ADSL speed improvements on a plate
BT has come up with a product which can speed up ADSL lines by up to 1.5Mbps, for a one-off cost of about ten pounds.
A lot of broadband lines fail to live up to their advertised speeds. Some of this is due to network traffic congestion, some is due to over-optimistic claims from ADSL suppliers, but some of it, according to BT, is because of electrical interference from TVs, lights, and the mass of electrical wiring in the average home. The interference degrades the ADSL signal, and the more extension sockets you have, the greater the problem.
To address this problem, BT has begun selling a product called an i-Plate (short for Interstitial Plate) which can be fitted to your existing master phone socket and which provides additional filtering against electrical noise. You can fit it yourself. You don't need to pay an engineer to come out and plug it in for you and you don't need any special tools to fit it. This plate shouldn't be confused with the ADSL filters which you will still need. The i-Plate is an additional filter.
In a pilot test on 36,000 homes, BT found that the device often improved performance by up to 1.5Mbps, and in some cases by up to 4Mbps. It estimates that around 70% of homes will benefit from fitting an i-Plate. Prices from online suppliers range from £10 to about £14 and I expect they will soon appear in stores such as BT's own shops, Currys and PC World.
18th October 2008