Broadband Help!

Hi All,

Just in case some of you might be involved in the technical side of broadband - I thought I would try here as Talk Talk have no idea

I am the last line from the exchange, and until recently had been able through TalkTalk, to get a stable 2/2.5mg download speed over the last few years. Recently they have put Fibre into our village as part of the rural broadband scheme, and TalkTalk offered an upgrade. They were confident of speeds of around 18mg, which I know compared to some of you is 'steam' powered, but for us would have meant a big improvement. I decided to go for the upgrade. I am just over 1 mile from the cabinet housing the fibre and it is copper from there.

On go live date, it was great I was getting 21/22mg steady as a rock. Then after a week they activated the TalkTalk TV which uses the broadband and Freeview ariel to run the system, this was free and part of my deal. Whether it was co-incidence or the causation, but since about the same time I have now got a very intermittent service which can vary from 22mg right down to 0.25mg. It keeps dropping out and has become unstable.

Interestingly at the same time when I do a speed test with OOKLA - it seems to think I am at a location, but not where I live!

It shows client location as somewhere near Eastbourne. It also tells me I am 1 mile from the Eastbourne server and 52 miles from London server and likewise all the distances from the various servers are incorrect. Finally, none of any location services will work when I am at home and connected to my WiFi, for instance, if I go onto Google Maps it will state unable to locate your position. If I go onto find my iPhone App, it will be able to see all of my devices, but will say 'online no location available'. Once I leave the home WiFi and go onto cellular or another wiFi connection they work fine!!
Often I will get error messages on the OOKLA speed test of 'intermittent Synch'.

TalkTalk have sent out an Open Reach engineer who spent 2.5 hours yesterday. The tests appeared to be OK, but to be absolutely sure he fitted the latest master socket with a radio interference shield, and also replaced the old cable from the socket to the telegraph pole, only as it was the old single wire type, putting the twin twisted wire to ensure reduction in any possible interference. When he had done this he saw a slight reduction in the resistance, but it was well within range beforehand. The engineer is confident that as copper wires go, that for that distance mine are in very good order and the problem lies with the ISP. TalkTalk can't seem to fathom this out.

The only other thing to mention is that as they rely on the TV Ariel as part of their system to work the TV side of things whether this is having an impact and causing these erroneous issues, as my TV ariel is pretty useless and I rely on a Sat Dish to pick up a decent signal

But it is causing a lot of frustration and like all of these types of issues will be something simple, but only known to someone in the trade who has encountered it beforehand. Anyone?

I could slag talk talk off and go on about how many friends used to be with them but it is what it is. One thing to do though is if you think it is the tv box then disconnect it all and test it for a while. Sounds like you aren't using it anyway as you have satellite.
How are you testing, over wifi or ethernet cable plugged directly into the router? Point being is it an Internet issue or a wifi interference issue.

We had a rock steady 8meg download speed from Virgin but when BT offered their Infinity 2 package for 10 quid a month less I thought 'Why not?' When it works it's fine with around 20meg down and 2 up but it's incredibly unstable and needs re-booting almost daily. My son reckons his online gaming experience is better due to a reduced ping but the overall experience is nowhere near what I'd hoped for. I've since found out that Fast.co.uk do FTTC in our area which isn't as cheap but it would work.

Marki_GSA said:

I could slag talk talk off and go on about how many friends used to be with them but it is what it is. One thing to do though is if you think it is the tv box then disconnect it all and test it for a while. Sounds like you aren't using it anyway as you have satellite.
How are you testing, over wifi or ethernet cable plugged directly into the router? Point being is it an Internet issue or a wifi interference issue.

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I had tried disconnecting the TV system at my end, but I think it is to do with the connection they have to make for it to be activated. I was hoping that I could go to their TV service and tell Sky to shove it for a while as it is ridiculously expensive and they are not giving anything worthwhile as way of a loyalty discount, whereas if I terminated and either signed up in the wife's name or my name in the future you can get about 50% off.

I have tried over both WiFi and LAN, no real difference. I have done all the obvious stuff to ensure it is not a device issue. I know what you mean about TalkTalk

But when I was with BT years ago they were as infuriating when the line went wrong, I think all of them are pretty much the same - awful customer service. But I sent Dido Harding CEO of TalkTalk, a very nice (sarcastically humorous e-mail about the poor service ) and she replied personally. Her office is dealing with the matter and I am seeing some progress, but these PA's have very little or no technical knowledge. But due to their intervention they have now managed to get the router and server to at least know each other's respective GPS location, so their system no longer thinks I am a mile outside Eastbourne !

uncle dick said:

We had a rock steady 8meg download speed from Virgin but when BT offered their Infinity 2 package for 10 quid a month less I thought 'Why not?' When it works it's fine with around 20meg down and 2 up but it's incredibly unstable and needs re-booting almost daily. My son reckons his online gaming experience is better due to a reduced ping but the overall experience is nowhere near what I'd hoped for. I've since found out that Fast.co.uk do FTTC in our area which isn't as cheap but it would work.

