Does using a phone reduce broadband speed?

Hi

I have a 4.2mb connection which I was happy with so I left it going for 25 days odd. Today we kept getting spam phonecalls from some unknown caller/company so I was asked to unplug the phone.

When I just looked at my connection I saw it had reconnected 5hrs ago, around the time I unplugged the phone. It had also connected at 4.3mb and also had a higher noise margin (from about 5.6 to 6.6 - was up to 6.9 at one point) so I tried turning the router off and on again and now its connected at 4.4mb.

I guess it could be just a co-incidence, my 4.2mb connection was solid and perhaps it decided it could give me more speed, but I can't help thinking that unplugging the phone has reduced some noise on the line or something?

I have a adsl filter on the main socket, which the modem plugs into. Then there is a extension socket in another room (it is smaller) which has a filter on it and the phone plugs into that. I'm sure when I just put the phone into the extension socket without a filter the internet didn't connect (this was ages ago, I thought you only needed one adsl filter on the main socket?)

Any thoughts?
Thanks

using the phone should have no difference. Disconnecting a phone may, if your internal wiring is funny.

When someone calls from a company to 'help me' I always hang up and ring them using a number I have. Most are hoax.

Its plugged back in now, its at around 5.2db tonight and still connected at 4.4mb, so it could just be variation.

We got about 6 in an hour and she phoned up BT (!) who told her to phone sky, who said there isn't anything we can do. Advised to use TPS which I thought we was on but I have signed up again, will take 28 days but haven't heard any calls today.

They were just silent when she picked up the phone. We get them quite often, it kept saying private caller so we couldn't bar them, like we do with normal numbers that are unsolicited

We're TPS and it makes little difference - the majority of these calls originate offshore so out of the reach of the TPS.

In reply to a post by MikeL:

Its plugged back in now, its at around 5.2db tonight and still connected at 4.4mb, so it could just be variation.

We got about 6 in an hour and she phoned up BT (!) who told her to phone sky, who said there isn't anything we can do. Advised to use TPS which I thought we was on but I have signed up again, will take 28 days but haven't heard any calls today.

They were just silent when she picked up the phone. We get them quite often, it kept saying private caller so we couldn't bar them, like we do with normal numbers that are unsolicited

We registered with the TPS a few years ago, and the number of sales calls went down from several each day, to a handful per month.

Unfortunately the numbers have gradually crept back up since then, but still not as many as we were getting at the peak.

Currently we're getting lots of sales calls from the uk, from companies trying to flog us solar voltaic panels, although they usually claim it is a survey, (surveys being exempt from TPS).

We can't even ignore International calls now, because calls from out local doctors surgery and one or two other businesses we use, now show as International.

One suggestion I've seen to deal with some autodialers, but not tried yet, so I don't know if it works is to record out-of-service tones on the answer machine before the normal message - just the first tone is usually supposed to be sufficient, apparently some dialers are set up to drop the number if they receive these tones. (Google for sit.wav).

Edited by AbandonShip (Sat 25-Feb-12 13:55:35)

my neighbour had 8 calls per day - got him on TPS and 30 days later (as it takes at least 1 month) he gets zero calls...

to answer the OP's question:

what you are seeing is as you say "variation" - line speeds are never exact and can differ from sync to sync - it also depends on the type of connection your on (if profiling is used or fixed rates etc) and if their is any varying degrees of acute noise present on your line.

if you have an extension socket then you may want to try a filtered faceplate such as the NTE-2000 which will terminate the xDSL at the master socket so its not affected by your internal wiring (same result as plugging into the test socket) - also i find the NTE-2000 has better filtering which can give increased speed slightly, I got extra 300k on my old 13,000k line, of course that may not happen for everyone, ISP's use cheap filters. you could also disconnect your ringwire (filtered faceplate removes the need to do this) and see if that make any difference as it can act as an ariel introducing noise into your line - even your standard 2 & 5 internal phone wires can introduce interference but depending on the type of wire used (such as CCS/CCA or badly twisted cable) as to just how susceptible they are.

Edited by paulb100 (Mon 19-Mar-12 23:39:13)

Its been about a month now since I signed us up to TPS and we haven't had any calls that I can remember. I'm sure we were already on TPS but perhaps not.

I already have a iplate. I may try a filterd faceplate in the future but they require a bit more wiring I think?