today Friday). Although I explained that the slow speed had started as soon as my phone line was reconnected after the pole was replaced he, of course, had to go through all the usual indoor checks.
So he replaced my master socket, tried another socket to Hub cable, tried a new Hub and did various online speed tests
Results were erratic each time the hub was re-booted. Sometimes it would connect quite quickly and give speeds up to 50Mbps (though still not my usual 70Mbps), other times it would refuse to connect at all - flashing purple to denote no connection.
One other thing the engineer said: that my connection from socket to hub should still have a filter in it, even though I'm on DV. We tried it with such a filter - it didn't make any difference! Has anyone else heard that the filter is still required with DV - I thought it wasn't?
Anyway, he agreed the line was faulty and the fault must be external, so he got the issue escalated to Openreach.
I await their visit with some trepidation!
Meanwhile I've managed, after several re-boots, to get the hub to connect at a measly 30Mbps, and I now am going to leave it alone - it's enough for web browsing and emails, though not enough to stream anything.

[licquorice]

No, of course you don't need a filter with DV. I despair of the calibre of technicians that BT send out.

[iniltous]

You haven’t provided the stats from the router that could possibly have indicated  an issue (although not where the issue is )

TBH this is playing out pretty much as expected, a problem at the pole is self evidently close to your property, (in relative terms ) , line testers indicate a general area but are limited ,  the problem the tester indicated could’ve been within your property or close to it , sending out ‘BT’ instead if Openreach has limitations in that if the problem is ‘outside’ then BT can’t encroach onto Openreach network, so this has introduced a delay

…unlike your automated test , my recent experience of reporting a fault via that method, didn’t indicate a BT visit was potentially necessary, it went directly to Openreach , my ‘fault’  was at the cabinet, 100-120 metres away , I dare say the distance to the pole top (where your  issue almost certainly is )  is likely to be less than a third of that distance hence the decision to sent BT first .

[chrisjp]

I suspect the the BT technician has got used to still using a filter even for DV connections, because the filter provides an RJ11 socket, so a cable with RJ11s at each end can be used to connect socket to hub.
To dispense with the filter, you need a cable with the standard BT telephone plug at one end and an RJ11 at the other, which I obtained when I was changed to DV.
I don't think the BT technician had one of these in his bag!

[chrisjp]

Well, the Openreach technician visited my house as promised yesterday and, I must say, I can't fault both BT's and Openreach's quick response to the reduction in my broadband speed following replacement of the pole supplying my FTTC line.

Before pole replacement, I routinely got around 70Mbps but this reduced to about 15Mbps following the pole replacement. The Openreach technician soon found a fault in the connections on the pole and fixed this. Disappointingly though, this only got my speed up to about 50Mbs.

The Openreach technician tested my connection line right back to my master socket and, after replacing the line from my house eves (where the line from the pole is attached) right through to my master socket, he tested the speed here and it was over 70Mbps.

I run my Smarthub 2 off an extension socket that I installed many years ago, and this has never given any dimunition in speed before, so it seems a very strange co-incidence that it should start doing so exactly when the pole was replaced. Of course the Openreach technician said that there was nothing more he could do since speed at the master socket was well within expectations.

The only options I would have would be to (1) replace the extension cable, but this runs through my loft and down the wall in my study, buried in plaster, (2) put the Smarthub near the master socket, but there is no power supply near and I would then need long ethernet cables to connect my computer and white WiFi master disc, or (3) run a long BT plug to RJ11 from master socket to Smarthub. Both (2) and (3) would require chasing out walls and routing via the loft, so I'm very reluctant to do these.

50Mbps is actually quite a usable speed so at present I'm just living with the situation, but it's still very puzzling.

If anyone has any comments, or suggested remedies, I'd be glad to hear them!

[licquorice]

Can you post a screenshot of your hub stats please?

[chrisjp]

Hi licquorice, is this what you need?