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Thanks I will have a look at Fast.co.uk, I had not heard of them and I have assurance that unless Talk Talk can sort this out then I am not bound by the contract and can leave penalty free.

But I would still appreciate any pearls of wisdom from any BT/Openreach/Broadband engineers out there.....

I think the TV malarkey and difficulty of fixing your geographical locations are complete red herrings. You have a fibre (FTTC) broadband connection which appears, intermittently, to be running very slow as I understand it: pure and simple. The connection runs VDSL2 over copper to the cabinet and that should be capable of sustaining 20Mb/s (note...not milligrams-mg- but Megabits per second) and if Openreach (who provide that copper) have confirmed it's OK, the problem probably lies with TalkTalk.

I'd use bt wholesale's speed checker out of interest (http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/): I believe it measures the sync rate of the line. I think services like OOKLA measure proper download (but happy to be corrected) so will be affected by what happens in the wider network. If the line is syncing OK (as demonstrated by bt wholesale's speed tester) when you are experiencing poor download speed, that would strongly suggest a problem in Talk Talk's network (or at least that part of BT's network which is managed by Talk Talk).

I have always used Zen Internet. Simply the best but not cheap. I am constantly tempted by special offers from other ISPs but when I read threads like this, I realise it's probably money well spent.

E. Buygum said:

I think the TV malarkey and difficulty of fixing your geographical locations are complete red herrings. You have a fibre (FTTC) broadband connection which appears, intermittently, to be running very slow as I understand it: pure and simple. The connection runs VDSL2 over copper to the cabinet and that should be capable of sustaining 20Mb/s (note...not milligrams-mg- but Megabits per second) and if Openreach (who provide that copper) have confirmed it's OK, the problem probably lies with TalkTalk.

I'd use bt wholesale's speed checker out of interest (http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/): I believe it measures the sync rate of the line. I think services like OOKLA measure proper download (but happy to be corrected) so will be affected by what happens in the wider network. If the line is syncing OK (as demonstrated by bt wholesale's speed tester) when you are experiencing poor download speed, that would strongly suggest a problem in Talk Talk's network (or at least that part of BT's network which is managed by Talk Talk).

I have always used Zen Internet. Simply the best but not cheap. I am constantly tempted by special offers from other ISPs but when I read threads like this, I realise it's probably money well spent.

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Zen's network is consistently good, and their tech support staff know what they are talking about. Always recommend them to my customers.

i've seen zen criticised recently, including their legendarily good customer support. never heard a good word for talk talk.

OP might take his problem to the forums here

I've used zen for the past eight years and they've been very good. Their support team is excellent.

Another thumbs up for Zen, been with them a a good few years.

Thanks for the responses....

I have looked at both of the alternative suggestions, but neither Zen or Fast are available to me here. However, progress is being made by TalkTalk, I am now shown to be at the correct GPS location, rather than 35 miles away elsewhere on the speed checks

They have checked all of the copper wires from the cabinet to my home and these are all serviceable. But there are still issues, so they have requested a Openreach Broadband specialist to attend and investigate further as they accept that there are still issues, he is booked in for Tuesday am.

I did consider their own Forum to highlight my experiences to get a response, but decided to go straight to the CEO's office instead. I know that they have an very poor customer service rating compared to most, but the latest CEO has made it part of her goals to significantly improve this; and I have been with them for a few years with a reasonably problem free service. They were able to provide me with a reliable 2.5MB service for the last three years, whereas BT and others were telling me not to bother, or they could only provide 0.5MB at most.

Their main problems are that most of their customer service issues are dealt with by call centres in the far east, who whilst all very pleasant and polite, appear not to have english as their first language and are not able to deviate from the script they have been given. This leads to you feeling that you are being treated in a very condescending way and reading the forum seems to have a high failure rate of reaching solutions, thus meaning very high dissatisfaction rates. Since I have been dealt with by the CEO office I cannot really fault their efforts, which as I have said are still continuing. Given that I do not understand the technical issues that may be responsible I am prepared to allow them a chance to overcome these, as I have had a good service on the whole from them hitherto.

I see it as a similar situation to Abbey National, when it was first taken over by Santander - many people suffered very very poor service, so frequent that it was featured as one of the worst banks for several years. Then they had a new CEO, Ana Patricia Botín, who quite literally ensured a transformation of the bank. It regularly gets top ratings and provides top rates for retail customers whilst giving a top rated service. I have benefitted from that transformation significantly and maybe will see similar tangible changes at TalkTalk.

