March 17, 2008

£10 BT Device Could Boost Your Broadband March 17, 2008

Read more Broadband , Gadgets , Gizmodo UK , Laptops , Online , PC

BT Wholesale is planning to launch a little device that could radically improve your broadband speed.

That’s the promise anyhow. We all know that many broadband suppliers suck when it comes to providing the kind of speeds they make you pay for but, BT is insisting that some of the problem could be down to your electricity and interference. It claims electrical interference in the home from other items like TVs and the rest, can cripple broadband performance.

Continued...

BT Wholesale is testing a device called an Interstitial Plate, or iPlate (ARRGH!), which slots into your master phone socket and eliminates the noise. BT has demonstrated how a faulty lamp reduced a 3.8Mbps line to 700Kbps but when the iPlate was plugged in, the signal speed returned to normal. It’s been on trial with 1,000 customers and BT is very happy with the feedback. Ashley Pickering from BT Wholesale's broadband access solutions team told PC Pro:

“We've seen huge increases in speed. On average, it makes one and a half megs of difference.”

The device will ship in the coming months and can be installed without the cost of a pricey engineer. BT expects that ISPs will offer it for free to customers with problems. Sign me up.-Martin Lynch

[PC Pro]

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Comments

Some how I can't see Orange giving it away for free, but I so want one of these. 8mb I'm supposed to get, I'm lucky at the moment to even get 1mb.

Posted by Dave | March 17, 2008 02:56 PM

put me down for 1 how do I sign up???

Posted by AJ | March 17, 2008 05:48 PM

for £10 u can not really go wrong, even if its 200kbs or 1.5Mbs improved.

Personally i just wish they would pull their thumb out of their ass and catch up with the rest of the world like sweden and offer 100Mbs Inet.

Posted by rob | March 17, 2008 06:51 PM

I had this installed a while back by a BT engineer to try and fix a persistantly slow/lost connection.. and it worked a treat! He explained it to me as "a magic box that does a lot of complicated stuff"! Very technical! However, I've now moved and realised I left it plugged into the old port - wish I'd known how special it was!

Posted by Mintskii | March 18, 2008 02:06 PM

Just pull out the unneccessary phone wires which pick up radio waves and therefore cause interference - just leave 2 and 5 which are the actual twisted pair phone lines.
Worked wonderfully for me, 6mbps to full 8mbps with no disconnects at rush hour any more

Posted by biscuit | March 18, 2008 10:30 PM

you can acheve the same results by removing the wire from terminal 3 on your phone sockets.

save youself a tenner....

Posted by smartybones | March 19, 2008 03:00 PM

Theres also a free alternative for people using a Wireless Router. You can use this free PAPER template from PC Format Magazine
http://blog.pcformat.co.uk/page/pcformat?entry=wifi_booster_template

They claim it will boost the perfomance of any wireless router with antenna. Its 2 seperate parts you cut out and join together to make a dome shape, and place it onto your antenna.

I don't have antenna on my router but I can't think of any reasons why you wouldn't try it out if your Wifi was poor.

Posted by Liam | March 20, 2008 10:29 AM

Not the same as removing the wires in the socket - that only helps to reduce noise pickup, the two signal lines still pick up noise themselves.

Liam - this "antenna mod" wont speed up your broadband, only your wireless connection to the modem (if at all). Since wireless systems are generally massively higher bandwidth than the broadband line this makes no odds to surfing speed.

Seems fishy to me that my line inexplicably dropped from 3.5M to 1.8M a while ago and now they are presenting a magical cure though...

Posted by James | March 21, 2008 02:25 AM