Does your ADSL connect at a very low speed?

Friday 08 August 2008 07:58:45 by Andrew Ferguson

The last week on our forums has revealed what may be the start of a pattern, a number of posters have reported that their ADSL modem will only connect at 128Kbps downstream and 64Kbps in the upstream direction. To date all of these posters have been using the BT Total broadband service.

At first sight many people, including service desks put this down to issues like long length, bad microfilters, in home telephone wiring and other common issues. Alas this would seem to be none of those issues, since IPStream Max should have a minimum sync of 160Kbps for the downstream, and 64Kbps for the upstream. If the 160Kbps speed cannot be reached then the ADSL modem should not sync at all.

The service still works, but with a speed that it barely twice the speed of dial-up the experience will not be what broadband is meant to be. A real possibility is that some upgrading from dial-up will not realise the low sync speeds are actually a problem.

If you are affected by this problem, then email us at andrew@thinkbroadband.com, include actual sync speed, attenuation, noise margin figures if available, model of ADSL modem used, ISP name and if you would like us to try pursue BT to try and get this fixed the telephone number of the line affected. You should still try and get the problem reported via your broadband provider, who in theory would then report it as a fault to BT Wholesale.