I complained that my recently installed 2 meg internet was not connecting half the time. Their office says it's because my house is pretty far from the relevant local 'pod' and if I downgrade to the 1 meg service the disconexion problem will go away. They gave me a curious explanation about the flow being smoother over the long distance if not being pushed too fast....

Is this worth trying or rubbish?

I complained that my recently installed 2 meg internet was not connecting half the time. Their office says it's because my house is pretty far from the relevant local 'pod' and if I downgrade to the 1 meg service the disconexion problem will go away. They gave me a curious explanation about the flow being smoother over the long distance if not being pushed too fast....

Is this worth trying or rubbish?

give me the line values, attenuation, snr and noise margin and i'll tell you if it's true or not, those informations are inside the modem.

NHJ is right - it could be, but it really only depends on the line. Distance is a factor but so is line quality. Your DSL modem has built in diagnostics that can tell you what, if anything, is wrong with the line.

I had a great connection about 3.5 km from the DSLAM (base station) but then TOT installed a bunch of new phone lines and my snr went to the toilet. Now my connection is barely functional. TOT technicians that came to the house didn't even know how to check the noise on my modem, they picked up the receiver and declared the line good.

Now I have this:

noise margin downstream: 3 db

It's a miracle this works at all - the noise margin should be > 12 for a good connection.