Broadband

Personal

SLT Broadband is designed to deliver the best performance possible on your line.The maximum possible speed of the service will depend on a number of factors. The main factor affecting your broadband speed is the distance from your telephone exchange to your home. Generally speaking, the closer you live to the telephone exchange; higher the broadband speed you can achieve.

Even though some of these factors are outside of your control, many others can be mitigated.

Quality of the cabling within your premises
Broadband 'Line Profile' used on your service - This can be adjusted to achieve optimal performance for your specific circumstances
Processing speed of your computer
Capabilities of your ADSL modem or router
Speed of the connection between your computer and modem or router.(Ethernet is faster than wireless)
Total number of users who access internet from your home or office - It's worth remembering that the number of people sharing your broadband connection will affect your speed. If your download speed is continuously lower, then you should check the number of devices that are connecting to your modem or router. You can then ask the others to consider using broadband at different times, so your speed increases.

Factors that may affect the performance

Your actual achieved speed may vary substantially from theoretical values based on

'Line Profile' that is operative on your service. SLT places Broadband services on a conservative initial package profile that constrains maximum download speeds, in order to achieve the highest possible connection stability. SLT Operational & Maintenance Team may then change to optimal speed based on the feedback of customers to explore the tradeoff between speed and connection stability that applies for their individual situation.
Length of copper wire from SLT's exchange to your premises - The distance of the exchange to your home will have a big impact on the speed you are likely to get. You could get the maximum connection speed of 8Mb - 16Mb, reducing to 6Mb, 4Mb, 2Mb or less, the further away you are.
Quality of the line running from your premises to the exchange.
Electrical interference from your own electronic devices or an external source such as street lights, power lines or generators, particularly if they run close to the telephone cables.
The specification of your modem or router - ADSL 2+ is likely to deliver better speed than a standard ADSL modem.
Software configuration and applications on your computer
Capacity of, load on, and access data rate of the destination host computer which you are accessing.
Speed of individual websites you are visiting (some have a maximum access speed)

So it's quite true that the various factors listed above will reduce your performance from theoretical values.

Following parameters may be useful in understanding the advertised bandwidth.

Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the capacity of any broadband connection which determines the maximum amount of data it transports.
Maximum & Minimum Bandwidth Parameters
In some situations subscribers would not be able to get the maximum bandwidth as advertised in the package due to numerous technical reasons. In such situations maximum possible bandwidth would be provided to customers after conducting a technical evaluation test. However if the upper bandwidth exceeds the minimum permissible bandwidth which refers as the "minimum bandwidth" the said package would not be issued to customers. Instead subscribers would be provided with another suitable package which supports his or her line conditions.