Need some ideas for my speed

[fortyniner]

I had a decent (well 1.3Mb) speed when I first moved to rural North Wales but over the past few months it's getting slower and slower.  The line reset itself yet again about 17 hours ago and now the BT speedtest results show :

Download speedachieved during the test was - 304 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 100-500 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :672 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 704 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 350 Kbps

The router shows :

ADSL Information       (ADSL Firmware Version:  E.38.2.23 )
  ATM Statistics   TX Blocks   RX Blocks   Corrected Blocks   Uncorrected Blocks
     1774237      7896242                 11713            98
  ADSL Status   Mode   State   Up Speed     Down Speed   SNR Margin   Loop Att.
     G.DMT   SHOWTIME   704000                  672000                      12.0                  54.0


It's got to the stage where I am seriously considering satellite broadband despite the cost that this will involve as I can't operate on these speeds (the last windows updates for example took over an hour to download on each PC - didn't dare run the updates on more than one pc at a time - and they were only in the region of 60mb    )

The annoying thing is that, as I say, I had a rock steady connection for about 8 months, then something must have happened somewhere down the line as first of all I got continual drops of the line and then the speed started to slide.  A week ago it went up to about 700k and yesterday (after a powercut the I assume was caused by the wind here that brought down several trees) it was reduced to 300k.

If anyone has any ideas what so ever as to what I can do to get the 1Mb+ speed back I'd be extreamly grateful - I've tried swapping the router (the new one gave even more problems), switching filters, double filtering, turning off all DECT phones, plugging the router into a different phone socket (I don't have a test socket), turning off everything electrical in the house apart from the PC, monitor and router.  The problem happened without me adding any new equipment or plugging anything new in so I don't see that it can be that (but turned off everything anyway).

[fortyniner]

It ironic really when the BT Wholesale checker says...

"Our check also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL Max broadband line speed of 1.5Mbps; typically the line speed would range between 1Mbps and 2.5Mbps.

Your exchange is planned to have ADSL2+ by 31st March 2012. Our check also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL2+ broadband line speed of 2Mbps; typically the line speed would range between 1Mbps and 3.5Mbps."

[Rik]

Clearly the connection has become unstable as the sync speed should give a higher profile than you currently have. If you dial 17070 and select option 2, quiet line test, you should hear only a slight hiss or hum. If there is any crackling, report the fault to your voice provider without mentioning ADSL.

If the test is quiet, then check your wiring at each socket, you should have just two connection, on terminals 2 & 5. If there's anything on 3, remove it at all sockets. The wiring on 2/5 should be a matched pair eg blue/white and white/blue. Check the polarity is the same at all sockets.

If that doesn't apply, or help, have you got a MW, battery-powered, radio?

[fortyniner]

Hi Rik,

Thanks for getting back to me - the quiet line test was silent so I'll check the sockets (gotta move some furniture for that).

I'm sure I have a battery poved MW rsdio here - I imagine I need to tune it to a frequency and do a walk test do I ?

Cheers,

John

[Rik]

Almost. De-tune it, so all you hear is white noise, then do the walk test, starting from where the phone line enters the house and ending at the router. If the noise increases at any point, that's something giving off RF noise, which may be causing problems.