vodafone reduced me from 8mbit/s to 6mbit/s - no explanation

RODJ

can anyone advise me on this please?

i've been on 8mbit/s with vodafone since forever. today i notice
i'm running at about 1mbit/s so i call tech support.

they say sorry about that - we reduced your speed by accident, but
we'll bump you back up. but he only bumps me up to 6mbit/s and says
his software informs me my line only supports up to 6. but it was
definitely running fine at 8 all along.

basically my connection speed has been reduced by 25% as of today (for
the same price mind you) and not even an explanation what
happened!

is there any point in getting onto their complaints dept do you think or
what would be the best way to proceed in your opinion? i'm paying for
the service where many people are getting 24mbit/s but my exchange
only goes up to 8mbit/s. at least i'd like to get the full 8!!

Sponge Bob

RODJ wrote: »

is there any point in getting onto their complaints dept do you think or
what would be the best way to proceed in your opinion? i'm paying for
the service where many people are getting 24mbit/s but my exchange
only goes up to 8mbit/s. at least i'd like to get the full 8!!

I reckon eircom have turned half of Dublin down and yes you should FORMALLY complain and if you get some BS then take it to Comreg and complain again.

I reckon this is widespread and is because eircom have overcooked their network in response to UPC.

Bohrio

RODJ wrote: »

can anyone advise me on this please?

i've been on 8mbit/s with vodafone since forever. today i notice
i'm running at about 1mbit/s so i call tech support.

they say sorry about that - we reduced your speed by accident, but
we'll bump you back up. but he only bumps me up to 6mbit/s and says
his software informs me my line only supports up to 6. but it was
definitely running fine at 8 all along.

basically my connection speed has been reduced by 25% as of today (for
the same price mind you) and not even an explanation what
happened!

is there any point in getting onto their complaints dept do you think or
what would be the best way to proceed in your opinion? i'm paying for
the service where many people are getting 24mbit/s but my exchange
only goes up to 8mbit/s. at least i'd like to get the full 8!!

Do you live in Finglas by any chance?

Bohrio

By the looks of it and the fact that you were put on a 1 mb profile I have a feeling I know what has happened.

(removed)

PS: just in case I wanna make clear that I dont work for Vodafone

RODJ

Bohrio wrote: »

Do you live in Finglas by any chance?

bingo! is there something going on in this exchange that you can tell
me

Bohrio

hehe

nope... everything is as usual...

Do you really need those extra 2 mb that bad?

Thor

Bohrio wrote: »

hehe

nope... everything is as usual...

Do you really need those extra 2 mb that bad?

Em, Who wouldn't need the extra 2Mb speed!! Seeing as he only had 8Mb in the first place!!

Imagine if they cut you by 2mb!!

In the long run, It will always make a difference!! 220kbps extra speed would cut your download time by around 20% give or take!!

Bohrio

Thor wrote: »

Em, Who wouldn't need the extra 2Mb speed!! Seeing as he only had 8Mb in the first place!!

Imagine if they cut you by 2mb!!

In the long run, It will always make a difference!! 220kbps extra speed would cut your download time by around 20% give or take!!

Well I have 50 mb so getting 48 wouldnt make much of a different but I agree, 20% off is a bit too much but in all fairness, I was on a 8 mb package before and hardly notice any different at all. The only time when you can notice the difference is when downloading files but even then it didnt bother me much...

lucernarian

Bohrio wrote: »

Well I have 50 mb so getting 48 wouldnt make much of a different but I agree, 20% off is a bit too much but in all fairness, I was on a 8 mb package before and hardly notice any different at all. The only time when you can notice the difference is when downloading files but even then it didnt bother me much...

It still begs the question of why Vodafone won't simply reinstate the speed if it worked perfectly before?

Or is this a case of more shenanigans with eircom wholesale and the prequal speed being treated as law?

Thor

Imagine if you suddenly started paying them 25% less every month, They wouldn't stand for it.

Tell them to fix it or give you a 25% discount on your broadband every month.

It's ridiculous how DSL ISP's can advertise speeds of 8Mb or 24Mb and then say your line can't handle that speed!!

