I have BT Broadband and, for the last few months, there have been unpleasant drop-outs and go-slows. It isn't all the time, but it is often at lunchtime or close of play. I live in a small village and normally have good(ish) service.

My question is - they are building a new road close by and they have set up the site office in my village. Is it possible that they will be using the same 'lines' as the rest of us here and the slow-downs are them using up the capacity?

If they have run landlines into the site hut and if they are using broadband on those lines then it is entirely possible that they are connected to the same exchange. Depending on what service provider they use and the capacity on the exchange then they could have an impact on your service. But then again so could any other broadband customer on the same exchange.

And of course it all depends on what they are doing. just firing off the odd e-mail or looking up suppliers websites for example would have minimal impact. But if they are downloading very large files then that would have more of an impact.

Whilst you can't totally eliminate this site office it really wouldn't be very much more different to a couple of extra houses going on line. All the broadband users on your exchange are sharing capacity to some extent and what effect each of you has on the others depends on what you are doing.

Thanks So when BT said 'it can't possibly affect it' they may have been telling porkies

This isn't a little site office - this is a three-year project to dual the main road... about twenty desks have been moved into our village hall. There is a further site office with 4 portacabins just down the road (about 300m) as well. If it gets worse I will have a pop at BT... they need to ensure capacity issues are resolved.

It is possible that the contractors have rented a private data circuit entirely separate to the broadband services on the exchange. Would make sense if it is a large scale operation like you describe.

In theory that would have no impact on your broadband as it should use a separate block of bandwidth going out of the exchange into the wider BT network to what the broadband customers use. There might be an impact if BT (or more likely Openreach) have had to squeeze the broadband capacity a bit to accommodate the contractors if they didn't have the necessary capacity on the network at the exchange.

They may have concluded that it wasn't worth the expense of upgrading the network capacity for what is essentially a short term need. If the project was to build a couple of hundred houses with loads of potential new broadband customers then they may have decided a boost in capacity would make financial sense in the longer term.

That it is these times suggests to me it has nowt to do with the site office, at least not while doing its day to day business. What one or more of their users may get up on their breaks is another question.

We also have the same problems. It suddenly freezes or drops completely. It's been happening for a couple of weeks.

A few new lines to a building site is not going to cause you noticable 'go slows' and certainly not 'drop outs'. It could possibly be a REIN related issue, that would certainly cause the problems you are having if it is only happening at certain times of day.




No, extremely unlikely it's the cause of your issues. Sounds like you need an Openreach engineer to come and check your line.

Having a 'pop' at BT will not change anything. You don't even know that the building contractors use BT as their supplier.

Totally agree. Talk about grasping at straws and trying to find a convenient cause to the problem. The OP will be suggesting conspiracy theories next......