Page 1 of BT Phoneline and modem

Moved to a new house about 18months, signed up to a new ISP, but only ever connected at 28.8kbps, thought this was due to the ISP. Have had to change recently, and found that I was still only connecting at 28 (if I`m lucky), I knew that this might be down to the gain rate so I rang BT and asked them to check the line and rate. Got a phone message yesterday saying the line was fine, the gain rate was set to max (4), but that the type of line I was on was unable to handle anything above about 30k, and there was nothing they could do. So my question is this, why have BT put a crap phoneline in a brand new house, why does my mate 7 doors away connect at 40kbps, and is there really nothing that can be done? (And no, broadband isn`t available yet) :/

I guess a few questions in order first,

What o/s you using?
What type of modem are you using?
Is it set up in the modem properties to access at the highest speeds?

Does seem strange to admit they only have a 30k bandwidth on your line, very sus if you ask me. Would also ask to borrow your mates modem for a short while and see what his reports the connection at, and vice versa, take your to his etc.

Be careful that the light at the end of the
tunnel, isnt the 6:15 from Paddington..

Had a range of similar probs with a NTL line & a NTL account in Herts 2 years back, whereas the same acct on a BT line in Devon accessing NTL World was fine.

(The latter was in place before the former).

NTL came & went a few times & said all was well etc etc etc

In short I tried the following modems

Internal Modem on Laptop 9K Average connect speed
USR External Modem 18K Av Connect Speed
Cheap External Modem from Home Av 48k connect speed

Once I hit 48K all was well but the ISP continually threw me off in times ranging from 9 to 28mins one night it got so bad I went to bed early & tried again when I woke up at 5.30am same problem & upto 10 mins to reconnect, so I logged it time to dial in successfully & time I was online before thrown off. A very sharp e-mail to NTL with this info & I was on my return from work able to get the full 2 hours & no delays in connecting.

"Great chunks of my past detaching themselves like melting icebergs"

Tried with internal/external modems, win 98 and XP, all settings are fine, tried several ISP`s.

Seems you have covered most of the bases, i take it from what you said earlier that your not cabled up where you live, that also seem odd - i used to work for a cable co and they were usually dead keen to get into new housing estates, used to save them digging up the roads..

Maybe if you wrote to BT and asked why its the case you can only connect on a brand new line at the speed regarded as state of the art ten years ago.

Be careful that the light at the end of the
tunnel, isnt the 6:15 from Paddington..

Roar349,

If you know your kit worked OK before then I can almost guarantee BT have a DACS device on your line! This is a special line sharing device that BT use on analogue lines. In areas where they are short of lines, they will use this device to enable two households to share a single line.

I speak from experience because I had the same problem. One day all was well at 44Kbps+ and then the next day 26.4Kbps was the max? I too reported the fault to BT, they also increased the gain to no affect so said there was nothing wrong and they couldn`t guarantee faster connections on an analogue line designed for voice communications.

A year later and after much research (I work in the IT industry) I found out about the DACS devices. OFTEL have a web-site all about this technology and after quoting from their directives, BT had the device removed 2 days later. I`m now surfing at 44-45Kbps (no Broadband in my area unfortunatly). One useful test is BT`s own Broadband availability web-page - it used to tell me if could not confirm availability and it may be due to a line sharing device.......ie, DACS!

Check out OFTEL`s website and get back onto BT!!!