Why am I getting a progressively slower broadband speed, sales pitch???

[PPM43]

I think I might know why...

IN 2016 my ADSL router was handshaking at 3,776kbit/s.with 6.0db SN margin

Since then I have had no change to the layout in the house but from the start of this year the speed has progressively dropped to 3, then 2.5, then 2 then 1.5 and now it's rubbish at 0.75mbit/s.

Every time I call talk talk I get the same sales pitch 'lucky you you can upgrade to fibre for the same amount' even though they have been repeatedly told 'no fibre to our village until 2026'....I've been sent one engineer who failed to improve the situation and actually disconnected my telephone from the master socket, when I complained to talk talk they told me that I would have to pay a BT openreach engineer to fix their mess...2 'no-show' engineering calls and now that the speed is below their guaranteed minimum (so that I am due compensation, but they wouldn't specify how much) they have promised an engineer will call tomorrow.

The annoying thing is my router shows a Signal to noise margin of almost 20db so I know full well I should be getting faster speeds - it is sooo obvious that talk talk are limiting my speed to try and upsell me something that I don't need. It is rubbish service. No wonder they are rated the worst broadband company in the UK.

If this carries on it'll be a complaint to Ofcom before I ditch them for another provider.

[Karl-TalkTalk]

Hi PPM43

I've reset the port and optimised the line, see if this helps.

Thanks  

Karl. 

[Skynet_TX]

Hi @PPM43,

TalkTalk will not be limiting your speed to try to upsell you. Openreach have a system called Dynamic Line Management (DLM), this is an automated system that monitors the quality of your connection and will automatically make changes to your line settings to try to give you the best combination of speed and stability. One of the things that DLM can do to try to give you a more stable connection is to increase the target SNR.

So what is probably happening here is that DLM is detecting some issues with your connection, which it thinks will cause stability problem with your router, so it has increased your target SNR in an attempt to give you a more stable connection.

An SNR that high would tend to indicate a problem on the line somewhere that DLM is trying to 'correct' for. Hopefully you get a good engineer tomorrow to look at this for you.

It would be worth going to the Service Centre to run a connection test on your line, does this detect any issues ?

Also, if you have a landline phone can you check to see if that is working normally (i.e. you have a clear dial tone and no noise on the line).