Better Broadband in Wales

PlusNet broadband.

I’ve been on the phone to the support team at Plusnet, my ISP recently over an issue that may or may not have anything to do with them. It is nice that they have an English support team as it certainly makes dealing with such issues a whole lot easier, so whilst speaking with them I also thought I’d try to increase my Broadband speed a little too.

A few years ago, I had problems with our connection. At the time the line only supported speeds up to 1Mbps, but we were on the standard (up to 8Mbps) connection. The problem with this was that the speeds would often drop to next to nothing. I got on the phone to Plusnet and they decided that if I changed to a fixed broadband connection at 1Mbps rather than the variable up to 8Mbps that my connection would be more stable. This worked and ever since I’ve been enjoying a steady internet connection where I get 950Kbps downloads and around 150Kbps upload speeds.

At the time that was fine, but the line has been upgraded slightly since then and these speeds are now pretty slow. So, I asked Plusnet if I could go back to the variable speed connection to see if that would make a difference. At first they said I was already on that and that there wasn’t a fixed 1Mbps connection on my line. After a while I convinced them that there must be and the regraded my account to the ‘Up to 8Mbps’ connection.

Speedtest Results

Speedtest Results

This took effect this morning and I immediately noticed an improvement. Connection speeds have doubled to around 1.8Mbps download and 360Kbps upload. I’m not convinced that is is definitely an improvement overall yet though. For a start the latency seems pretty high. Although the actual download speeds are good, it seems to take a while before it actually starts downloading. Also, whilst downloading a large file earlier the speed was good for a while but then dropped off to nothing, forcing me to stop the download and restart it. I’ve also had the connection drop a couple of times. Hopefully these issues are just little niggles due to the changeover and things will settle down soon.

1.8Mbps may not be that fast but it’s twice what I was getting so it would be nice. It may even mean we can start using BBC iPlayer properly!

1 Response

  1. Avatar forComment Author Alan says:

    Well, the new broadband should have sorted itself out by now and the initial 1.8Mbps connection speeds that I was getting have dropped to around 1.19Mbps, marginally better than the 950Kbps I was getting before, but only just. Upload speeds are better though as – Tests this morning average around 330Kbps.

    If it drops any more or becomes less reliable then I’ll have to change back to the fixed speed connection.

    Al.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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