There was a fault on our line which was resolved by BT Openreach, however, in discussing with AOL's engineers on the phone I asked about the slow upload speed.

Currently the max I'm getting is 448kbps upstream. Next door is with TalkTalk (same company, different brand) and gets close to 1Mbps upstream. Same for guy across the road who is with Sky broadband.

AOL's engineers claimed that because our line rental is still with BT, we are on the "Fujitsu" exchange which is limited to 448kbps. This is despite the local exchange being enabled for AOL and TalkTalk (checked on Samknows).

Do you guys have any advice as I'm finding Skype video calls are really suffering with an upload speed of 40-45kb/sec.

I'd like to improve this speed but I'm wary of going fully LLU as it apparently can result in total line downtime when switching to a different provider.

It sounds like you are on a BT Wholesale ADSL MAX service which has a max upload rate of 448kbs as opposed to an ADSL2+ service which would have a potentially higher upload rate.

Does Samknows say it your exchange has been enabled for ADSL2+ services? If it has been then the AOL rep has lied to you.

Thanks, the exchange says enabled for ADSL, ADSL Max, 21CN WBC and FTTC. It also says enabled for AOL LLU.

I just realised I posted in a sub-board, sorry!

A lot of the LLU and BT kit in the exchanges is Fujitsu so it'll be something to do with that. Some is Huawei though. In a large exchange there could be several MSANs for a given LLU provider.

It actually sounds like you are still on ADSL, and haven't been switched to ADSL2+

What download speed do you get?

FTTC says that AOL have lied because FTTC is available.

I get about 7 Mbps downstream. Here are the router stats (it mentions ADSL2+ but you never know with AOL):

Your downstream rate alone confirms you are on ADSL2+, but you may be on different equipment to your friend who is on the same exchange. Each MSAN can only do a certain number of customers. Most of the kit does seem to be Fujitsu though. Which doesn't really tie in to what you're saying about the 448kbps limit as wherever I've lived I've been able to get 1Mbit.

To be honest the rate limit on Fujitsu is not something I'm aware of. I'm not saying what you've been told is wrong, but it could even be for example, some older Fujitsu kit can't do any more, but the newer Fujitsu kit can.... something along those lines.

And if you're on BT Wholesale ADSL2+ well that definitely does 1Mbit upstream too, as that's what I'm connected at now, but like I say it could be to do with the different models of equipment at the exchange:

Downstream: 14,751 Kbps
Upstream: 999 Kbps

Thanks Icaraa. If I get in touch with them about the upload speed, what should I be asking them to do?

Their first level support is incredibly slow and frustrating!

Looks to me like the upstream is limited by being capped using Target SNR.

This, I believe, is the method used by BT Wholesale ADSL2+ as well as ADSL Max. So it appears you have been moved from Max to ADSL2+ but the upstream parameters have not been changed.

Standard flavour ADSL2+ Annex A allows for a maximum of ~1.3 Mbps upload speed, but many providers cap this at 448Kbps, I believe this is because the higher upload speed can introduce line stability issues on circuits with high attenuation (i.e. longer or 'poorer quality' lines).

BT Retail and PlusNet certainly cap uploads by default, though ceertainly with PlusNet you can request that they uncap your upload rate via their Helpdesk, not sure about BT Retail. The other alternative that some ISPs offer is the 'Annex M' variant which increase potential upload speeds to 2.5Mbps at the cost of a lower Downstream Sync rate, though this is often only available on their Business Broandband services and/or for an extra monthly charge.

That doesn't sound right to me I've been with BT Retail for a few years and my upload has always been 999kbps.

The networks team are supposed to be looking into it at the moment.

Just wanted to ask - is there any significance to the SN Margin dropping?

The router was restarted (someone unplugged it to do the hoovering) and it then connected at 9632kbps downstream (still 440kbps upstream). Before the restart the SN Margin was 6.2dB.

After the restart and higher connection speed it was 3.1dB. I just checked now and it's 0.7dB.

Line attenuation remains unchanged.

Useless service from AOL. They don't know anything. The phrase "pay peanuts, get monkeys" springs to mind.

Connection is still dropping.

May move to Sky, they seem to have good reviews for their broadband.

I've found when I was on ADSL with Sky, they were more than happy to reconfigure the line. For example, DLM had synced my line too high so it would drop out in the evenings as he SNR declined. Got onto Sky and they monitored the line and manually set a rate that remained constant with no d/cs until I moved to fibre.