BT has started handing out Broadband Accelerators to customers prepared to stump up £1.20 in postage, and promises an average speed increase of half a megabit.
BT customers interested in a free boost to their broadband can apply on-line for a free Broadband Accelerator, assuming they're prepared to pay for postage, have the …
I just received an iPlate - net effect an apparent slight reduction in speed.
However, when I unplug the internal wiring and plug a micro-filter in to the BT ‘test socket’ to which my home-hub and a DECT phone are attached, my ‘IP Profile’ rises from 2mbit/s up to 6.5mbit/s.
So I am now thinking of some experiments to cut (or perhaps earth) the bell-wire – or another approach would be to insert a (very short range) DECT extender to link from the micro-filter attached to the test socket through to the internal wiring – more money but might do the trick?
Thanks to Neil from BT who rang to provide support and knew what he was talking about!
Suprising thats its taken then so long to admit this is a problem.
Personally I cut the ringer wire about 3 years ago and have been experiencing an extra 4Mb/s on my ADSL2+ line. Note it doesn't affect the ringing of my phone as the micro filter has a separate ringer circuit built in..
The iPlate consists of a filter which removes the interference created by Microwaves and similar electrical equipment, thus allowing an increase in speed due to reduced interference.
For anyone prepared to remove the two screws in their master socket & disconnect the bell wires 3 & 4 (if they havnt done so already) it have a similar effect, albeit to a lesser degree.
well i took mine off cause they ask you to remove it if they have line problems.
but i dont really care !!!
i got a upgrade too 4mb last weekend !!! WOOOOOOOO
also although i shouldnt really say this i got a brand new router because i phoned up and stated that my wireless signal was no where near as good as it used to be so they said they would send me a new one !!!
I forgot to tell them my little boy Ripped the Arial off
AC cause i really like my new router and i want more stuff !!!
They do work and can work well. I went from about 1.7 Meg to 5.8 meg DSL connection speed by fitting one of these things. I just plugged it in, reset my router and bingo: a big leap in speed! Just to prove it I then removed it and it went back to the poor, crappy performance.
Might take your ISP a little while to faff about with their settings for you to get the corresponding rise in actual download speed. (im afraid im no IT tech monkey hence the rubbish explanation!) so if you fit one and immediately run a speedtest you might not show an immediate improvement, give it a few hours or overnight. However you will see an immediate change in your router where it shows connection speeds.
Also, dont do what I did. I have two BT sockets in my house, one in the lounge and one in the bedroom. I actually bought my I plate 6 months ago and found it wouldn't fit on the phone socket in the lounge and therefore thought I had the wrong type of socket. I had assumed that the socket in the lounge was the master socket and the bedroom was the extension, when it was in fact the other way around! I only discovered this last week so have missed out on 6 months of faster broadband!
Anyhoo as a technical illiterate (in the IT sense) I recommend this!
I have had an iplate fitted since they became available . Whilst it didn't increase my line speed which is already as high as its likely to go 6.5mbps I was suffering periodic disconnects which neither the ISP or BT could find any reason for .
Since fitting these have gone . I was skeptical as I had already cut the bell wire and disconnected the other spare wires . Whatever these other filters are they work . My line is now rock solid .
That's certainly the claim, and if you've got extensions around the home then it's certainly worth a try, even if you're not a BT Broadband customer it's only about seven quid retail.
Anyone with extensions should reallly take a look at any number of factors, to do with that extension network, that could be causing line interferance. All wiring beyond the primary wall unit coming into the house (called the NTE-5 unit, pictured in your article) is entirely the house occupier's responsibility, and it's up to them to make sure it is optimised. The NTE-5 is purpose designed as the demarcation line between who is responsible, BT or you.
Many people may be using a purpose-built combined microfilter/faceplate, that eliminates the bell line by default, for instance. I'd recommend these, and an I-plate would be rendundant or even counterproductive, if one of these was in use.
There's a little survey on the BT page that you link to that is very good at determining whether a home network will benefit from an I-Plate.
The i-plate is definitely worth the investment of £1.20 if you run your broadband modem off a house extension socket. I was boosted to 5 Mbit from 3.5/4 Mbit (real measured speed).
What you forgot to mention is that it's only free if you're a BT Total Broadband customer (which no self respecting Reg reader should be), and that if you're not, you have to stump up £7.07 (delivery is free).
