Has anyone noticed slower BT broadband speeds in the evenings lately?

[EricaDalton]

Hi everyone,
I’ve been experiencing noticeably slower broadband speeds on my BT connection during the evenings over the past week. Streaming and downloads seem fine during the day, but things slow down quite a bit after 7 p.m. I’ve restarted the router and checked cables, but no improvement. Is anyone else seeing the same issue, or could it just be congestion in my area? Any advice would be appreciated!

[Michael_D]

Hi @EricaDalton 

Welcome to the community.

It is possible that it could be congestion, but it is certainly worth looking into.

If you haven't already, I'd recommend doing a speed test during the day when the speeds seem fine, and another after 7pm to see how much it does drop by.

If there is a noticeable drop, and it goes below your guaranteed download speed, head over to our Fix a problem with broadband and Wi-Fi page, which gives you the option to login and check the line.

If an engineer is needed, you'll have the option to book one, and if not it will put you in touch with our tech guides to look into this further.

Michael

[licquorice]

Guaranteed speed refers to connection speed not download speed.

[licquorice]

Connection speed won't vary with time of day, its almost certainly a hot VP (congestion). BT should be aware of it with their monitoring systems and taking action to increase capacity. That's the theory!

[36ULW]

Nope. Works fine.

[licquorice]

????

[Kimberlin]

I'm just throwing it out there because I genuinely don't know, but would this just be region specific? What I mean is, I don't suffer slowdowns in the evenings where I live.

[licquorice]

Yes it will be 'exchange' specific due to congestion in the backhaul paths.

This diagram from https://kitz.co.uk/ shows what I mean. It's an old diagram but shows the principles

[Colin_London]

So you don’t say if you are FTTP or FTTC. Both suffer from Contention, but only FTTC is usually noticeable.

On FTTP each distribution box has a gross bandwidth of about 1.6Gbps I believe. As more houses choose FTTP the likelihood of your speed getting reduced increases, particularly in the evenings.

For the first 18 months of my contract I was consistently getting my full 500Mbps on speedtests. But in the last 6 months all my neighbours seem to have discovered the delights of FTTP (judging by the connections in the pole box) and now my evening speed tests are around 460Mbps.

Not a practical problem, but demonstrates the issue.