Broadband modems

500,000 homes lose 4Mbps of speed due to poor set-up

26 June 2012

According to research carried out by TalkTalk, millions of UK homes are missing out from achieving the best possible speeds due to poor set up, which is what we have been saying for a long time!

TalkTalk engineers have performed 25,000 home visits and have identified many problems associated with set up.  TalkTalk claims that over half a million homes lose about 4Mbps of download speed due to poor set-up, and believes that a further 2.5m homes could increase their broadband speeds by making a few changes.

According to TalkTalk, the average home has a broadband speed of 7.6Mbps, so a loss of 4Mbps is a significant amount.

TalkTalk believes that most of the issues that they have identified can be solved quickly by broadband users themselves. We wholeheartedly agree, which is why we have produced our independent Increase Broadband Speed Guide.

The most common issues found by the TalkTalk engineers were:

  • poor wiring (31%)
  • router not set up correctly (20%)
  • phone socket not set up properly (17%)
  • a new ADSL broadband filter was required (14%)
  • other problems, such as customers not connecting the router to the mastersocket directly (13%).

Interestingly, TalkTalk wants to encourage people to think of broadband in the same way as water and electricity, in that it is a resource that can go to waste if broadband users are not careful.

For our comprehensive guide on how to maximise your broadband speed, click on the following link:

Increase Broadband Speed Guide

Speed up broadband: five top tips

18 April 2012

When you want to speed up your broadband, it can be somewhat depressing reading information about new superfast broadband services if they are currently not available in many areas. All is not lost! We present five tips on how to get the very best speeds from your Internet connection if you’re not lucky enough to be able to subscribe to superfast broadband services.

With recent announcements from Virgin Media and BT, you could be forgiven for thinking that almost everyone is able to access superfast broadband speeds. Early this year, Virgin Media announced plans to double the speeds for most of its four million broadband customers, offering download speeds up to 120Mbps. This month, BT announced that the maximum download speed of its Infinity superfast broadband service would be increased to 76Mbps (with upload speeds increased to 19Mbps).

Despite these impressive headline speeds, it’s important to realise that superfast broadband services are not available in many areas of the UK, so average broadband speeds are much lower. In its latest assessment of broadband speeds (published in February 2012), Ofcom found that the average broadband speed in the UK as a whole was 7.6Mbps. 

Even with significant Government funding, superfast broadband services will still not be available to at least 10% of the UK population even by early 2015, and this percentage could be much higher. Many of us will be ‘stuck’ with ADSL services, so we’ll have to make the most of them! In its February 2012 report, Ofcom found that ADSL-based connections continue to deliver average download speeds much lower than the headline ‘up to’ speeds (which are often used to advertise broadband services). ‘Up to’ 8Mbit/s and ‘up to’ 20/24Mbit/s ADSL connections delivered just 41% and 31% of headline speeds.

Here are five tips proven to speed up broadband:

Tip 1: Connect your modem/router to the BT mastersocket rather than using long extensions. Long extensions can increase noise and interference to your broadband signal, which can have a detrimental impact on broadband speed.

Tip 2: Fit a filtered ADSL faceplate. This can make a dramatic difference to broadband speeds and costs less than £10. The purpose of the filtered faceplate it to separate your broadband signal from the rest of the telephone wiring throughout your house. A filtered faceplate is very easy to fit. For more information, view our ADSL Faceplate page.

Tip 3: Select an ISP that doesn’t ‘traffic shape’. Many ISPs apply so-called ‘traffic shaping’ at peak times, intentionally reducing broadband speeds to avoid having to invest in broadband infrastructure (to cope with the peaks in traffic demand).  High-quality ISPs that do not traffic shape include Xilo. For more information, view our Which ISP? page.

Tip 4: Purchase a high-quality router/modem. There are significant differences in the extent to which broadband modems can maintain a connection, particularly with challenging or long lines. Routers such as the Billion 7800N have gained an excellent reputation among broadband users for extracting the best performance possible. For more information, visit our Which Broadband Router/Modem? page.

Tip 5: Tweak the target SNR margin. Some modems (including the Billion 7800N) allow you to tweak the target SNR margin, to significantly increase broadband speed. For example, changing the SNR target margin from 18dB to 1dB could increase download speeds by over 100%. For further information, read our SNR Tweak page.

If you are able to apply all five tips, you are likely to experience dramatic improvements in broadband performance. Good luck!

Introduction to the Increase Broadband Speed website and blog

1 February 2012

Photo representative of increasing broadband speed

If you’re struggling with your broadband connection, or you would simply like to get the very best speeds and reliability from your broadband line, then the Increase Broadband Speed website and blog are for you. We bring together, in one place, proven techniques that can substantially increase your broadband speeds,  and we provide recommendations for the best broadband equipment and services.

Without a decent broadband connection, you risk getting left behind. We are becoming more reliant on broadband and the Internet. We’re increasingly doing our shopping online. Our children are using the Internet more for their school work. Our mobile phones can now connect to home broadband connection to avoid running up costly mobile bills. Services such as BBC’s iPlayer are increasingly being used to supplement conventional TV viewing and radio listening. New devices, such as Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle, offer easy access to information and applications via a home broadband connection. 

While an increasing number of people have the option of superfast broadband services, many are still reliant on ADSL2+ and older ADSL technology. 

After helping many people in our local area with their broadband services, Alastair Brydon and I decided to set up this website and blog to help people more broadly. We live in rural Cambridgeshire and have personally suffered the frustrations of poor broadband speeds. By improving our own speeds, and through helping others, we have discovered that it is possible to substantially improve broadband speeds by using a number of techniques. Our telecommunications backgrounds have helped us to gauge which techniques make the biggest difference. We’ve found that these techniques work successfully time and time again, and most are really easy to implement. For many broadband users, we have been able to double broadband connection and throughput speeds. 

We hope that you find the site useful. We have tried to make its structure clear so that you can navigate the site successfully. If you are looking for a good place to start, then please visit the following page, which summarises a number of our recommendations.

Increase Broadband Speed guide

If you find the information and advice useful, we would love to hear from you. You can email us at info@increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk, as we love to know that we’ve made a difference!