PJCNET

For the last 4 months at the time of writing I have been experiencing very slow speeds with BT Total Broadband during heavy usage hours, mainly in the evening, for more details please see Is BT Broadband betting overloaded and read all the comments.

About 4 months ago at the time of writing when I was experiencing slow speeds during heavy broadband usage times, mainly during the evening, my general browsing was very slow and streaming videos would buffer repeatedly. I’d run various speed testers to check my speed including Speedtest.net, Speed.io and others. Different speed testers would vary somewhat, but would all confirm that my Internet was running slow, sometimes averaging slower than 512Kb/S when at off peak times I’m regularly getting 6000Kb/S+. I’d then call BT to complain and they’d tell me to run the Official BT Speed Tester and a few months back this would also agree that my speeds were in fact slow, forcing BT to acknowledge it. Also when BT ran tests at their end, they’d also see the problem.

Now at the time of writing I still experience the same severe slow downs during heavy usage and all the various speed testers still continue to report very slow speeds. The problem is the Official BT Speed Tester now completely disagrees with all other speed testers and BT then insist that everything is okay and I’m in fact getting good speeds. It certainly seems that BT have changed their official speed tester so that it doesn’t accurately measure the actual speed achieved. I strongly suspect they are now using a special priority line in a similar way to how BT Vision uses a priority line to the Internet for their so called speed test. This therefore bypasses the serious congestion at the local exchange, saying that everyone has good speeds unless the actual line itself is at fault.

The biggest problem is BT are now using the new official speed tester to deny anything is wrong when they clearly have serious congestion problems at the exchange. They even try to tell people that their PC is at fault and try to charge them for a paid technical support service, see Are BT providing a poor service so people are forced to pay for additional paid services? which is terrible.

Is anyone else having problems with their Internet speed on BT broadband during heavy usage times only which is usually worst in the evenings? Are you getting told the speed is very good because the BT Official Speed Tester tells you so when it clearly isn’t good? I’d love to hear your experiences.

Disclaimer

The above document details my own personal opinion only and it cannot be disclosed as definite fact. Although PJCNET always tries to make the information available as accurate as possible, we cannot be held responsible for any mistakes made or any adverse publicity this my cause. We invite BT to respond to my opinion to give both sides of the debate.

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