BB Speed and Phone Line Crackling

My BB speed has dropped to a crawl over the past week. Just done a speed test on tihs site and the stats are as follows - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/12733...

We have experienced some crackling on the phone line when making voice calls, our line is with Sky and they did a line check and said there appeared to be no probems. If they got a BT visit for us it would cost us big time if the fault was at our end. After looking online I tried moving the base station of the phone away from the router. After doing this, this is when the speed problems started. I was also getting disconnected when the phone was used. (looking through these forums seems that is due to a line issue?). Putting the microfilters back in stopped the disconnections but I am now getting the results above.

Am I best taking this up with BT BB or Sky Talk? (I was looking to reutrn my phoneline to BT anyway so maybe should do that first?)

Do you get a crackling on the line if you plug just a (preferably corded) phone directly into the test socket on the wall in this pic?

If so then it is a line fault and Sky should get it fixed. There should be no risk of a charge to you.

You cannot take the issue up with BT if your line rental is paid to Sky.

Well, the broadband speed has been poor all week. Last night we had friends in, one of them suggested disconnecting the Sky box from the phone line and removing the microfilter. This morning the speed of my BB has shot up 7 fold. Still half as good as the 7mb I usually get but better. I can even get the free videos on BT Vision to play today.

Not sure on the line noise situation, will have to keep an eye on it over the next few days.

Would having the Sky box connected to the phone have an effect on BB and the phone line?

Edited by deleted (Sun 09-May-10 10:40:53)

In the past Sky boxes have often needed double-filtering. I thought that had been cured but it may depend how old yours is.

Or the filter may have failed - this does happen.

You may find the speed recovers in a few days, (or possibly a few weeks ). See my website re:-

IP profile
BT DLM
Noise margin
Troubleshooting >> High noise margin and Miscellaneous nasties.

To check your profile run the BT speed test, and to find your target noise margin read your stats immediately after a reconnection (and try always to connect during daylight as it is faster than connecting in the dark.

See here for help finding your stats if you need it.