I presume BT are offering to do this in desperate attempt to compensate for the fact they came out 3rd worst of all major ISPs last week?
...and just disconnect the bell wire at your master socket. The BT engineer who installed my broadband suggested this 2 years ago and it yeilded an infinite speed increase on my upstairs extension from 0 to whatever it is now.
Only if you have your broadband from BT themselves. If you're with another privider you've got to go to the shop and fork out the best part of a tenner when you're done.
Personally, I put an extension system in place which, although cuts out if the power dies (I have a standard phone on the main socket for emergencies) also allows me to up my REN number considerably.
That booster, put straight after the main phone socket, also eliminated the interfearence and was better value for money than this interfearence eliminator. http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=32828&C=5716&U=shop_A21AF
I heard a story recently that there was a noticable incidence of people cutting the wrong wire. Unlike disarming a Hollywood bomb this won't blow the hero to smithereens, but it will stop your phone working and land you with a hefty call out charge if you can't fix it yourself.
Could this be why BT are offering these for almost free?
It's worth mentioning that in many homes the extensions won't have the bell wire connected anyway. If they are done by the book they will have, but most DIY or non-BT wiring jobs won't have bothered with the bell wire for ages.
Called up BT engineering and they didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Eventually got my BT branded iPlate (boring name? prepend that 'i'!) off ebay, instead.
Did you really mean bits per second, or should that be a capital B for bytes?
(Either way, I'm still feeling remarkably smug about having a cable connection instead of one of those toy ADSL thingys, the modern-day equivalent of the dial-up modem....!)
Just open your master socket, rip out any extension cables running from it (who doesn't use DECT phones these days?). My speed went from a dodgy 5Mbps up to 10Mbps just by doing that!
When they use cable...stupid! The rest of us are still BT customers, albeit indirectly, of BT Wholesale. The £1.20 P&P offer is only available to BT "Total Broadband Customers" , so if you use another ISP, then you'll have to fork out the full amount of £7.07 on top of p&p.
This does make me wonder though, whether or not this is an "infrastructure or legacy issue" affecting all customers of BT Wholesale, and whether or not they should also offer the devices at a similar cost, via "other ISP's". After all I would imagine that BT Total Broadband is able to source these devices at similarly massive volumes & discount, available to BT Wholesale, so why should they not also do the same, and offer them under similar terms via "other ISP's" or "their customers", which in turn means those BT customer who are not BT customers.
Confused? I wouldnt blame you if you were. BUt I cant help feeling I'm being done over, after all BT is offering to FIX an inherent flaw in their own infrastructure for a small fee to one customer and a bigger cost to other customers, even though the problem is the same for all copper wire customers.
I see a lot of comments here and on the net about how you can install this iPlate, or how you can cut the bell wire, but these all seem to talk about if you have a socket with one of those lines across the middle.
My socket just has a flat faceplate, with only a marking in the top left, the old BT logo, the first one shown in BTs checker linked in the article.
Is there anything I can do to achieve the same effects? Can I replace this socket with one of those NTE5 ones that can use this iPlate thing at all? Does anyone have any links or info for those of us that doesn't have one of these plates that's required or the iPlate but still has to suffer shit speeds?
Trojans offer a free large wooden horse to Greeks.
I know the device is almost certainly completely innocent but I'm not going to plug in anything BT have touched if I can avoid it after the Phorm thing.
Well at least ADSL comes under better regulation, and is more widely available. Those prats at the cable companies ran a line right through my town, straight up the middle, but for some ridiculous reason refused to provide the town with service. Arseholes.
Then again I wouldn't touch Virgin with a bargepole. At least if something goes wrong with my link then my ISP, which is pretty good really, will be on BT's back about it so I don't have to.
For a complete wiring mod all you need to do is disconnect the Orange/White stripe & White/Orange stripe wires . This should leave you a White/Blue stripe and a Blue/White stripe wire . Those two are all you need . If you run a PABX system DONT disconnect the White/Orange stripe wire as PABX uses it as earth .
The iplate must filter more than just the bellwire as with this mod it shouldn't make any difference to my adsl but as posted earlier it did improve my line stability .
AC, well, just to prove that I'm capable of ticking the box correctly.
