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Broadband Speeds Explained

Explaining the limitations of traditional broadband

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Why Can't It Be Faster?

Explaining the technology and how to achieve the best possible speeds

So that our customers can understand what to expect from their broadband connection in terms of speed, and to explain simple steps to improve your speeds, we have devised the following guide.

Firstly, we should make it clear what we mean by broadband speeds. The speed at which you access website pages or files from the Internet is known as your download speed. The speed at which you send files (eg sending an email or uploading pictures to a website such as Facebook) is your upload speed. Typically the download speed will be typically faster than the upload speed especially as the majority of applications require this to be the case.


We currently offer two speed profiles:

  1. Fibre to the Street (SOGEA) up to 80Mbps (up to 20Mb upstream)
  2. Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) up to 1Gb (up to 115Mb upstream)

Our Availability Checker will allow you to access this information.

There are lots of factors that can impact on the speed of your broadband connection:

  • The length of your phone line from the BT local exchange
  • The quality and age of internal and external wiring
  • The quality and length of internal wiring from the master socket to your router (shorter the better)
  • Quality of your filter / splitter
  • Connecting to the router wirelessly as opposed to connecting with an RJ45 cable
  • The age of your router and computer equipment
  • Weather conditions (eg affecting the external wiring and connections to your premises)
  • Non-broadband equipment including seasonal decorations (eg Christmas tree lights)

Should you wish to raise a slow broadband fault with us, we will want to run through various steps to ensure that some of these issues that are within your control are ruled out.

There are various simple steps which may help:

  • Ensure you leave your router powered up and connected at all times. When you constantly connect / re-connect a router sometimes it can have an adverse effect on the speeds achieved.
  • If you are connecting wirelessly, try using an RJ45 ethernet network cable. Sometimes wireless signals can suffer from interference.
  • If you are using a wireless connection ensure that you have security enabled. It is quite possible that other users may be connected to your signal if left unsecured.
  • Replace your router if it's old, especially if you wish to gain the most from your broadband connections. Alternatively ensure that you have the very latest firmware for your existing router.
  • Don't connect your router using long extension cables. Ensure that they are kept as short as possible, such as using the supplied cables with your router (approx 1 meter).
  • Ensure you are connect to the master socket, not a slave socket. The master socket is typically located nearest to the front door. Using slave sockets which feed from the master can have the same effect as a long extension cable.

Fibre speeds can fluctuate during the training period. It's important that your router is left powered up and connected at all times in order for you to receive the quickest and most reliable connections your line can support.

As you are connected directly to the exchange via fibre you should find that the likelihood of interference on the line is limited compared to copper. Speed fluctuations are likely to be down to demand for bandwidth on your connection, capacity at the exchange, or capacity on our network.

Some of the following points may be considered obvious, but they are important to note:

  • Fibre broadband is not supplied with any form of warranty. It may take the carrier more than 24 hours to fix some problems.
  • For those operating mission critical applications it is always recommended that you consider a backup Internet connection or a more resilient solution with a service level agreement, such as a leased line.
  • Fibre is a contended service. As such latency and pings times can vary. We cannot make any guarantees regarding the speeds achieved.
  • Please do not make requests for part refunds, good will gestures, or free services in the event of less than desirable performances. We are unable to offer these. We will always ensure that any faults are dealt with quickly and efficiently, but sometimes we have to rely on our partners such as BT Wholesale which can delay matters.
  • The quality and speed of your broadband will be affected by your line. If you suffer from poor quality calls, crackles or any form of interference these are issues you must take up with your line rental supplier. They are outside of our influence and should be treated as voice affecting faults. Once addressed you may find that the broadband faults are also fixed.
  • No matter how tedious some of the questions we ask you may seem when fault fixing, we only ask for information that will assist in getting a quicker fix to your problem. Sadly BT Wholesale haven't developed any magical tools to fix problems within minutes, so the first step will be to fact find in order to discover the best way forward.

Should you have any questions about the points raised on this page, or for further information about our broadband packages, then please do not hesitate to contact us either via email on sales@cix.uk or phone on 03300 538 548.