Really slow broadband

[sooi 0]

Hello!

 

First time posting so I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask this but;

 

A couple months ago I moved to Sheffield from Belgium for work and got the flat I'm living in now. I only had about 2 days to decide on a place so went for this one. I'm quite happy with it except for one thing. The internet speed is terrible. 

All providers can give me about 8Mb max and usually I get around 1-2Mb. I'm guessing this is because of the lines going to the building are just slow. I find this a bit confusing as I hear from friends that live across the street and in the building next to mine that they have much faster speeds and fibre connections.

 

In Belgium the broadband lines are connected per region and I'm guessing that in the UK they are connected by building (?).

I asked my landlord and several provider employees if there were any options for me to get anything faster and most of them barely even know what I'm talking about or suggest getting mobile data which would cost me far too much.

 

So is there any way for me to get anything faster installed here? It doesn't have to be the best of the best but what I'm getting now reminds me of the dial up days.

 

 

Thanks!

[Pyrotequila 401]

Stick your postcode in on this site; https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/postcode_checker/

And it should tell you what is available at your address.

 

If you want faster broadband then you'll probably be wanting to upgrade to fibre.

Who is your current provider?

[sooi 0]

7 minutes ago, Pyrotequila said:

Stick your postcode in on this site; https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/postcode_checker/

And it should tell you what is available at your address.

 

If you want faster broadband then you'll probably be wanting to upgrade to fibre.

Who is your current provider?

I'm currently on Sky because it was the cheapest. 

None of the package with speed faster than what I have now are available at my address.

[Pyrotequila 401]

It's possible that your telephone exchange hasn't yet been upgraded to fibre.

You can check here; https://www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/fibre-broadband/when-can-i-get-fibre

[sooi 0]

Looks like that's the case yeah.

 

The thing is, I don't get how all the buildings around mine do have fibre.

Is there any way to speed up getting fibre at all? Feels like my only options is hoping and waiting.

[Top Cats Hat 10]

The last time I complained about broadband speed to my provider, they told me to ring them as soon as I see a 'For Sale' sign in the street, and I would be allocated their faster broadband connection before the new owners had broadband installed.

 

They couldn't really explain to me how this worked but I suspect that in some areas bandwidth is rationed if the speed isn't great.

[Pyrotequila 401]

5 hours ago, Top Cats Hat said:

The last time I complained about broadband speed to my provider, they told me to ring them as soon as I see a 'For Sale' sign in the street, and I would be allocated their faster broadband connection before the new owners had broadband installed.

 

They couldn't really explain to me how this worked but I suspect that in some areas bandwidth is rationed if the speed isn't great.

If I remember right, there are only a certain number of connections inside the fibre roadside cabinets, and once they're all allocated to houses that's it for the area served by that cabinet, nobody else can order fibre unless they install a second cabinet or someone cancels.

[Janus 28]

I can understand how frustrating this must be for you.

It has always been explained to me that the distance from the BT cabinet to your home, plus the condition of the wires between them 2 points is a key issue to the speed.

If your immediate neighbours are getting a lot faster speeds they are probably on fibre. If not, you are very unlucky.

Howevwr there is a bit here about slow speeds and how to address the issue with the provider.

https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/how-to-complain-about-your-broadband-speed

Hope this is of some help, and welcome to the forum.

 

[steve68 66]

Last time we had slow BB issues BT checked the cabling to the house and renewed the cable, the engineer  surprised by the amount of cracks in the cable that we'd ever had a good connection previously.

 

when our Tenants had reoccurring issues with Virgin speed drops, I sent Virgin an old 2009 Pic of mine, Jeremy Corbin running the 100m he was quite nifty back then, asking why he was considerably quicker than Virgins BB speed, seemed to do the trick, next day they were switch to a higher speed free of charge and an engineer came out sorted everything for them. 

 

Fine  figure of the Man himself.

 

[sooi 0]

Back again.

 

I have contacted Openreach once and Sky twice now, one more useful than the other.

 

The first person from Sky told me that it is completely in Openreach's hands to upgrade the physical wires in my building and they could do nothing about it themselves.

 

I contacted them a second time because I also have my modem disconnecting at certain days in the evening. The only thing they told me is that I should watch videos in SD instead of HD, which is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

 

I filled in the form for "My neighbours have fibre and I don't" from Openreach. They emailed me back saying that the cabinet I'm using doesn't support fibre. 

Still doesn't explain why all my neighbours do have fibre however.

Is it just a small box with a single medieval copper wire that is only going to my building?

 

@Janus How do you go about getting an actual engineer coming to take a look?

 

 

I'm also very open for other suggestions from anyone!

 

I'm not going to give up just yet.

[Janus 28]

Hi Sooi,

Sorry to hear that you have not been able to make any significant progress with your BB speed issue.

Although the Openreach engineers are the guys that would ultimately do the  work  in your cabinet, cabling etc, they can only take instructions from your provider, so it is not much use you talking to them. ISPs use Openreach as their contractor.

Although the slow speed is  not the fault of sky, it certainly is Sky's responsibility.

 The contract you have is between you and Sky. As part of that contract Sky have a  responsibility to provide the minimum BB speed that was agreed  with you at the time of the contract.  If the speed is below the minimum you can cancel the contract.

Do you know  the minimum speed that  was agreed?  Do you know the minimum speed that you are getting?

If you cancel with Sky, you may still not  be able to improve on the BB speed while ever you are in the  same property & relying on that cabinet.

 

[pearlt072 10]

@sooi  Where abouts do you live?  Postcode would be useful.