@ Anonymous Coward - 5th August 2009 09:25 GMT
I'm feeling quite smug that I'm not being ripped off by Virgin Media for a service that's only usable in the small hours of the morning, and that I actually have a customer services team who know what they're doing and can answer questions without a script.
The guy that said about ripping out the extensions is deluded...
If you had your phoneline installed a long time ago, chances are it was located nowhere near a power socket as the phones didn't need power back then, hence that's why we for one need to run an extension from the master socket to somewhere there is a power socket for the DECT phone we now have.
Either that or pay BT a considerable sum to re-locate the master socket near a power socket.
I had to have one of the Master-Socket ADSL filters fitted by BT a couple of years ago to get broadbane working at all. When I first had broadband installed I was getting < 0.5Mbps and it was dropping out every couple of minutes. Now with the Master-Socket filter I'm up towards a heady rate of 1.7Mbps. Woo.
Oh, and this is in an urban area, on a large estate (1000 houses & apartments) built entirely in the last 10 years. Great planning there BT/Wimpey/Redrow, surely it would have been better to build a new small exchange in the centre of the estate, and everyone could easily have had 8Mbps+ connections, but nooo, that would be far too forward-thinking. One of my neighbours has been told by BT (after 18 months of wrangling and trying to get through to people at ISPs that aren't in India reading a script off a screen) that he "just can't have broadband, his line won't support it" - despite being in the same block of flats!!! He asked them to re-lay his line, they refused. So he cancelled his landline (which he only got installed for broadband in the first place), and invoked the Direct Debit Guarantee to get 18 months of line rental back off BT - I'd like to see them try to take him to court!!
Plug your modem directly into the master socket, or use CAT5 network cable to wire up your phone extensions, rather than that nasty unsheilded bit of bell wire you bought from Dixons for £25.
New build houses should have the new BT plates installed by default, if you take them apart you will see a circular object which is an ADSL filter, it does exactly the same job as the iPlate. If you have the BT Openworld logo on your faceplate then you have the filter already.
Erm, why on earth would anyone CUT the wire? Just disconnect it from the NTE5 faceplate (and at all the extensions incidentally - if it's connected anywhere it can cause interference) - no cutting is involved!
I've still to figure out if this i-Plate (subverted Apple marketing?) is the same thing as an ADSL Nation faceplate. The added benefit is that effectively the filters dotted around the home can be dumped (and you can filter alarm systems wired into the telephone system), as the ADSL Nation one filters the lines at the source, so cutting off any additional attenuation added by the extensions. Sky boxes should still be filtered at the extension however - double filtered if no faceplate exists. They're noisy buggers and a common source of sync speed drop.
This of course assumes that you haven't just unscrewed the NTE5 plate and plugged the modem directly into the test socket and just left it there. Who uses a land line these days anyway? Even if you do, just get a DECT extension phone which doesn't need to be plugged in.
If connecting direct to the test socket improves your speed, but the iplate doesn't then you've probably got DIY extension syndrome. I've come across lots of houses where the extensions have been wired in using crappy wire and or sockets all wired up in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. Sometimes it's obvious when you use the extensions that something is wrong, but sometimes the phones just magically seem to work despite all the problems, while broadband is badly effected. The only real solution is to rewire all your extensions and disconnect those that are not in use. Indeed with the proliferation of wireless handsets and networks there is often no need for any extensions.
Providers often take the blame for poor quality service when in fact it's the internal wiring that's at fault. I knew one person who complained of poor quality voice service from their phone provider and switched to cable claiming it was much better. However it turned out that the cable installer had wired in all new extensions for her because "a real cowboy wired these in for you".
I've even come across an installation done with four core alarm wire where one of the extension cables was actually microphonic.
Remember this is fixing a problem with customer's internal wiring. This NOT fixing a problem with the BT kit. Many people do thier own wiring and dodgy cheap DECT handsets etc, BT cannot be responsible for what you do in your own house!
Internal wiring is owned by you and is your responsibility. Interference on the network side is partly BT's responsibility, although if the culplrit is not BT (for example a farmer's electric fence etc) then there is nothing that BT can do legally to resolve it.
The plates do work, for us it makes the the difference between having boradband and not, we get approx 2.4mbit out of a 6.5 kilimeter line. The i-plate can sometimes work even if a neighbour installs one as the bell wire can cause interferance past your own master socket.
