Slow upload speeds for a full month now

[kreg]

I'm currently on Volt M600 Fibre Broadband which usually gives me around 40mb up and for the last month or so my upload speeds have been terrible and sitting around 25% of what they should be, sometimes as low as 3mb. I'm on a wired connection so there's no WiFi issues to contend with.

The service status website initially shows no issues in the area but when I call 0800 561 0061 I'm told there is and they're working on it but it's a complex issue. I've been given 5 dates for resolution – 9am on Oct 2, Oct 12, Oct 13, Oct 21 and finally Oct 27 but my speeds are still sitting at 10mb upload as of right now. I upload 14GB videos to YouTube 2-3 times a week and what used to take 45 mins or so is now taking 2.5 hours and sometimes longer.

It's a nightmare trying to actually speak to someone about this as I just get palmed off to WhatsApp and I'm given the same script over and over again. "There's an issue affecting your postcode, please wait a week and I'll make sure this is fixed".

Could someone from the team get in touch regarding this? I've been told it's a priority 4 outage, which I'm guessing is low priority as I still have internet access however a month without a fix is getting beyond a joke.

I've tested all of my kit and everything is working as it should but the SamKnows test reports my router upload as being slower than device which indicates an issue outside the house.

As far as I know there has been a ticket raised for this and that is F010968001.

Edit: One thing I have noticed is that YouTube and the Google speed test report slow speeds but Ookla and others report 40mb and uploading to Frame.io is at full speed too. Is this potentially a google/virgin media issue? These two tests were done within maybe 30 seconds of each other.

[kreg]

Upstream bonded channels

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) Symbol Rate (ksps) Modulation Channel ID

1	49600000	45.8	5120	64 qam	1
2	23600000	43.3	5120	64 qam	5
3	30100000	43.8	5120	64 qam	4
4	36599991	44.3	5120	64 qam	3
5	43100014	44.3	5120	64 qam	2

Upstream bonded channels

Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts

1	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
2	ATDMA	0	0	37	0
3	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
4	ATDMA	0	0	1	0
5	ATDMA	0	0	0	0

Primary Upstream Service Flow

SFID	17657
Max Traffic Rate	44000278
Max Traffic Burst	42600
Min Traffic Rate	0
Max Concatenated Burst	42600
Scheduling Type	BestEffort

[Joseph_B]

Hey @kreg,

Welcome back to the Community Forums and thanks for the post. 

Sorry that you have been having this issue with your upload speed, looking into that ticket reference you gave, I can see the outage is still listed and being worked on, the estimated fix time for this is the 31st October at 2pm, do let us know after this point if you still have this issue and I can continue to check this through.

Joe

[kreg]

Hi @Joseph_B, 2pm has been and gone and my upload speeds are still slow.

I appreciate it's a priority 4 as I can still access internet but this has been carrying on for over a month now and every time the estimated fix date arrives I'm told to wait another week, it's beyond frustrating.

[kreg]

Even slower upload speeds this morning, I can't even phone to make a complaint as I'm just told the lines are too busy, please call back later.

[Molly_T]

Hi Kreg 👋

Thank you for keeping us updated! So sorry to hear that you have still been experiencing these speed issues! 

It does look as though the SNR outage has been extended to 06.11.23 at 1pm.

SNR (signal to noise ratio) is just a technical term for interference of the Broadband signal caused by noise which ingresses on to our network. It's a difficult problem to locate and diagnose because noise can ingress anywhere on the network. As a general rule it's normally caused by customer equipment e.g. loose connections or 3rd party equipment attached to our network. However it can also be attributable to local architecture, e.g street cabinets, cabling or at the origin of the signal which we call the Headend (servers/routing system). The only way to establish where the noise is originating is for the Network Techs to run a series of trace routes. Once found then the cause dictates the amount of work required and the time frame for resolution. 
It also looks as though you have been in touch further since your last post and that an engineer appointment was booked. Hopefully this went well? Please let us know how you are getting on following any actions being taken by the engineer! We do hope this improves things, but keep us posted if you continue to have issues so we can provide further support or outage updates if needed. 

Wishing you all the best! 🌞

[kreg]

Hi Molly, yeah we had an engineer out on Friday who swapped my Hub 3 for a Hub 5, all tests he done on the line were showing full speed capability and I was hitting 40mb most of Friday night and able to upload 9GB to YouTube in 35 mins or so. However, yesterday afternoon my uploads dropped to 5mb and this morning they're all over the place, ranging from 10-37mb and ~90 mins to upload the same amount of data so things are still very intermittent.

Samknows is also reporting varying speeds, sometimes the router upload is 17, sometimes it's 40.

I'm noticing a fair amount of T3 timeouts on channel 4 on my upstream and these are flagged as "critical" on my network log, not sure if this is related?

05-11-2023 01:22:33

critical

Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=**:**:**:**:**:**;CMTS-MAC=**:**:**:**:**:**;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;

3.0 Upstream channels

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) Symbol Rate (ksps) Modulation Channel ID

0	49600000	46.3	5120	QAM 64	1
1	43100000	45.8	5120	QAM 64	2
2	36600000	45.3	5120	QAM 64	3
3	30100000	44.8	5120	QAM 64	4
4	23600000	44	5120	QAM 64	5

3.0 Upstream channels

Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts

0	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
1	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
2	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
3	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
4	ATDMA	0	0	33	0

3.1 Upstream channels

Channel Channel Width (MHz) Power (dBmV) FFT Type Modulation

6

10

41.2

2K

QAM 256

3.1 Upstream channels

Channel Channel Type Number of Active Subcarriers First Active Subcarrier (Hz) T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts

6

OFDMA

200

74000000

0

0

[kreg]

I set up a BQM and this is the results from yesterday/today.

and this is my upload this morning, these two tests are within minutes of each other:

[kreg]

Service Status phone number reported an eningeer in the area to fix a broadband and TV fault today and speeds have been flying all day so I assumed this issue was over as I was getting a solid 40mb upload on each test until around 6pm. However, it’s crawling once again and the service status is back to the intermittent issue I've been facing for weeks on end.

I'm getting really, really annoyed with this.

I appreciate it's a priority 4 but it's continually bumped down the list and I can't even speak to anyone regarding it. Whatsapp takes hours to be fed the same script and it takes days for a reply on the forums.

[kreg]

We've had engineers in the area for the last 2 days according to the service status website and absolutely nothing has changed.

The 6th November date has come and gone with no resolution which is now the 7th date I've had for this to be fixed with none of them actually happening. It's nigh on impossible to speak anyone about it either, I've still got around 12 months left of my contract but I don't think I'll be staying with Virgin after the length of time this has been ongoing.

When it works, it's incredible... when there's an issue, it's an absolute nightmare.