iPlate

[WLeg]

Has anyone got one, and do you agree with the reviews (selection below) ?

(aka - is it worth a £10 of my hard-earned ?)

Sunday Times

PC Pro

Samknows

Thinkbroadband

 

[Spinal]

From what I understand, all it does is "cut" the bell wire.... in which case I really don't see the point of paying £10, I have a wire-cutter you can borrow

but then again, I'm on cable

M.

 

[Sp!ke]

Cut the bell wire?

There are only two wires that get used... I doubt cutting one would allow any kind of access at all.

 

[richard]

It could ..

The master socket has a capacitor and resistor in series between the 2 wires that come into your house to generate the bell signal (well, to seperate the bell signal onto pin 3 of the sockets in the house) - on the master sockets that split (as mentioned in 1st link above), I think the components are in the front bit that comes off (the front bit comes of to isolate the house for testing or wiring extension by a user). I wonder whether this has different values for the capacitor or resistor that still means the bell signal is generated but generate differently ..

(for those who really care - master socket also has a spark gap to get rid of any high voltage specs from lightning, and the resistor is there primarily so the exchange can see all the way to the master socket for testing purposes.)

Richard

 

[Spinal]

Cut the bell wire?

There are only two wires that get used... I doubt cutting one would allow any kind of access at all.

From the PcPro link:

How does it work?

The iPlate essentially dispenses with the bell wire – the wire that used to make old phones make that glorious, old-school ringing noise that morons now pay for as a ringtone on their mobile. Modern phones don’t need the bell wire, meaning it now does nothing more than inconveniently act as a conductor for any electrical interference in your home. Dodgy light fittings, central heating, microwave ovens, the old telly used by the family next door: all of them can generate electrical interference, creating “noise” on your line and subsequently hampering broadband speeds.

It’s perfectly possible to disconnect the bell wire yourself (a quick Google search will reveal several walkthrough guides) but this involves snipping wires. Get that wrong and you face not only a hefty bill for a BT engineer, but the indignity of having said engineer turn up at your house, take one look, suck his teeth and ask “what cowboy’s been meddling with this?”. The iPlate is a far safer choice for those who don’t know exactly what they’re doing.

 

[jadefox]

Interesting....my best mate had broadband fitted and it's pretty useless - so I'm gonna send him the links and see if it might help him....thanks for posting!

& PS - if you're reading this jason, then please don't get the wire cutters out - just spend the tenner

 

[stevesey]

Details what it actually does (well how to diy the same thing)

 

[HughJarse]

I cut my bell wire and fitted an adsl master socket and saw about 1.5mb difference.

My understanding is by terminating with a dsl master socket you negate the internal house wiring and thus get the speed of the adsl purely on the copper outside the house, not inside. Also if you let the bellwire run along next to the normal wires ( ie by not cutting it) it causes and induction effect and thus line noise.

 

[fuzzer]

I cut my bell wire and fitted an adsl master socket and saw about 1.5mb difference.

My understanding is by terminating with a dsl master socket you negate the internal house wiring and thus get the speed of the adsl purely on the copper outside the house, not inside. Also if you let the bellwire run along next to the normal wires ( ie by not cutting it) it causes and induction effect and thus line noise.

Quite correct , the engineer installed ADSL is far superior to the self install Microfilter veriety.

can't remember the part numbers but when i used to do ADSL support the difference was massive and that was back in the 8meg days.

 

[spinaltap]

I bought and fitted the ADSL Nation XTE-2005 faceplate for £12.

One, it increased my download speed from 7Mb to 14Mb.

Two, it enables you to dispense with all your micro filters you may have around the home.

Strongly recommended...

http://www.adslnation.com/products/xte2005.php

 

[crockers]

Do new houses have a "bell wire" ? If not how can one tell if one has one or not?

 

[HughJarse]

disconnect orange wires on terminals 3 & 4


read here it explains it all
http://www.jarviser.co.uk/jarviser/broadbandspeed.html

 

[stevesey]

Details what it actually does (well how to diy the same thing)

Do new houses have a "bell wire" ? If not how can one tell if one has one or not?

Read the link.

 

[seymansey]

I have a new flat, and the Bell Wire wasn't connected up

 

[swunger]

There are some stats on this in a recent government report, see http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/chpt3a_digitalbritain-finalreport-jun09.pdf

This estimates that just over a third of homes that can't currently get a 2MB/s broadband service can get there by using an iPlate. And its much easier than fiddling with the master socket yourself (plus its legal). What it won't do is fix problems caused, for example, by being too far from the exchange.

 

[Rory]

Quite correct , the engineer installed ADSL is far superior to the self install Microfilter veriety.

I presume it only helps if the service is a bit iffy?

I've always had an ADSL faceplate master socket, as I used to have ISDN so an engineer had to remove that when we got ADSL. He wasn't supposed to fit an ADSL master socket, but after 3 chocolate biscuits he came round. I typically get 6.2Mb on speedtests (nominally 8Mb).

My next door neighbour has his router plugged into an extension socket through a dongle filter, and he also gets 6.2Mb.

 

[speedybiker]

Seems some confusion here over the Iplate.
This will help clarify:

FAQ I-Plate or Filtered Faceplate ?

Alex