Unless you live next door to the exchange then no one is getting full speed!!

But in this case, The op originally had full speed so his line can handle it, Which means they have no excuse!!

Bohrio

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

It still begs the question of why Vodafone won't simply reinstate the speed if it worked perfectly before?

Or is this a case of more shenanigans with eircom wholesale and the prequal speed being treated as law?

you are assuming he is on an eircom wholesale product.

There are many reason why this could have happened.

Why if the OP is on ADSL2+ now and the reason why he is getting 6 and not 8 is because the auto tunning system believes is better of like this?

A Reason why, well, lets say this person has a very old router that is not compatible or meant to work on an ADSL2+ exchange. What will happen there?

His attainable rates will be based on g.dmt not adsl2+. Should in fact, he should be able to get much higher speeds if he had an adsl2+ compatible router.

Also, what if his line is bad or there is a PSTN fault on it?

Many many reason why this could happen...

Is not up to vodafone to determine what the maximum speed is but to the Access Provider.

And Thor, the reason why your analogy is not correct is because the product sold is an "up to x mb" product. The reason why is because there are technical reason why your line cannot get the speed advertised. However, said this, ISP should make this even more clear as is leads to confusion.

RODJ

Thor wrote: »

Imagine if you suddenly started paying them 25% less every month, They wouldn't stand for it.

Tell them to fix it or give you a 25% discount on your broadband every month.

It's ridiculous how DSL ISP's can advertise speeds of 8Mb or 24Mb and then say your line can't handle that speed!!

Unless you live next door to the exchange then no one is getting full speed!!

But in this case, The op originally had full speed so his line can handle it, Which means they have no excuse!!

not to worry - although vodafone basically told me to bugger off, boards.ie
came to my rescue and resolved my problem in a roundabout way. i'll say no more!

lucernarian

Bohrio wrote: »

you are assuming he is on an eircom wholesale product.

There are many reason why this could have happened.

Why if the OP is on ADSL2+ now and the reason why he is getting 6 and not 8 is because the auto tunning system believes is better of like this?

A Reason why, well, lets say this person has a very old router that is not compatible or meant to work on an ADSL2+ exchange. What will happen there?

His attainable rates will be based on g.dmt not adsl2+. Should in fact, he should be able to get much higher speeds if he had an adsl2+ compatible router.

Also, what if his line is bad or there is a PSTN fault on it?

Many many reason why this could happen...

Is not up to vodafone to determine what the maximum speed is but to the Access Provider.

And Thor, the reason why your analogy is not correct is because the product sold is an "up to x mb" product. The reason why is because there are technical reason why your line cannot get the speed advertised. However, said this, ISP should make this even more clear as is leads to confusion.

I don't think I assumed anything there. Sometimes Vodafone customers are served via BT wholesale and sometimes via eircom wholesale. I don't know if BT wholesale are, shall I say, uptight about prequal limits but eircom certainly are, there are threads in the Talk to: eircom forum. One thread in particular highlights this. As the poster hasn't given any information that suggests he is served under either "carrier" for want of a better word, I posed the question of whether it was an eircom wholesale and prequal issue. If I knew it was eircom wholesale I wouldn't have posed the question to begin with and would have instead blamed eircom for their stubborn approach to prequal limits.

Now, as for the points above:

It begs credulity to think that if a line is changed from G.dmt to G.dmtbisplus modulation that its data capacity would be reduced. The main reason behind using ADSL2+ is for the higher speeds it offers over ADSL, particularly on shorter lines. Longer lines still benefit from being now able to use bins that can carry 1 bit and also improved error correction coding IIRC. The autotuning you mention is used by BT in the UK but I've seen no reason to believe it happens in Ireland. I already have talked to Vodafone about one line where running a test from the DSLAM showed that line was capable of about 3 mbps but that the provider (eircom wholesale still) would not allow a profile higher than 1 mbit with high interleaving to be used. The eircom thread I mentioned gives a better example where the poster provided line statistics with a very healthy signal margin but was arbitrarily limited by the software portal/interface (forget what it's called again) that eircom wholesale offers.