Usually, you need the Blue on 2 and the White/Blue on 5 and that's it.
Basically, note down whatever is on 2 and 5 before you start.
As for the tin-hat brigade (ie dunncha and presumably you again as AC@10:02), you are free to test all the components of the i-Plate before attaching it to your outlet.
In principle you don't need one of these if you have the original filtered faceplate, or similar modern equivalents.
In practice if you have the *original* (now 7+ years old) faceplate there is a very slight chance that routine component degradation or failure may have occured, in which case one of these might be of value.
re Phorm comments
I sympathise with the train of thought, but there's nothing in this which is capable of doing anything *that* dodgy. Honest.
Do you have any extensions, then, in that case? If not, then you don't need an i-Plate, anyway.
It sounds like you could have an old standard BT-branded line-jacker socket, and as far as I know, you cannot open up an LJU. However, make sure it actually IS the primary socket to the premises. Many extansion sockets look like LJUs, and your builder or electrician may have hidden the real NTE5 from view and left you with an extension socket.
Folks often complain that i-Plates 'don't work', but oftentimes, this is because they didn't need one (for any of the reasons already stated) or because they have an NTE5 dating from after March 2007 - where the bell circuit was already filtered within the socket. The i-Plate is a perfectly legitimate piece iof kit, but it is a fix for older equipment: if you don't have the older equipment for which it is designed, then fitting an i-Plate won't improve your line!
Finally, remember that transmission speeds will only improve, in any case such as this, if the ciruit INSIDE your home is underperforming the ciruit OUTSIDE it. It sounds obvious, but people fit things like i-Plates, and then seem to expect them to suck the electrons out of the mainline, at increased speeds, in some way. If the slowdown is caused upstream from your NTE5, then you can do what you like inside your home; it won't matter. Grumble to your telephone provider and try to get the real problem fixed. If it is causing demonstrable lack of connectivity (like an old BACS unit), then you will often find that BT Open Reach is legally obliged to fix it, free of charge, to meet the minimum domestic connectivity levels set by EU law. This is what the NNTE5 is for. Problems beyond the NTE5 are not something you can, or should, attempt to take any responsibility for improving.
All the nasty gubbins about different uk TELEPHONE sockets can be found here:
Register
BT has started handing out Broadband Accelerators to customers prepared to stump up £1.20 in postage, and promises an average speed increase of half a megabit. BT customers interested in a free boost to their broadband can apply on-line for a free Broadband Accelerator, assuming they're prepared to pay for postage, have the …
Page:
Is this a enhancement
or a hardware plug-in to support some sort of Phorm/spying type operation?
A free plug-in which is going to help you the customer?
be suspicious
Long Line?
Does anyone know if this would be of use to someone on the end of a long line from the exchange?
Unplug all extension wiring...
I just received an iPlate - net effect an apparent slight reduction in speed.
However, when I unplug the internal wiring and plug a micro-filter in to the BT ‘test socket’ to which my home-hub and a DECT phone are attached, my ‘IP Profile’ rises from 2mbit/s up to 6.5mbit/s.
So I am now thinking of some experiments to cut (or perhaps earth) the bell-wire – or another approach would be to insert a (very short range) DECT extender to link from the micro-filter attached to the test socket through to the internal wiring – more money but might do the trick?
Thanks to Neil from BT who rang to provide support and knew what he was talking about!
Matt Black
Surprising
Suprising thats its taken then so long to admit this is a problem.
Personally I cut the ringer wire about 3 years ago and have been experiencing an extra 4Mb/s on my ADSL2+ line. Note it doesn't affect the ringing of my phone as the micro filter has a separate ringer circuit built in..
Cmon in
Heard about these some time ago; quite some time ago 6 years to be exact.... Glad to see BT has licensed them and included them in new installations.
It is still however, a poor replacement for fibre as the aging copper will not manage to make it (in some cases) another 90 years!
BT, have some bran, its good for your diet!
Excuse me, but
Broadband Accelerator it is most certainly NOT.
The iPlate consists of a filter which removes the interference created by Microwaves and similar electrical equipment, thus allowing an increase in speed due to reduced interference.
