I too once lived in a UK village approximately 5-6 miles from the main telephone exchange.
The connection to the village was was via copper cable (not fibre optic cable).
The main connection to the village is terminated at something called a CAB and it's from there that the connections to the houses are made.
I was originally subscribed to BT-Broadband with a Fixed Line Speed of 1/2Mb.
Back in June 2007, I got a sales call from BT inviting me to 'upgrade' my connection speed from a 1/2Mb to 2Mb, all for the same money as I was paying for my fixed 1/2Mb connection. It seemed like a bargain, so I told them to go ahead.
Well it worked well for a number of days, but then the speed started to drop off, i.e. drop off to considerably less than my original & rock-solid 1/2Mb connection. What happened next then took me 12 months to resolve (
and it never was fully resolved) but, fwiw, here's my take on it:
What BT want to give you is a service that is 'reliable' 1st, and 'fast' 2nd.
So what they do is for the first 10 days, i.e. when the service / upgrade is first installed to your home, their system works out your 'maximum
reliable line speed' and then caps your connection at that speed. They call this assessment of your maximum reliable line speed '
Profiling'.
In the main exchange, where the lines to / from your village are terminated, BT will be using a 'Rate Adaptive' router. It's this router that caps the speed at something which it thinks will provide you with a 'reliable' (
first & foremost) Internet connection, regardless of the final speed that you actually achieve and / or regardless of what speed you think you've paid for! In short, your theoretical maximum line speed is electronically throttled back to provide a speed that BT think is more '
reliable'.
When BT tell you that they are re-profiling your line, what that means is that BT (
electronically) instruct the Rate Adaptive router in the main exchange to start-over again, i.e. remove all caps on your line speed and then start stepping down the speed (
based upon data packet loss) until a maximum reliable speed is determined and then to cap your connection at that speed. So, given that the noisy ole' copper wires between you and the main exchange have not been replaced, after a few days you end up back where you started, wrt a slow connection speed.
Well I did, as you probably have done too, spend hours getting the run-around on tech support calls with BT Broadband (
Bangalore, talking to people whom were obviously Indian, yet purporting to have anglo-saxon names like Dave and such like, go figure ?!). Needless to say, they hadn't got a f'ing clue and are doing no more than reading from a script… and my problem was certainly outside of the scope of that script!
I was finally directed to a combination or BT Line Faults & BT Wholesale (
UK based. Nb. It's BT Wholesale who manage & lease the lines to BT Broadband) which then resulted in numerous visits from BT field engineers - whose knowledge and experience evidently can vary - but wherein I eventually got lucky and was assigned a really top notch & tenacious chap to come and investigate the problem (
nb. it would appear that BT field engineers actually don't work for BT wherein, even though they drive BT vans & wear BT uniforms, they are employed as 'contractors', this being all part of BT 'cost-cutting'… I digress).
I did eventually got someway towards a solution, wherein I suspect the fix BT put in place was to take me off of the 'Rate Adaptive' system and put me (
back) on to a 'fixed rate' / 'fixed speed' ADSL connection… though I'd guess that (
now 3 years on from that) BT are probably not supporting ADSL anymore (
and that fibre-optic to the CAB is now the flavour of the month for rural locations) ?!
Perhaps the moral of the story is that I should have stayed with my original 1/2Mb ADSL connection and avoided 12 months worth of hassle and frustration, to say nought of hours wasted on the calls to BT tech support and the days waiting for visits from field engineers!
I would add that changing you service provider (
ISP) might
not make much difference - unless they have installed / use a separate cable to your village? - else wise you will simply end up being connected on the same cable as presently, inherent with all of the same problems!
What certainly helped my case was that I had run many (
many!) speed tests on my own line and had kept the results; and you too can run your own speed tests using either (
and I suggest both) web-based utilities:
http://SpeedTester.BT.com
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest
Keep the records of these tests, as you can then use them to spank BT with evidence that's hard for them to refute!
Having been through the mill with this myself, I can certainly empathise and sympathise with you… but please do stick with it!
Have you asked your village neighbours / local Parish Council if they are having the same problems and, if so, I suggest collectively lobbying BT to get them to install a 'fibre to the CAB' connection from the main exchange down to your village ASAP !
Albeit that they might have changed these, the various contact numbers I had for BT are as follows:
Technical Support Help Desk - 0800 111 45 67 x 1 x 2
Line Faults Dept - 0800 731 85 78 (only once a fault has been reported through the help desk)
BT Wholesale - 0808 100 9779
Broadband Tech Help Desk - 0870 240 4650 (and maybe also try - 0845 600 7030 x 1 x 1 x 3 )
Order Management - 0800 800 150
Broadband Customer Options Team - 0800 800 030