Am I Being Sold Nonsense....? Not on ADSL2!

[Elmlea]

Hi all,

I was getting a steady 4mbps from Sky, despite all my line stats pointing towards 7-8mbps being feasible. I contacted support and asked to be set to a gaming profile, which gained me 0.5mbps at the expense of half my upload sync speed. The tier 2 support guy also kindly said he'd send out an Openreach engineer just in case.

When the Openreach engineer got here, he said straight away after plugging his kit in that the problem was I was on regular ADSL, not ADSL2. His little device just said "ADSL" in the corner and he was adamant that it'd say "ADSL2" if that was the case! He said it's not uncommon; while Sky have their equipment in our exchange, I wasn't the first household he'd seen where my Sky account was still being routed through the BT equipment.

Has anyone heard of this before? Despite the sync speeds being broadly similar to my old regular ADSL connection, when I saw an upstream sync of 900kbps and 768kbps I assumed I must be on ADSL2?

I called support back, who first told me that I *was* on ADSL2, and there must be some other reason for the slow speed.

After contacting their Customer Solutions people, he then took me off hold and explained that the "Sky Voice and Broadband Network" in my area was oversubscribed, and therefore I couldn't be migrated across to ADSL2.

Anyone got any advice on how to follow this up? I'm not terribly happy with being told I'll get ADSL2 only to, well, not get it without anyone even telling me. Plus, the numerous excuses, plus people on the phone claiming I'm ADSL2 when an engineer in front of me proves I'm not make me think I might be getting the run around a bit.

What should I do now?

[Exdee]

Can you post your router stats? They will reveal whether you are on ADSL2+ or not.

[Elmlea]

Sure, what am I looking for?

[Elmlea]

As a start....

System Details
Manufacturer Sagemcom
Model Number F@ST2304
Firmware Version 5.14.6.1a4N
ADSL Firmware Version A2pD030n.d23b
Modem
Modem Status Connected
DownStream Connection Speed 5220 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 412 kbps
VPI 0
VCI 38

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 5220 kbps 412 kbps
Line Attenuation 46.5 dB 27.6 dB
Noise Margin 6.3 dB 16.5 dB

I can't see anything that refers to ADSL or ADSL2 though, although I'm sure I remember there being some standard codes; G.992 something etc? There's no sign of that anywhere in the details I can pull out of this router.

I do have a spare router I could plug in and see what it gets, mind you.

[Exdee]

How to get your router statistics

[Elmlea]

Quite happy with that bit, cheers, I was hoping there'd be somewhere it'd confirm if I was on G992.5 (it should be 5 for ADSL2+, I think?), but I can't see that anywhere.

Unless you can spot something in the basic statistics there that tell you what service I'm on?

[Exdee]

Your stats suggest you are on ADSL2+.
Let's see what stats you get from your spare router.

[Elmlea]

Your stats suggest you are on ADSL2+.
Let's see what stats you get from your spare router.

From recent experience, they'll give me a drop to around 4mbps downstream and an attenuation of around 50dB. My other half's on iPlayer though so I won't plug it in right now!

What about those stats points towards ADSL2+? And if I *am* on ADSL2+, why would the Openreach engineer's kit claim I was on regular ADSL?

Also, if it is ADSL2+, with a stable line with those stats and no noise problems, why is it struggling along at 5000/400 when it should be able to crack 7000-8000/700-900 without too much difficulty?

[gorebrush]

I wouldn't trust anything someone from BT is telling you mate...

I am cynical though


Though, a 46dB attenuation figure would be more like 6.8Mb not 7-8...

[Elmlea]

I wouldn't trust anything someone from BT is telling you mate...

I am cynical though

Fair enough, but I did look at his little plug-in device and saw it saying "connection type ADSL" where he said it would normally say "connection type ADSL2+" so it seems pretty clear cut....!