Problems with Orange Broadband connection

I have had a 2 Mbps Orange "Home Starter" broadband connection (with offpeak calls) for a number of years which has given broadband speeds in the range 1 to 2 Mbps which has been adequate for our usage eg BBC i Player etc.

Over the last few weeks the broadband speed has deteriorated to an almost unusable level so I contacted Orange "Customer Services" by e-mail who gave the following response:

"A check on BT's database shows that they have downgraded the speeds
possible on your line to a possible 256K. This normally means that there
is congestion on your line often caused in rural areas where all users
must use one line. I would advice firstly factory resetting your Seimans
router as it may simply have been affected by an electrical disturbance
with the below guid".

I read this with disbelief because BT keep sending me letters saying that speeds will soon be up to 20 Mbps so I asked my neighbour who said that he was getting approx 5.5 Mbps. I also put my poscode into the BT speedtest site which confirmed that I should be able to get 5.5 Mbps at my postcode, however when I put my phone number in the site it confirmed a maximum speed of 256K for my line. I checked the speed on the Broadband UK site and this confimed the Dowload Speed of 128k and Upload Speed of 368k.

I then phoned Orange Customer Services on Tuesday 6 October and they confirmed the BT downgrading and advised me to stick pins in my Siemens Router to do a factory reset which seemed pointless if the maximum speed achievable was 256K. I told them about my neighbours speed and they said they would check my speed out with BT.

On Wednesday 7 October I thought that my problem had been solved because my broadband speed suddenly increased to 3.5 Mbbs. This was the result of the BT speed test:

Download speed achieved during the test was - 3230 Kbps
Your DSL Connection Rate :4736 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 4000 Kbps

However on Friday 9 October I was bitterly disappointed to find that the speed had dropped to 130 K. This was the result of the BT Speed Test:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 118 Kbps
Your DSL Connection Rate :160 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 384 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 135 Kbps

I sent another email to Orange Customer Services about this but got the standard reply about sticking pins in my router.

I also contacted BT (my landline is with BT) who gave the following response:

"I can advise however that we would view any speed under 512kbps as not being a broadband service. If you were to move to BT and were unable to get above 512kbps after we had a chance to look at any possible faults on your line you would not be held to term on your cnotract
I am sorry I am unable to give you a guaranteed speed you would received but I would not know what this is until you were a BT customer."

My speed increased briefly last night (Saturday) to approx 750k but was back at 130k this morning. I attempted to use the BT speed test site to check this but I seem to have been blocked from using this.

If my speed had remained at 3.5 M I would be happy to remain with Orange but I cannot cope with the continuing dramatic variations in speed. I am thinking about changing to BT or another provider but I would like confirmation that I could get speeds up to 4 Meg from the new provider before I do this.

I would also like some kind person to explain why my IP Profile was downgraded from 4000kbps to 135kbps and my DSL Connection Rate (whatever that means) from 4736 to 160 kbps.

I would be eternally gradeful if some kind person would explain what is happening with my broadband connection to make the speed keep changing like this before I start to look for a new provider. I do not want the same to happen with them! I just want an adequate connection in the range 2 to 4 Meg so that we can continue to use the BBC i Player etc.

As far as I am concerned Orange's new name of "Everything Everywhere" means "Nothing Nowwhere" to me.

Grumpyoldman