Just found out my internet max speed is slower than all other houses on my street

[Mungri]

I've been in my current house for the last 5 years with a FTTC connection, the maximum speed available to me all that time has been 51 mbps which I simply thought was due to distance from the cabinet.

As my area is planned for FTTP rollout, I was checking the BT broadband availability checker using my UPRN number, and only just thought to check the other houses on my street, which is 15 in total on a side street of a development of 300+.

My neighbours house right next to mine has a line speed of 68 high, and several others have 72+, only my house shows at 48 on the checker, with the maximum speed I've had on faster fibre packages capping out at around 52, even on the plans for 70+ speeds.

It was quite an effort trying to explain this to BT customer support over the phone, but they eventually agreed to send an engineer to check my line which I'm unsure if its actually a solution. The person was adamant that it was just the speed on the contracts I was comparing and not the line itself and kept saying its because others have a faster contract / speak to our sales team for a faster contract when I'm already on faster fibre which supports 72+ max speeds. 

Does anyone here know why my line would be slower than everyone elses including my neighbours (semi detached too) and if theres actually a solution  to this? I am going to also try calling openreach soon to see if they can give any insight onto why this might be.

[ptrduffy]

There are any number of factors that can affect the speed of the DSL portion of your connection (ie the copper line from cabinet to your property).  You mentioned distance from cabinet, which is certainly one of them.  You also say that the property next door has a higher rate - but the fact that it's next door doesn't necessarily mean that you are a similar distance from the cabinet (as measured by length of copper wire), as the wire to your property may take a different physical route, or you may even be served from a different cabinet.  The condition of the copper wire, its proximity to other active connections, or to mains cables and a number of other things can also affect the attainable speed.

The DLS system constantly attempts to maintain the maximum speed possible on your line - it does this by measuring things like the signal strength at your property, the amount of noise on the line, and the rate at which errors occur on the line.  It will increase your speed until any one of these goes out of an acceptable range, and then reduce it it to bring it back into range.

You could try a quiet line test if you have a standard PSTN voice connection on your line - dial 17070 from a physically connected handset, and you should hear nothing.  If there's any crackling, then that is indicative of a line fault.  Beyond that, there's probably not much you can do.

[iniltous]

Estimate speeds are not limiting factor , if you lived really close to the FTTC cabinet and 80Mb on the Fibre 2 product was easily achievable, it wouldn’t make any difference if the estimate was somehow inaccurate and stated 60Mb , there is no ‘limit’ imposed by the estimate, the speed obtained it is as it’s always been is dependent on the line length ( assuming no defects are present, externally or internally ) .

If the cable length is similar for the properties you have checked ( it always possible that you take different routes back to the cabinet making comparisons pointless) but assuming they are pretty much the same , then reasons why estimates could be different, if a line is working as WLR ( the most likely case as a BT customer ) , it has real data , if  that person has an unreported defect that has dragged the speed down , the estimate will reduce in line with the real data , if a near neighbour property has no service from OR ,or is a MPF customer , then the address checker will give a mathematical derived estimate ( because there is no actual data ).

Someone may run their router off an extension socket that’s poorly wired with inferior grade cable , a near neighbour may run their router from the master socket test port , that could account for considerably different sync speeds.

Post the advanced connection statistics from your router that should give an indication if your line sync  is sub optimal or not 

[Mungri]

I've checked over 30 addresses now, all 15 on my street and more on the main development, mine is the only one not showing 68mb.

I don't have a landline phone, who even does anymore?

When I moved into the house, the grey box outside and master socket weren't even connected yet, an engineer came in the first couple of weeks to connect it, which gives me reason to believe something was done wrong.

Both BT Broadband Checker and Open Reach fibre checker display 68mb for every house around mine except for mine, the cabinet is the same one and its literally at the front of the main street, less than 200m away if even that much.

Also houses further away from the cabinet than mine even have 73+ mb speed available.