For anyone prepared to remove the two screws in their master socket & disconnect the bell wires 3 & 4 (if they havnt done so already) it have a similar effect, albeit to a lesser degree.
wooot
well i took mine off cause they ask you to remove it if they have line problems.
but i dont really care !!!
i got a upgrade too 4mb last weekend !!! WOOOOOOOO
also although i shouldnt really say this i got a brand new router because i phoned up and stated that my wireless signal was no where near as good as it used to be so they said they would send me a new one !!!
I forgot to tell them my little boy Ripped the Arial off
AC cause i really like my new router and i want more stuff !!!
thanks BT
These do work
They do work and can work well. I went from about 1.7 Meg to 5.8 meg DSL connection speed by fitting one of these things. I just plugged it in, reset my router and bingo: a big leap in speed! Just to prove it I then removed it and it went back to the poor, crappy performance.
Might take your ISP a little while to faff about with their settings for you to get the corresponding rise in actual download speed. (im afraid im no IT tech monkey hence the rubbish explanation!) so if you fit one and immediately run a speedtest you might not show an immediate improvement, give it a few hours or overnight. However you will see an immediate change in your router where it shows connection speeds.
Also, dont do what I did. I have two BT sockets in my house, one in the lounge and one in the bedroom. I actually bought my I plate 6 months ago and found it wouldn't fit on the phone socket in the lounge and therefore thought I had the wrong type of socket. I had assumed that the socket in the lounge was the master socket and the bedroom was the extension, when it was in fact the other way around! I only discovered this last week so have missed out on 6 months of faster broadband!
Anyhoo as a technical illiterate (in the IT sense) I recommend this!
AC...cos im an idiot!
Thanks Bill
Getting below local area average (3.5Mb) on an 8Mb line, so maybe this is worth a try.
Also increases line stability
I have had an iplate fitted since they became available . Whilst it didn't increase my line speed which is already as high as its likely to go 6.5mbps I was suffering periodic disconnects which neither the ISP or BT could find any reason for .
Since fitting these have gone . I was skeptical as I had already cut the bell wire and disconnected the other spare wires . Whatever these other filters are they work . My line is now rock solid .
CBA to order one?
Google "disconnect ring wire", same thing
BT
Ah, poor old British Telecommunications plc.
Such a shame that the 1984 privitization banned BT carrying "entertainment services" on their system, to protect the "new cable companies".
If that ban had been lifted before the late 1990s, BT would have slung fibreoptics in to every home by 2000.
Now, it is reduced to handing out super-filters in attempt at turd-polishing.
Re: Long Line?
That's certainly the claim, and if you've got extensions around the home then it's certainly worth a try, even if you're not a BT Broadband customer it's only about seven quid retail.
Bill.
Anyone with extensions, that is
Anyone with extensions should reallly take a look at any number of factors, to do with that extension network, that could be causing line interferance. All wiring beyond the primary wall unit coming into the house (called the NTE-5 unit, pictured in your article) is entirely the house occupier's responsibility, and it's up to them to make sure it is optimised. The NTE-5 is purpose designed as the demarcation line between who is responsible, BT or you.
Many people may be using a purpose-built combined microfilter/faceplate, that eliminates the bell line by default, for instance. I'd recommend these, and an I-plate would be rendundant or even counterproductive, if one of these was in use.
There's a little survey on the BT page that you link to that is very good at determining whether a home network will benefit from an I-Plate.
Anybody tried one ?
Me being someone who instinctively does not believe what large corporates say - without verification.
Work a treat
The i-plate is definitely worth the investment of £1.20 if you run your broadband modem off a house extension socket. I was boosted to 5 Mbit from 3.5/4 Mbit (real measured speed).
What about the BT-supplied filter faceplate?
Will this help even if I've already got a BT-supplied faceplate with separate ADSL and phoner jacks on it?
BT Broadband customers only
Its worth noting that this is only available to BT broadband customers only. Not everyday BT customers who just rent the line or have calls with them.
I tried to get one last month, however as i'm not a BT broadband customer I was asked to pay the full retail amount for it.
Paris - because everything she does is FAST!
Not free
What you forgot to mention is that it's only free if you're a BT Total Broadband customer (which no self respecting Reg reader should be), and that if you're not, you have to stump up £7.07 (delivery is free).
