So, having had BT infinity for ~18months, and syncing at about 26Mpbs, we decided we were happy with the service and signed up for a new contracted to get the speed increase. The order went live on the 17th April, but I saw no speed increase. I gave it a few reboots and left it a couple of weeks, but it still stayed around the 26Mbps mark.
So, venting on twitter, I got a response from @BTCare who offered to help. Good stuff! After some line tests and various instances of speed tests, They arranged for an engineer to come yesterday.
The engineer Gary duly came, and spent 4 hours trying to see where the problem was. He replaced the Modem with a new one, replaced my BT Home Hub 2 with a Home Hub 3, and the master socket face plate with a new one.
The line was still only syncing at 26Mbps, which was odd, as he reported that he was seeing 80Mbps at the cabinet 500 metres away.
In the end, it turns out that the cables from the cabinet to our house are aluminium, not copper. Aluminium is less conductive than copper, and was probably cheaper when the cables were laid.
I’m waiting to hear back from the nice chap at BT to see if there’s anything that can be done…
As an aside, I’ve switched back to my Home Hub 2. It apears the Home Hub 3 I was issued with does not do “loopback” connections, needed to access my dynamic DNS address from within the LAN. As it’s a “Type A” homehub, there’s currently no firmware upgrade to fix this, though it has apparently been fixed in the latest Firmware on the “Type B” devices.
I must say that my thanks go out to all the lovely staff on the BTCare team, and the engineer Gary. They have all been more than helpful!