With ADSL2+, the standard inherently supports a fallback to G.dmt for CPEs that only support it. But this is the thing, even if the line was changed to an ADSL2+ card, it should still connect to the ADSL speed the modem previously worked at. Not 2 mbps lower. What would make more sense is if the line was changed from ADSL2+ to ADSL as a line may be able to handle 8 mbps with ADSL2+ modulation but only 6 mbps with ADSL. But then that still means the router was able to handle ADSL2+ fine and Vodafone made a very peculiar business decision.

A line fault should be cured by fixing it surely? Not by reducing speeds. It's an odd fault that would appear out of nowhere yet would make a line only work at 6 mbps instead of what always worked, 8 mbps. If there was a fault, what's to say it won't deteriorate further and would need more remedial work? Also, if there was a PSTN fault, the system would have flagged the line as red.

The salient point here is that it should be up to the modem and DSLAM to negotiate the highest possible speed if the product is "up to 8 mbps/24 mbps", like in the UK with BT/Openreach and not some prequal test by the Access Provider (be it eircom or BT)

RODJ, have you got your 8 mbps reinstated? What are your DSL line stats currently?

dvpower

I've had a similar issue with Vodafone. I'm on an 8mbit package but I don't actually get much more than 3mbit.
They told me that my line doesn't support greater than 5mbit, so they put me on a 3mbit 'profile'. Said something about the risk of connection dropping if I was on a higher profile than the line supports.

Bohrio

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

I don't think I assumed anything there. Sometimes Vodafone customers are served via BT wholesale and sometimes via eircom wholesale. I don't know if BT wholesale are, shall I say, uptight about prequal limits but eircom certainly are, there are threads in the Talk to: eircom forum. One thread in particular highlights this. As the poster hasn't given any information that suggests he is served under either "carrier" for want of a better word, I posed the question of whether it was an eircom wholesale and prequal issue. If I knew it was eircom wholesale I wouldn't have posed the question to begin with and would have instead blamed eircom for their stubborn approach to prequal limits.

I see your side of the story. As you know, Eircom based their prequal on a simple formula based on the attenuation value at a particular frequency range. Its a very simple and most of the times effective way of pre-qualifying a line.

However this customer is not on an eircom dsl product. He is on Line Sharing hence the difference in the way this line has been prequalified.

lucernarian

Bohrio wrote: »

I see your side of the story. As you know, Eircom based their prequal on a simple formula based on the attenuation value at a particular frequency range. Its a very simple and most of the times effective way of pre-qualifying a line.

However this customer is not on an eircom dsl product. He is on Line Sharing hence the difference in the way this line has been prequalified.

Simple it is. I call it lazy and old-fashioned. It beggars belief that the eircom wholesale and perhaps BT wholesale with line share will not allow a higher speed purely on the basis of attenuation readings (@300KHz with eircom, right?). I was told by eircom manangement years ago that one line would "never" receive broadband because of its length yet it now handles 1 mbit with no sweat and with signal margins always over 14dB. I'm not the only one who had a line which suddenly went from a fail to "may be suitable". In my time on boards I've only read of one or two amber lines which didn't get the full 1 mbps. So I know exactly how much speed predictions based on attenuation alone are worth:rolleyes:

The clear solution to all of this is to remove prequal limits and if any given line has unstable SNR so that the negotiated speed is too high and drops, then a limit can be slapped on the line. I don't see how consumers can benefit from pre-emptive restricted line profiles or overly-conservative limits.

Bohrio

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Simple it is. I call it lazy and old-fashioned. It beggars belief that the eircom wholesale and perhaps BT wholesale with line share will not allow a higher speed purely on the basis of attenuation readings (@300KHz with eircom, right?). I was told by eircom manangement years ago that one line would "never" receive broadband because of its length yet it now handles 1 mbit with no sweat and with signal margins always over 14dB. I'm not the only one who had a line which suddenly went from a fail to "may be suitable". In my time on boards I've only read of one or two amber lines which didn't get the full 1 mbps. So I know exactly how much speed predictions based on attenuation alone are worth:rolleyes:

The clear solution to all of this is to remove prequal limits and if any given line has unstable SNR so that the negotiated speed is too high and drops, then a limit can be slapped on the line. I don't see how consumers can benefit from pre-emptive restricted line profiles or overly-conservative limits.

