There are a number of factors that will affect the speed of
connection delivered over your DSL service, for this reason the
speed of your Broadband service can never be guaranteed.
Manx Telecom offer both VDSL Ultima and ADSL2+
Broadband services. Ultima is offered as a higher speed Unlimited
service which has no usage restrictions. ASDL2+ offers a range of
products which are priced differently based on a monthly
through-put of data rather than the line speed, for example 15
Gigabytes of data per month. This is the amount of data used
when browsing web sites, using email etc, rather than the speed of
your connection/downloading.
Please note that no refunds or compensation will be given
relating to the speed of your Broadband connection when it is
within service specifications.
The speed at which you connect/download will vary significantly
due to a range of factors, including:
- The distance of your home/office from our local exchange or
remote equipment – the longer the line, the slower the speed.
- The number of other people online at anyone time – because the
broadband network, and the Internet in general, is a shared
service, speeds are slower at times of peak use. Customers who
connect at higher speed will often find that their download speeds
during busy periods will be comparable to customers who connect at
lower speeds.
- The specification of equipment and wiring in your home or
office, including routers, PCs, laptops, etc. Poor wiring or older
equipment can reduce the speed by over 50%.
- Electrical interference ‘noise’ – eg, from fluorescent lights,
microwaves and vacuum cleaners.
Correct Setup
While it's not always possible, it is best to not use any form
of extension lead between your router and the telephone socket.
This includes hardwired extension sockets as these are still just
extension leads. The further that your Broadband signal has to run
the more interference there will be and as such the slower the
connection will run. A small increase in line noise can cause major
problems, so it is always worth trying to run from the main
telephone socket without any extension leads.
Filtering
It is very important to ensure that you correctly use filtering
on your telephone line to ensure that there is no interference on
your Broadband service.
Ultima Broadband
If you subscribe to Ultima Broadband a Manx Telecom engineer
will have installed a specific socket for your Broadband service.
You should not use any other filtering on your line, filtering is
performed by this socket. If you use filters in any other socket on
an Ultima Broadband line you will be 'double-filtering' and this
can seriously affect the quality of the service you receive.
ADSL2+
As ADSL2+ is a wires-only service, meaning no engineering visit
is made to provide Broadband, you need to ensure that all equipment
attached to the phone line is connecting through an ADSL filter
(see our Filter Troubleshooting page for further
information). Unfiltered equipment (Such as telephones, fax
machines, answering machines, cordless telephone base units, alarm
systems, surge protectors, Set-Top Boxes, dialler boxes,
literally anything attached to the telephone line) can interfere
with the broadband reception of your router. If you are in
doubt whether a piece of equipment attached to the telephone
line is causing a problem, simply disconnect all devices (except
the router) and try your Broadband connection again.
Bringing you the best possible service
Broadband is a 'Rate-Adaptive' service which means that
each time you connect it will automatically connect at the fastest
possible, stable connection speed based on all the factors
previously mentioned.
If there are problems with your own equipment and/or wiring, one
of our engineers can visit your home/office to resolve them, but
there is a charge for this service.
If the Broadband service doesn’t meet your bandwidth
expectations, we have a range of premium services that may better
match your requirements – just call us on 624 624 for details and
prices.
Our most commonly reported ‘faults’ reported to our
Service Centre can be prevented or resolved without you having to
call us.
Test Your Broadband Speed
You can test the speed of your Broadband connection by using our
Bandwidth Speedtest tool.
Security
Now you have an always-on connection you should secure your PC
or Mac from viruses, hackers and other problems. A software
firewall which allows you to block access to your PC from outside
sources (and can protect the rest of the internet if you get a
virus), and an anti-virus scanning application would be a
minimum. Some operating systems (e.g. Windows Vista and
7) have firewall software built-in so ensure you have that option
enabled. We would also recommend that you consider running an
anti-spyware scanning application too.
Some useful links to examples of these applications are as
follows:
Document Downloads
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