"Insufficient bandwidth" plaguing Bowes Park residents

In the depth of winter last year I saw five phone company engineers removing heavy, greasy black cables the thickness of my arm from under the pavement. They came back later to lay a replacement cable the size of a hosepipe. Then, during the spring the pavements around the entrance of Bounds Green tube was ripped up to allow for the installation of a new green "BT" cabinet.

In May a new cabinet was installed near Springfield Tavern. The roadworks in the background is unrelated.

Here's the background to my unusual obsession with roadworks. If I want to watch a programme with my children after the 9pm watershed then BBC iPlayer is the place to find appropriate content. What often happens is that we get to watch 10 minutes of David Attenborough after which the image gets choppy and is followed by a message "Insufficient bandwidth to stream this programme." (Children have no patience. They don't appreciate the wonder of getting TV on demand; it's always been part of their lives and they just expect it to work.) So when I saw the activity by the phone company my thoughts were: "This has got to be it; at last, we're getting faster internet!' I called up my internet provider and was told yes, the faster FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) internet will be ready in June.

7 More days to go…but I don't believe it!

Muswell Hill was the lucky guinea pig for what has been branded by BT as "BT infinity". The trial was a success and soon TV adverts were wowing every viewer in the UK with the promise of a super-fast service. There was a problem for most who wanted to order it: it was not available. The expensive and time consuming task of laying the new cables was just cranking into gear. For the last two years I've eagerly re-visited Samknows to find out when our telephone exchange Bowes Park (official abbreviation "LNBPK") with get faster internet. Every six months the date kept on getting pushed later. Samknows currently lists Bowes Park exchange's status for FTTC's as: "Available in some areas" Well it ain't yet in mine.

To see the actual speed internet users in the area are getting you can view this map. Yes, some of us are getting speeds that will support reliable TV streaming. Most of these are Virgin customers. Virgin has its own cabling network and has provided stonking fast internet to swathes of London for many years. The rest of us (BT/Plusnet/TalkTalk/Sky etc) all use the same wires provided by BT with only a small percentage on the faster FTTC link to Bowes Park exchange.

When can we be sure of the whole of Bowes Park exchange area getting FTTC? I don't know. BT's target is to make FTTC available to two thirds of UK households by the end of 2014. I'm hoping that with the increasing number of new street cabinets currently being installed on our streets, it's going to be some time this year.

Bowes Park Exchange is on Lordship Lane directly opposite Wood Green Crown Court. This is where most of BowesAndBound's residents phone cables originate.

What are the signs that you have or may soon have faster internet?

First you'll see the standard waist high green phone cabinet on your street get replaced by a shoulder high behemoth. If it's humming and there's hot air coming out the vents, it's operational. To check, call up your internet provider and ask "When is the up to 40 Mbps internet going to be available?" The correct term is FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) but don't expect them to know that. And don't get fobbed off with offers of an "upgrade" to up to 16 Mbps internet. That inferior technology often offers little or no improvement over conventional broadband.

So why would you want the up to 40 Mbps internet?

If the extent of your internet useage is checking emails and reading the news online then there's no point in upgrading your connection. I'm hoping that once I upgrade to 40 mpbs internet Youtube videos will begin playing instantly and I'll also be able to upload large 1 GB files to customers in minutes, not hours.

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Comment by Dave McNeill on May 24, 2012 at 14:32: Great post, Kevin. Very informative.

Being at the New Southgate end of the area was, communicationally speaking, a curse when we first moved in - we were awarded an 020 3 number instead of the lovely old 020 8888 Wood Green number we used to have on the Bowes Park exchange. (Try explaining for the fiftieth time that 020 is, in fact, the STD code for the whole of London these days!)

That all changed when BT Infinty arrived in New Southgate. I've got to say that for streaming Video (we are also big iPlayer watchers and now have an internet connected TV) it is great. No buffering, no breakups. Even HD content, though not Blu-ray quality, is good. I would recommend a wired connection for the TV - we have powerline ethernet adapters (TP-Link - incredibly easy to install).

I'm not a comms expert, but I do know that Virgin are giving BT a run for their money in the super-fast broadband arena. You may not wish to move to cable, but it might be worth checking out speed/availability/cost in your area as a stick to wave at BT.

Lastly, a good tip is to regularly run a bandwidth checker. I use speedtest.net. They've got an Android app. It keeps your results history, so you can compare speeds at different times of the day and as weeks go by. Last test I did (admittedly this was at the end of last year, so I'm not taking my own advice!) I was getting just over 20Mbps down and 1.7 up. If you find yours degrading at certain times, there may be some recourse.

Comment by Michael Dawson on May 25, 2012 at 14:42: Just adding my experiences with Virgin Media. The TV is very good - excellent picture quality and only very occasionally that there is any problem. The broadband connection, in my experience, is nothing like as good. I have tested my download and upload speeds recently using the uswitch site: http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/speedtest/ Out of six tests, the average download speed is around 5Mb, the highest two are just under 10Mb and the others below 2Mb. The average upload speed is more consistent at around 1Mb, although sending emails with attachments seems to take a surprisingly long time. Perhaps I am unlucky - I suspect results vary a lot even within a fairly small area. But according to uswitch, the Virgin Media average upload speed for my area (not defined) is 10.7MB, compared with 15.5MB for BT (and the corresponding upload speeds are 3.2MB and 1.5Mb). As with BT, there is a lot on the Virgin Media website about speeding up broadband and how brilliant VM is, but nothing to explain what my package (Large) really entitles me to, or why my service seems to be really pretty poor.

