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Appauling Broadband Speeds

I live on a Scottish Island and over the last month or so the broadband speeds have degraded to such an extent that at times I have not been able to open webpages. I have recorded download speeds as low as .002.

I have an outstanding complaint with my ISP and have an engineer coming on the 29th to visit my property (and supposedly fix the problem). The problem seems to be congestion and everyone on my local exchange with broadband seem to be suffering with the same symptoms.

I would appear to be the only person who has made an official complaint to my ISP and I'm wondering whether mine will just get fixed by moving me to another line and the remainder of the village ignored.

How can I make a complaint on behalf of the whole village so that we get the fibre optic cable that has just been laid installed sooner than the end of 2016.
 
Who's your provider? Which exchange are you on? What is your predicted speed from dslchecker.bt.com. Using a provider other than BT is likely to have congestion problems as all the exchanges are Market 1 non-LLU ADSL MAX type.

I remember when I was on one of the UK's largest budget providers and got speeds like that despite my line syncing at 7mbps.

There's not really any way to speed up the fibre upgrades. It's very time consuming organizing the deployment of the fibres across the water and then finding and fitting the DSLAMs can take a very significant amount of time. This is because electricity sources have to be found for the cabinets and it looks like quite a lot of the addresses are Exchange Only lines, so PCPs need to be fitted, which can lead to quite a complex rewiring of the telecoms system.

I know this comes as no comfort to you. However, if you're not on BT, I would really recommend going for them as you might get up to 8mbps depending on your location.
 
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BT is the provider. I understand that they have recently done some 'balancing' of the lines on the Isle of Mull where I live. I'm on the Dervaig exchange and it appears that most people on that exchange are having problem. Is it worth submitting a complaint on ISPReview or is it best just to go to Trading Standards for mis-selling?

Have just submitted a complaint through the ISPA's website
 
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I can't say I've come across line balancing in that context! If the exchange has copper for its backhaul it could be that they are having to resetup the bonding to get the backhaul operating at maximum speed. Balancing customer lines though (I assume that's what you're saying)... I don't know to be honest.

If your speed is below the guaranteed speed BT quoted at order, then you could probably get them for Breach of Contract if nothing else. (Although, from what I've heard, they don't tend to tell you your guaranteed speed until you've phoned them up to complain and then the guaranteed speed is a lot less than you heard before! ) I'd recommend going on speedtest.btwholesale.com running the test and then clicking "Further diagnostics", sticking your phone number in and reporting the figures it produces. If your speed is below the minimum, the bar should turn red, and then it should automatically be a fault. However, certainly if you had more than or equal to 2mbps at one point and were quoted more than two and now you're getting less than 0.400, that's usually considered a fault. see here: http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/acceptablespeeds.htm
 
I have had speeds as low as .002 and there have been occassions when it has stopped altogether. This is not just me, its other people on the exchange. A&A say I should be getting between 1.5 and 2 but I have seen figures that say 2.5.

As for using BT's wholesale site when it is running slowly is a joke, the site wont load half the time and when it does it will complete the test then when you go to submit the results it just hangs and crashes out.

BT sold me unlimited broadband which was functioning properly (i.e. I could watch 'on demand' most evenings if I wanted). Now with whatever the 'balancing' has done, I can just forget about anything on the Internet other than loading simple web pages. My contract with BT was for the supply of Unlimited Broadband and they are, in my opinion, in breach of their contract because I can't get unlimited broadband during peak hours.
 
to be honest there is no such thing as "unlimited" as there is always some sort of limit.. in BTs case its a "FUP" (Fair Usage Policy), which depending on usage (generally the top 5% of heavy downloaders tend to get slowed down tho lm guessing the percentage which it kicks in at) slows connections down at peak times.
 
BT defined Unlimited as unlimited ACCESS; this guy cannot access, so should be able to claim.
 
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