Atrocious download speed

[SJCB]

Recently moved into flat (central london) and the download speeds I have been getting are appaling.

The only option for broadband was the Essential package as the flat does not yet have access to fibre. However, the garunteed download speed was supposed to be 8.2Mbps. As can be seen in pic below, the current speed is supposedly 6.5Mbps

However, in realiaty, when I use other internet speed checkers the download rate is between 1.8-4.2Mbps. I have tested this several times during day, both during peak and off-peak hours

This means that when I go to download stuff (such as through Steam) my download rate ends up being 500kbps. Also makes streaming videos above 720p impossible and websites very slow to open. Which as the title says, is atrocious, especially for London!.

Routor statistics below:

Any help or suggestions?

[Christopher+Woods]

Testing with a wired connection to the router? If your sync speed on the modem consistently is below the handback threshold then Sky will be obliged to either let you exit your contract or log it as a fault for engineer investigation. Suggest you speak to them tomorrow about it. They will likely advise you to do the basics like check wiring, only use ethernet to the router, verify sync speed using the "test socket" (in my last place, a previously installed extension socket took almost 5 meg off the broadband speed - connecting via the primary NTE5's "test" socket, which bypasses the extension NTE5 wiring, revealed this immediately).

[cookiemonsteruk]

@SJCB 

Could you enter your full postal address below and post the table after removing your address from the image

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

@Christopher+Woods  theres no handback threshold on adsl its just grouped under ofcom universal service obligation of 10Mbps

[TimmyBGood]

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@SJCB wrote:

Which as the title says, is atrocious, especially for London!.

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Worth noting even that Guaranteed Minimum is below the Universal Service obligation.  Sky should certainly be prepared to book an Openreach to investigate, but realistically ADSL over that length of line is never going to be adequate.  If you try the BT Wholesale availability checker, what shows there?

[SJCB]

@cookiemonsteruk here's the table.

[Christopher+Woods]

oh yikes! it was never implemented for 2+ was it, sorry for the 5am brain mislead.

At your expected line lengths you'll be similar to my situation in my old flat, an Exchange Only line a few kms away from the exchange on 40 year old copper, so you need to absolutely ensure all sources of local signal degradation are removed, no internal wiring extensions in place etc.

Make sure any router and phone line data and power cables cross at 90 degrees, don't run them parallel. Make sure you're definitely using the actual master socket NTE5 coming into the property; I gained 5 Mbit/sec by using the 'test socket' (later physically pulling out the internal extension wires).

If you have another ADSL2+ compatible microfilter try that. If you have a filtered faceplate with an Openreach or BT logo on it then that may be faulty and the engineer should be able to check on a visit.

Screenshot and save the results of the broadbandchecker page with a date stamp for your reference. I had a VDSL issue once and Openreach's systems silently lowered the clean and impacted ranges after a line fault was 'resolved', I lost half my speed.

Also despite Sky being LLU, Openreach may require some formal speed test results, so on a wired connection do a few tests on https://speedtest.btwholesale.com/ which will record an entry against your line. That may or may not be used if they raise an engineer callout.

As you may be charged for any non-Openreach modifications to your internal wiring or faceplate, make sure you're testing from the test socket and everything else is pristine. Of course 'this is how it was when I moved in' is accurate for you 🙂 

I know it might be frustrating, but if you can get altnet supply in your block (Hyperoptic, Gigaclear,  CommunityFibre, CityFibre, G.network, Giganet, Purefibre etc) and Sky can't resolve this satisfactorily, I'd perhaps ask them to sack off the Sky broadband, or give it you gratis, and you buy a package from one of those providers. Hopefully your block may be able to get service from at least one of them, you'll have to check with each though. I ended up moving to Hyperoptic symmetric gigabit and it was a dream by comparison.

[cookiemonsteruk]

@SJCB 

Apologies, i responded but it didn't post

The results on bt wholesale would indicate you are  closer than the line attenuation figure therefore a line fault as you should be getting 17Mbps not 6Mbps which is below ofcom universal service obligation

Call sky on 150 from your sky landline or
zero three three three seven five nine one zero one eight from any other phone

Or if in Ireland

Call sky ireland on

08.185.00.27.3
Remove all the full stops

To book an engineer or we can escalate

[Christopher+Woods]

Sounds like a positive initial response, definitely get them to push Openreach as hard as possible 🙂 Interested to hear how you get on.

[SJCB]

Well after a failed promise to call me back last monday, me contacting them twice and Sky saying they are having issues with their system and to call back today, they have finally said they will send out an engineer (in 10 days time) to try and sort it out.

So hopefully something might get done.

[Chrisee]

@SJCB i notice you mention very low speeds from Steam. Inconveniently they report speeds in Megabytes per second ( MB/s) while network speeds are normally measured in megabits per second(Mb/s) you need to multiply Steams speed by 8 to convert eg 1MB/s is 8Mb/s. 

[SJCB]

Yeh. I know. But even still my Steam download speed is 500kbs, so in effect my DL rate is 4MB/s which is still well below the promised 8-11MB/s of my offer.

Should also note that I get frequent ping/lag spikes where my ms which is usually aroun 20-60 suddenly shoots to 4000+ for a couple seconds. This means I get regular disconnects from a variety of games as well as causing a number to simply stop working for a moment (eg YouTube just stops buffering for about 10 seconds)