Good thinking! but the FR test is the only way to prequalify a line. Or at least the most accurate. Tests like DMT or DMM are only partially accurate.

What Eircom should be doing is be more receptive. The problem with them is that they wont listen to any advice, basically they wont listen to anything you say. If something is meant to be like this then that's it!!!

You could try using the prequal to prequalify the line, hence then name!! and then maybe try tunning the line up by looking at the attainable rates... but that just an opinion and it doesnt always work (see OP's case)

Some IPS dont have a speed limit at all, that seems to work for them but again it doesnt always work well.

So not easy... def Eircom position is the most "comfortable"

lucernarian

I can see the merits of prequal in a time when there was different product tiers based on speed. With the so-called "NGB" package and indeed with the former up to 7mbps/7.6mbps package, this prequal serves to conservatively restrict the max speed of many lines in the name of preserving stability for what is in all honesty the minority of lines (else boards would be thronged with "my line disconnects every half hour" threads)

BT in the UK were able to implement unrestricted speed pricing years ago which simply allowed the the modem and exchange negotiate the highest possible speed and then set a profile based on what worked as the highest speed that remained stable over a week or two. IIRC Openreach rolled out ADSL with similar Alcatel gear to what Eircom use (at least in the original exchanges in towns >1500 population) and I don't even think there's a need for the meticulous monitoring that BT use. I would suggest that if the line does suffer drops, eircom could trust to the customer to inform them of this:) It should then be easy to implement any number of line profiles straightaway at the bRAS by an OLO customer service rep if eircom wholesale (don't know about BT wholesale in Ireland) had the vision and attitude to make it happen. Still, at least we're now at a stage that all WLR and Line Share customers are treated equally unlike up to a couple of years ago where eircom retail customers had faults escalated or dealt with more quickly...

It took two years or so after BT decided to throw out attenuation and capacitance limits for their lowest speed broadband that eircom here even started to increase the attenuation limit from 54dB to 60dB, and steadily increased limits in leaps of 6 or 12dB after that point. And that was for 512k initially! I think it took a year or two after the Max ADSL offer from BT before eircom even offered the 7.6mbps package to residential customers, let alone "NGB" came on the scene. Over a decade after privatisation and there's still a culture of mediocrity within eircom while UPC make a mockery of their DSL offerings.

Bohrio

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

I can see the merits of prequal in a time when there was different product tiers based on speed. With the so-called "NGB" package and indeed with the former up to 7mbps/7.6mbps package, this prequal serves to conservatively restrict the max speed of many lines in the name of preserving stability for what is in all honesty the minority of lines (else boards would be thronged with "my line disconnects every half hour" threads)

BT in the UK were able to implement unrestricted speed pricing years ago which simply allowed the the modem and exchange negotiate the highest possible speed and then set a profile based on what worked as the highest speed that remained stable over a week or two. IIRC Openreach rolled out ADSL with similar Alcatel gear to what Eircom use (at least in the original exchanges in towns >1500 population) and I don't even think there's a need for the meticulous monitoring that BT use. I would suggest that if the line does suffer drops, eircom could trust to the customer to inform them of this:) It should then be easy to implement any number of line profiles straightaway at the bRAS by an OLO customer service rep if eircom wholesale (don't know about BT wholesale in Ireland) had the vision and attitude to make it happen. Still, at least we're now at a stage that all WLR and Line Share customers are treated equally unlike up to a couple of years ago where eircom retail customers had faults escalated or dealt with more quickly...

It took two years or so after BT decided to throw out attenuation and capacitance limits for their lowest speed broadband that eircom here even started to increase the attenuation limit from 54dB to 60dB, and steadily increased limits in leaps of 6 or 12dB after that point. And that was for 512k initially! I think it took a year or two after the Max ADSL offer from BT before eircom even offered the 7.6mbps package to residential customers, let alone "NGB" came on the scene. Over a decade after privatisation and there's still a culture of mediocrity within eircom while UPC make a mockery of their DSL offerings.

there is a lot more then this. Also remember the real reason why there is a prequeal. And this is to pre qualify a line for dsl.