But first of course, they have to get the thing working, properly and reliably, so time will tell

That's odd...if Zen doesn't have its own equipment in the local Exchange, it uses exactly the same BT Wholesale network to connect as Talk Talk does (WBC) and both, of course, use the same BT Openreach service (copper pair) to connect to the Exchange...If Talk Talk can reach you, so can Zen...unless the distance to cabinet means only a marginal service can be offered when Zen are probably more likely to pass on the business than Talk Talk.

I have had to call Zen twice in the last 5 years. Both times I went straight through to a competent Tech Support person in Rochdale. They ran diagnostics while I was on the phone and correctly diagnosed the issue in both cases in 5 minutes (1 was my router, 2 the BT line). It ain't cheap but if you still use a landline, their calls work out much cheaper than BT so overall it's not quite as painful.

I thought it strange myself, but using both service websites line checkers, they both are unable to provide anything other than an estimated 1 - 1.5MB speed, which is course what I am trying to improve upon. TalkTalk were the only provider who said they could get me 2.5-3MB when everyone else said it wasn't possible, before the arrival of the Fibre locally.

The arrival of the Fibre Broadband to our village is very recent - so perhaps that may have a bearing on matters. In any case I will see what the Higher Level Engineer says on Tuesday. A phone call to both of these service providers may provide an explanation, but I will hold off until after the forthcoming visit.

Cheers

The Openreach higher level engineer came as promised and did various tests and checks. Before he arrived he did a remote test and was seeing circa 5Mbps when he was here he eventually saw it at a steady 10Mbps and thought that although not what there should be he was relatively happy. As he was packing his things I did some tests and it crept up to about 18Mbps

He was baffled and said that we should monitor things for a few days. Talk Talk were being quite good with updates and checking and after 5 days off a stable 18Mbps I thought I would plug in the TV Link devices again to see what effect that might have.........................

Within a few minutes the speed was unstable down to less than 5Mbps, and then started dropping again

Another call to update ISP and they said they would get someone back to me. This Friday I had an off chance call from an Openreach engineer to say he could pop in if it was alright. He did all the same stuff viewed my results and did a few tests himself. I had by then unplugged the TV Link devices as I needed a stable service back to use for working. He then started to look at the overhead lines and thinks it might be 'cross talk'. Apparently with Fibre it is shoving so much down the system that it is far more sensitive to any slight fault, especially in the final copper wire to premises. He was talking about replacing the overhead cables along the telegraph poles back to the cabinet in the village, that is over a mile's worth.

The only reason he couldn't was he couldn't get and second engineer at such short notice on a Friday afternoon. He got the speed back to 15Mbps and then started to pack up. Before he left I did some checks and it was up to 22Mbps he was baffled ' I haven't done anything really, nothing to bring about such an improvement' he said before making some calls to other people about this.

So another period of monitoring over this weekend then. I have to say that all three Open reach guys have been first class and genuinely interested in bringing about a resolution, this last one even phoned the Talk Talk people direct to discuss it with them and they agreed it was not right and needed to be cured. Talk Talk have not been too bad either, once this matter had been elevated within their organisation it appears to be being dealt with appropriately.

Do I now plug in the TV Link again, and if it causes a crash it will show again and might see me get a new cable back to the cabinet, or do I just leave it and do without the TV and hope that it remains stable from now on..........

We had major problems with broadband which turned out to be caused by a CCTV power supply causing interference.

The Openreach engineer used a medium wave radio to listen to interference in a certain frequency and switched off individual circuits at our fusebox until it disappeared.


Power supply was replaced and broadband has been great since.

Problem points to TV box.

Does the BB recover when you unplug the tv box or does it need an engineer to reset it? If it recovers itself then plug it back in and if it crashes remove it. Not convinced on the cross talk theory if it is the tv box.

Marki_GSA said:

Does the BB recover when you unplug the tv box or does it need an engineer to reset it? If it recovers itself then plug it back in and if it crashes remove it. Not convinced on the cross talk theory if it is the tv box.

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No if I unplug these TV Link things (one in the mains socket near the router connected by cable - one in the mains socket by the TV box connect by cable) I do recover a far more stable speed and after a couple of days it is very stable.

But after the engineer attends it gets back up to the highest speed and looks good. Both the engineer and Talk Talk people do not think there is a connection between these TV devices and my BB issues ! But since these link devices are sending out signals it seems too much of a co-incidence to me.
As another post has said, BB can be affected by the most unlikely of things, the engineer was telling me of several cases similar to the CCTV security device example.