Comment by Dave McNeill on May 31, 2012 at 17:48: Perhaps Kensington and Chelsea's lack of appetite for FTTC will work in Bowes Park's favour.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/31/kensington_and_chelsea_bt_c...

Comment by Kevin@The Ground Bean Café on May 31, 2012 at 18:27: Many others in the area will be connected to the New Southgate exchange which also has an FTTC status as "available in some areas". So we're all in the same boat.

Michael, it's clear that you're not getting your contractual bandwidth. Virgin seem to have changed their terminology for packages and now lists their smallest broadband package as 30Mbps. So it's clear you've got a technical fault preventing you from getting your money's worth. You'll have to brace yourself for call centre fatigue and work you way through to someone who can fix the problem. My provider, TalkTalk has an excellent alternative to the call centre. Their member's forum has got very responsive employees responding to users' queries. These people can take charge of the case and get action. Way less frustrating than trying to explain your problem on the phone to someone who is neither trained to understand it, nor empowered to solve it. If Virgin's got an online forum I'd recommend you detail your situation there.

Finally, about my own quest for FTTC. I spoke to a call centre operator at TalkTalk yesterday. I was told that FTTC is already available in my street. The only problem is that when I do a similar check on OpenReach or PlusNets checker they both report that its not available. I don't believe TalkTalk. There are a whole bunch of idle FTTC cabinets still waiting to be switched on in our area. Next time you use the tube put your hand over the vents of the cabinet to the right of the steps leading into the station. There's no warm current rushing out. My opinion is that the hot air is being generated by Talk Talk sales staff who want me to sign-up now so that they can close the sale prior to actually having the service activated.

Comment by Clare on October 29, 2013 at 16:38: I'm in Clarence Road. We don't have access to cable there so no opportunity to have Virgin services.

I'm with BT and the upload and download speeds are laughable.

6Mb/s download and a 1 (yes, 'one') Mb/s upload.

On top of that, the internet cuts in and out frequently, easily once an hour and sometimes several times an hour.

There is no way I could stream anything without dropouts. iPlayer is just not possible.

I use the internet for work and study, a lot, and this is driving me insane.

I wonder about upgrading to BT Infinity, but believe that the 'speeds up to' blurb is misleading and fear my internet connection will still be dragging its heels.

BT say that if they come out and find the fault is in my flat that I will have to pay them £100.

I'm over a barrel.

Comment by Jules on October 29, 2013 at 17:30: @Clare — I live on Manor Road (no cable, either) and switched from Be's standard service (8Mbit down/1Mbit up) to BT Infinity 2 over a year ago. The first month was terrible, with the service up and down for the first few weeks, but I put that down to teething troubles — I signed up as soon as it was available in this area.

Thankfully, the service has been great ever since and, while there are still slowdowns during peak periods (Sunday nights, usually), I'm still very pleased with its performance:

Comment by Kevin@The Ground Bean Café on October 29, 2013 at 17:32: There are two different causes for slow internet:

a) Distance from the exchange

b) Wiring faults

Go to the BT's speed predictor website to find out what speed it predicts for your property when using 1) ADSL - broadband internet 2) Fibre Optic - Infinity

Now compare the ADSL prediction with what you're actually getting. If there is a big difference then raise the issue with your ISP; evidently something's not right. This would indicate a fault on their end or within your property. They'll first exhaust all possibility that problem is on their end with checks and tweaks. Only then will they suggest a site visit to test your local cabling.

So before you take the leap to Infinity you can already determine if your in-house infrastructure is up-to-scratch. If it does all check out OK and the only cause for slowness is your distance from the exchange then you should get the Infiinty speed predicted by the BT broadband speed predictor website.

I got fed up with Virgin due to massive slow-downs during peak usage time. They told me that the neighbourhood internet cables were due to be upgraded and the congestion would be overcome in a few months. After a year of continual postponements of the neighbourhood upgrade date I went over to fibre broadband.

The speed I'm getting now is the same as was predicted by the performance predictor at the BT Infinity website: 70Mbps down /15Mbps up. Pings are low and performance is also good at peak times.

You can choose from a long list of providers that all retail BT's wholesale Infinity product. Choose based on price and service.

Comment by Clare on October 29, 2013 at 17:32: That gives me hope Julian. Thank you.

Comment by Clare on October 29, 2013 at 17:33: Thanks Kevin. I'l do what you suggest and report back.

Comment by Clare on October 29, 2013 at 17:42: Hi Kevin.

What I should be getting on bog standard broadband then is 10.5

What I am currently getting on bog standard broadband is 6... That's when it's not dropping out.

The dropping out is so bad that I tend to use Free BT Wi-Fi hot spot rather than the actual Hub. Saves me going into the other room to reset it every hour!

Thanks for the advice.

I think I'll have to get onto BT. Not looking forward to that phone call...