If a person wanted to get broadband on a line the ISP will run a prequal test. This will tell the ISP whether the person was able to get broadband and what speed the customer will be able to get.

The results would be red, amber or green and the speed will vary between 512 kbps to 3 mb.

The reason why is back then eircom was not offering anything higher than 3 mb. As they started introducing higher speeds the prequal changed (4, 6, 8, 12, 15, etc).

A few years back the speed limit didnt really matter as we had either 1, 2 o 3 mb (with the exception of what was called... uuummmm, well I dont remember the exact name right now but it was the possibility to use special low rate profiles (384, 256 and 160 kbps) on amber/none standard delivery lines).

But then things change like you said, BT (their biggest copper ADSL competitor at that time) introduced up to 24 mb, just as Smart and Magnet had done before and they decided, after some thinking, to counter attack by offering up to 8 mb on g.dmt. That force the prequals to change again, but, as we all know, that didnt turned out to be a very good idea, as they were using adsl1 line were not copping well, interleave depth was too high, people started experiencing latency issues, congestion, etc... wont go on as is way too messy but here is when Eircom decided to cap lines using their prequal, based on their prequal.

Before, if your prequal was 2 mb green then, 2 mb you will get, it was more accuarate but still then some customer on 2 mb would be able to get 3 mb.. wait... I forgot what I was talking about...

Never mind, the main thing is, prequal is suppose to tell whether a line can get broadband and the approx speed the line can handle. NGB is no different than normal broadband, both offer adsl2+ (most bitstream dslam are dsl2+ now) the main difference is the core network which should be better prepared for congestion.

Unfortunately the speed cannot be set at the BRAS, what you are probably talking about is traffic shaping, where you can restric the bandwidth of a line but the sync speeds are set at the NMS.


This is a mess I am afraid, its a pain, UPC are miles away right now. When you look at their product range and compare it to Eircom's well, there is a big difference. there are other ISPs that can compeete with UPC but not at the same level.

To be able to match UPCs product you need to do what UPC did a few years ago, re wire the country!

sorry about this post I honestly dont remember anymore what I was going to answer, so my apologies if I make no sense, going to bed now, too tired

lucernarian

Just to clarify, I was talking about line speeds (as what's reported by a customer's modem-router but I should not have referred to the bRAS. In the cases I'm talking about, a line appears to be of sufficient quality to carry 8 mbps but the modem syncs at say 6144/512 kbps. The negotiated speed is ostensibly determined by the handshaking between DSLAM and CPE even if ultimately it is set by an employee at this "NMS" (I know of eircom wholesale's NMC but I've never heard of an NMS).

With the usage of rate-adaptive ADSL and target signal margins implemented at the DSLAM, the line should at least be able to sync at whatever the line can comfortably handle. Using prequal data in an age of "up to 8 mbps" services defeats the point of rate-adaptive adsl or the MaxADSL type services as what's used in the UK. http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/maxdsl2.htm.

The phone network as it stands won't match what UPC can deliver. A new 5km long line will still carry only 2 mbps just like the neighbour's 30 year old P&T-installed line. Many urban areas have lines 4km long, never mind rural Ireland. (Ignoring the wider Dundrum area and Stillorgan/Foxrock in Dublin) And I've seen nothing to suggest that OLOs are looking to introduce Sub-loop unbundling even though the reference offer for it exists (overpriced perhaps but they nonetheless exist).

Bohrio

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Just to clarify, I was talking about line speeds (as what's reported by a customer's modem-router but I should not have referred to the bRAS. In the cases I'm talking about, a line appears to be of sufficient quality to carry 8 mbps but the modem syncs at say 6144/512 kbps. The negotiated speed is ostensibly determined by the handshaking between DSLAM and CPE even if ultimately it is set by an employee at this "NMS" (I know of eircom wholesale's NMC but I've never heard of an NMS).

With the usage of rate-adaptive ADSL and target signal margins implemented at the DSLAM, the line should at least be able to sync at whatever the line can comfortably handle. Using prequal data in an age of "up to 8 mbps" services defeats the point of rate-adaptive adsl or the MaxADSL type services as what's used in the UK. http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/maxdsl2.htm.

