Free Faster Broadband
Posted in Home, the web on April 3, 2008 at 9:32 am
Apparently! A colleague has just changed to BT broadband and his intelligent, fault sensing modem dropped down to 500K as the optimal fault free speed. He was not impressed as he was getting around 2M from his previous ISP. However some googling around led him to the “bell wire fix”. Although your signal travels down miles of carefully twisted and balanced pair around the house it runs adjacent to the “bell wire”, an extra cable designed to provide power to electro-mechanical bells on half hundred weight bakelite telephones. This acts as an aerial and… let’s stop pretending I understand RF and just say it generally messes up your nice twisted pair of data lines.
As just about anything post 1970 doesn’t need it, disconnect it (pin 3 on the socket, pin 4 on the plug) and Robert is your parental sibling of the male gender. Having done this (both at the master and extension socket) he is getting 3.5M - and his phones still ring. Of course this could be coincidence and I accept no liability for any damage, loss or general hassle incurred if you try it yourself - do your own googling and make up your own mind! I’m on cable so I can’t even say I’ve tried it myself.
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Loading ...Comment by Andrew Ferguson - April 3, 2008 on 10:12 am
For those seeking pictures http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.html#235 may be worth a look.
Comment by Dave F - April 3, 2008 on 11:36 am
Excellent - that helps, have you tried this?
Comment by Barcode - April 4, 2008 on 10:27 am
It works. I went from 256k to 1.8mb by doing some very similar socket rewiring and passed the tip onto our electrician.
Comment by Dave F - April 4, 2008 on 12:48 pm
Thanks for the confirmation - why isn’t this wider known? I have heard that newer BT sockets have fixed the problem (not sure how). I guess BT don’t like people fiddling in their boxes - can’t say I blame them, I bet they’ve had someone bung 240 volts up the line before now!
Comment by Matt - April 7, 2008 on 4:24 pm
The “perfect” solution, if you have a two piece (NTE5) master socket and can feed the ADSL modem from there, is to use an ADSL filtered faceplate.
http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_faceplate.htm
Extensions fed from the filtered faceplate do not carry ADSL and do not require filters.
http://www.solwise.co.uk/adsl_splitters.htm
Cheaper than the “Clarity” model, and with facilities for both filtered and unfiltered extensions.
There are several others available, and the arrangement of splitting ADSL directly at the master socket separation eliminates all bell wire issues, though if you need an unfiltered extension for ADSL, then maybe disconnecting the bell wire on it would be a good idea.
Comment by Dave F - April 8, 2008 on 4:50 pm
Hi Matt, your comment got put on hold for me to moderate - maybe it looks too much like an advert to automated filters! I took your advice and “unfiltered” it 
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