I presume BT are offering to do this in desperate attempt to compensate for the fact they came out 3rd worst of all major ISPs last week?
Or save £1.20...
...and just disconnect the bell wire at your master socket. The BT engineer who installed my broadband suggested this 2 years ago and it yeilded an infinite speed increase on my upstairs extension from 0 to whatever it is now.
How To
Interesting, Found this as my fisrt question was SO WHICH ONES THE BELL WIRE
http://www.draytek.co.uk/support/kb_vigor_linefaults.html
Yeh, right
Only if you have your broadband from BT themselves. If you're with another privider you've got to go to the shop and fork out the best part of a tenner when you're done.
Personally, I put an extension system in place which, although cuts out if the power dies (I have a standard phone on the main socket for emergencies) also allows me to up my REN number considerably.
That booster, put straight after the main phone socket, also eliminated the interfearence and was better value for money than this interfearence eliminator. http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=32828&C=5716&U=shop_A21AF
Cutting the wrong wire?
I heard a story recently that there was a noticable incidence of people cutting the wrong wire. Unlike disarming a Hollywood bomb this won't blow the hero to smithereens, but it will stop your phone working and land you with a hefty call out charge if you can't fix it yourself.
Could this be why BT are offering these for almost free?
It's worth mentioning that in many homes the extensions won't have the bell wire connected anyway. If they are done by the book they will have, but most DIY or non-BT wiring jobs won't have bothered with the bell wire for ages.
No need for this.
Just disconnect the bell wire in your master socket.
I remember trying to get one of these last year
Called up BT engineering and they didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Eventually got my BT branded iPlate (boring name? prepend that 'i'!) off ebay, instead.
288Kb/sec clarification?
Did you really mean bits per second, or should that be a capital B for bytes?
(Either way, I'm still feeling remarkably smug about having a cable connection instead of one of those toy ADSL thingys, the modern-day equivalent of the dial-up modem....!)
Just rip out any extensions
Just open your master socket, rip out any extension cables running from it (who doesn't use DECT phones these days?). My speed went from a dodgy 5Mbps up to 10Mbps just by doing that!
When is a BT Customer not a BT Customer?
When they use cable...stupid! The rest of us are still BT customers, albeit indirectly, of BT Wholesale. The £1.20 P&P offer is only available to BT "Total Broadband Customers" , so if you use another ISP, then you'll have to fork out the full amount of £7.07 on top of p&p.
This does make me wonder though, whether or not this is an "infrastructure or legacy issue" affecting all customers of BT Wholesale, and whether or not they should also offer the devices at a similar cost, via "other ISP's". After all I would imagine that BT Total Broadband is able to source these devices at similarly massive volumes & discount, available to BT Wholesale, so why should they not also do the same, and offer them under similar terms via "other ISP's" or "their customers", which in turn means those BT customer who are not BT customers.
Confused? I wouldnt blame you if you were. BUt I cant help feeling I'm being done over, after all BT is offering to FIX an inherent flaw in their own infrastructure for a small fee to one customer and a bigger cost to other customers, even though the problem is the same for all copper wire customers.
It does actually work
I more than doubled my upstream bandwidth and I've stopped experiencing frequent desyncs since installing my iPlate. Worth every penny!
What if you don't have a split socket?
I see a lot of comments here and on the net about how you can install this iPlate, or how you can cut the bell wire, but these all seem to talk about if you have a socket with one of those lines across the middle.
My socket just has a flat faceplate, with only a marking in the top left, the old BT logo, the first one shown in BTs checker linked in the article.
Is there anything I can do to achieve the same effects? Can I replace this socket with one of those NTE5 ones that can use this iPlate thing at all? Does anyone have any links or info for those of us that doesn't have one of these plates that's required or the iPlate but still has to suffer shit speeds?
Re: wooot
Except, Mr Baden, you didn't post as AC...
Oops.
In other news
Trojans offer a free large wooden horse to Greeks.
I know the device is almost certainly completely innocent but I'm not going to plug in anything BT have touched if I can avoid it after the Phorm thing.
re:smug about cable
Well at least ADSL comes under better regulation, and is more widely available. Those prats at the cable companies ran a line right through my town, straight up the middle, but for some ridiculous reason refused to provide the town with service. Arseholes.