The phone network as it stands won't match what UPC can deliver. A new 5km long line will still carry only 2 mbps just like the neighbour's 30 year old P&T-installed line. Many urban areas have lines 4km long, never mind rural Ireland. (Ignoring the wider Dundrum area and Stillorgan/Foxrock in Dublin) And I've seen nothing to suggest that OLOs are looking to introduce Sub-loop unbundling even though the reference offer for it exists (overpriced perhaps but they nonetheless exist).

Hi tbc, NMS stands for Network Management Server, basically is where you set the line profile (speed rate downstream/upstream), interleave depth, max and min sync rates, etc. Also where the PVC is set up, among other things.

UK is different I am afraid. First of all they have technicians who will set up your broadband and fit a faceplate if your line is not stable. Also, BT UK use a similar autotunning process where the autotunning can take several days to finally set the desired speed.

Is hard to find a solution. Considering the quality of our copper here in Ireland I dont believe they should set the customer's to the highest possible speeds but, then again, I think Eircom or whatever ISP should be more willing or make it easier to modify these limits set by the automated system. I think that every line is different, not because my neighbour can get 10 mb I can too, even if I live closer to the exchange. Therefore although 80% of the lines are ok as they are (just made that number up) they need to understand that maybe the rest arent...

Is hard to make them understand, time will tell... not

Oh and before I forget, totally agree with using the prequal to set the max sync speeds, specially considering that a prequal was never meant to be a final test... is just plain lazy

RODJ

update!

i thought i should add this as it might be useful to anyone in a similar
situation:

i was using an old adsl1 router before and it seemed maybe that was part
of my problem. i borrowed an adsl2+ router today and it is showing that
speeds up to 16 mb are potentially possible on this line. i'm still only
on vodafone's 8mb package but it is good to know all the same for future
reference

thanks to all who were interested!

yangzone

Having had a Vodafone account for 18 months I decided to upgrade my package to take advantage of similar service for a little less money. 'Big mistake.

About a month ago i decided to change my account from a legacy 7MBit/60GB/anytime calls to an 8MBit/40GB/anytime calls and save a few euros.

18 months ago, when I decided to move to my present location, in a fairly densely populated region of NW Donegal, it was on the premise that Vodafone could deliver a good broadband service. Vodafone sales informed me at the time that, as I was far from the exchange, they could only deliver 5MBits and not the full 7Mbits. I was happy enough with this. Over that period I would occasionally check my speed and speedtestdotnet would always register a 5.1 MBit connection. The connection was good enough for my needs.

But for the past month, since I "upgraded", my connection has been approx 1.6MBit with a very slow upload speed. Emails with attachments take forever to send and web pages are very slow to load.

After several calls to tech support, it was eventually explained to me that, when my package changed, my connection fell on to a 2Mbit Eircom Exchange server, instead of the original Eircom Exchange Server that I was on, and that Vodafone have no control over this side of things.

i was not aware that a situation could exist where more than one exchange server could be available to a given phone line for a DSL connection.

I got on to Vodafone customer service and they said that they could not help me.

I of course asked, why I was not informed when I went to change package that while my upgrade would give me a 6% reduction in my bill that my service could fall by 70% (unusable in my situation.) No explanation.

When I go to Eircom and enquire about switching to their service they tell me that my line can only take 2Mbits.

Anybody got any idea how I might be able to get my service back?

lucernarian

There are repeated stories of this on the broadband and eircom and Vodafone forums. This behaviour, orchestrated by eircom wholesale's own policy it seems, is artificially limiting the speeds that lines can handle!

Ironically there are also many lines which appear to suffer speed increases that are too much for the line when Enhanced broadband or "NGB" is applied to the line. The prequal system being used for the application of speed profiles to lines is simply not up to scratch.

BT in the UK operate a far superior system that's realistic and provides the max speed that the line can handle with no problems, and a little extra margin to boot.

While this carry-on continues, people are only going to flock to UPC where they can get the speed they ordered without any ridiculous speed restrictions or without disconnections every 30 minutes.