Then again I wouldn't touch Virgin with a bargepole. At least if something goes wrong with my link then my ISP, which is pretty good really, will be on BT's back about it so I don't have to.
Wiring mod
For a complete wiring mod all you need to do is disconnect the Orange/White stripe & White/Orange stripe wires . This should leave you a White/Blue stripe and a Blue/White stripe wire . Those two are all you need . If you run a PABX system DONT disconnect the White/Orange stripe wire as PABX uses it as earth .
The iplate must filter more than just the bellwire as with this mod it shouldn't make any difference to my adsl but as posted earlier it did improve my line stability .
@ Lionel Baden
Anonymous Coward fail! They're gonna get you now.
AC, well, just to prove that I'm capable of ticking the box correctly.
@ Anonymous Coward - 5th August 2009 09:25 GMT
I'm feeling quite smug that I'm not being ripped off by Virgin Media for a service that's only usable in the small hours of the morning, and that I actually have a customer services team who know what they're doing and can answer questions without a script.
power socket
The guy that said about ripping out the extensions is deluded...
If you had your phoneline installed a long time ago, chances are it was located nowhere near a power socket as the phones didn't need power back then, hence that's why we for one need to run an extension from the master socket to somewhere there is a power socket for the DECT phone we now have.
Either that or pay BT a considerable sum to re-locate the master socket near a power socket.
Pah
I had to have one of the Master-Socket ADSL filters fitted by BT a couple of years ago to get broadbane working at all. When I first had broadband installed I was getting < 0.5Mbps and it was dropping out every couple of minutes. Now with the Master-Socket filter I'm up towards a heady rate of 1.7Mbps. Woo.
Oh, and this is in an urban area, on a large estate (1000 houses & apartments) built entirely in the last 10 years. Great planning there BT/Wimpey/Redrow, surely it would have been better to build a new small exchange in the centre of the estate, and everyone could easily have had 8Mbps+ connections, but nooo, that would be far too forward-thinking. One of my neighbours has been told by BT (after 18 months of wrangling and trying to get through to people at ISPs that aren't in India reading a script off a screen) that he "just can't have broadband, his line won't support it" - despite being in the same block of flats!!! He asked them to re-lay his line, they refused. So he cancelled his landline (which he only got installed for broadband in the first place), and invoked the Direct Debit Guarantee to get 18 months of line rental back off BT - I'd like to see them try to take him to court!!
Want faster ADSL?
Plug your modem directly into the master socket, or use CAT5 network cable to wire up your phone extensions, rather than that nasty unsheilded bit of bell wire you bought from Dixons for £25.
NTE-5
New build houses should have the new BT plates installed by default, if you take them apart you will see a circular object which is an ADSL filter, it does exactly the same job as the iPlate. If you have the BT Openworld logo on your faceplate then you have the filter already.
RE: Cutting the wrong wire?
Erm, why on earth would anyone CUT the wire? Just disconnect it from the NTE5 faceplate (and at all the extensions incidentally - if it's connected anywhere it can cause interference) - no cutting is involved!
I've still to figure out if this i-Plate (subverted Apple marketing?) is the same thing as an ADSL Nation faceplate. The added benefit is that effectively the filters dotted around the home can be dumped (and you can filter alarm systems wired into the telephone system), as the ADSL Nation one filters the lines at the source, so cutting off any additional attenuation added by the extensions. Sky boxes should still be filtered at the extension however - double filtered if no faceplate exists. They're noisy buggers and a common source of sync speed drop.
This of course assumes that you haven't just unscrewed the NTE5 plate and plugged the modem directly into the test socket and just left it there. Who uses a land line these days anyway? Even if you do, just get a DECT extension phone which doesn't need to be plugged in.
@Matt Black
If connecting direct to the test socket improves your speed, but the iplate doesn't then you've probably got DIY extension syndrome. I've come across lots of houses where the extensions have been wired in using crappy wire and or sockets all wired up in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. Sometimes it's obvious when you use the extensions that something is wrong, but sometimes the phones just magically seem to work despite all the problems, while broadband is badly effected. The only real solution is to rewire all your extensions and disconnect those that are not in use. Indeed with the proliferation of wireless handsets and networks there is often no need for any extensions.
Providers often take the blame for poor quality service when in fact it's the internal wiring that's at fault. I knew one person who complained of poor quality voice service from their phone provider and switched to cable claiming it was much better. However it turned out that the cable installer had wired in all new extensions for her because "a real cowboy wired these in for you".
I've even come across an installation done with four core alarm wire where one of the extension cables was actually microphonic.
'@Number6
No, you have a prefiltered faceplate...better than a Iplate
@Big-G
Remember this is fixing a problem with customer's internal wiring. This NOT fixing a problem with the BT kit. Many people do thier own wiring and dodgy cheap DECT handsets etc, BT cannot be responsible for what you do in your own house!
Internal wiring is owned by you and is your responsibility. Interference on the network side is partly BT's responsibility, although if the culplrit is not BT (for example a farmer's electric fence etc) then there is nothing that BT can do legally to resolve it.
The plates do work, for us it makes the the difference between having boradband and not, we get approx 2.4mbit out of a 6.5 kilimeter line. The i-plate can sometimes work even if a neighbour installs one as the bell wire can cause interferance past your own master socket.
Cutting the wrong wire
Usually, you need the Blue on 2 and the White/Blue on 5 and that's it.
Basically, note down whatever is on 2 and 5 before you start.
As for the tin-hat brigade (ie dunncha and presumably you again as AC@10:02), you are free to test all the components of the i-Plate before attaching it to your outlet.
Re: In other news
Blimey! Is that a propellor on your tinfoil hat?
@ ian11
Contact myself over at my IRC channel, for assistance with your Master Socket.
There is a way it can be sorted, but would require a few steps explaining to you.
I used to work for BT Yahoo front-line support, and have delt with simalar issues before.
http://www(DOT)westpark.tk (Replace (DOT) with .) Click on gaming related, then click on the second link in the "mpu34 Fruit Machine Chat" line.
I'll be about after 6pm.
Pure tech help question.
I very recently went to Sky from Virgin, obviously my main phone socket is now all BT. All I want to know is:
a) Do you think that the engineer would've disconnected the bell wire?
b) How do I identify it so that I can check for myself? (Most important)
Thanks in advance for your help.
@ Number6
Why not follow the link to BT, quoted in the article. You just might find the answer to your questiion...
Number6 - Original BT filtered faceplate
In principle you don't need one of these if you have the original filtered faceplate, or similar modern equivalents.
In practice if you have the *original* (now 7+ years old) faceplate there is a very slight chance that routine component degradation or failure may have occured, in which case one of these might be of value.
re Phorm comments
I sympathise with the train of thought, but there's nothing in this which is capable of doing anything *that* dodgy. Honest.
Re: What if you don't have a split socket?
Do you have any extensions, then, in that case? If not, then you don't need an i-Plate, anyway.
It sounds like you could have an old standard BT-branded line-jacker socket, and as far as I know, you cannot open up an LJU. However, make sure it actually IS the primary socket to the premises. Many extansion sockets look like LJUs, and your builder or electrician may have hidden the real NTE5 from view and left you with an extension socket.
Folks often complain that i-Plates 'don't work', but oftentimes, this is because they didn't need one (for any of the reasons already stated) or because they have an NTE5 dating from after March 2007 - where the bell circuit was already filtered within the socket. The i-Plate is a perfectly legitimate piece iof kit, but it is a fix for older equipment: if you don't have the older equipment for which it is designed, then fitting an i-Plate won't improve your line!
Finally, remember that transmission speeds will only improve, in any case such as this, if the ciruit INSIDE your home is underperforming the ciruit OUTSIDE it. It sounds obvious, but people fit things like i-Plates, and then seem to expect them to suck the electrons out of the mainline, at increased speeds, in some way. If the slowdown is caused upstream from your NTE5, then you can do what you like inside your home; it won't matter. Grumble to your telephone provider and try to get the real problem fixed. If it is causing demonstrable lack of connectivity (like an old BACS unit), then you will often find that BT Open Reach is legally obliged to fix it, free of charge, to meet the minimum domestic connectivity levels set by EU law. This is what the NNTE5 is for. Problems beyond the NTE5 are not something you can, or should, attempt to take any responsibility for improving.
All the nasty gubbins about different uk TELEPHONE sockets can be found here:
http://www.buzzhost.co.uk/nte5.php
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