Crackly lines in other rooms slowing broadband down?

I've recently had broadband installed (with fibre to the cabinet). The download speed is only 2 meg as opposed to the predicted 9 meg. The previous owner of the house had several phone sockets installed (on the same phone number). I haven't ever used these phone sockets before but tonight I plugged a phone into 2 of the bedroom sockets and the line sounded extremely crackly in both rooms. I then plugged the phone into the main socket in the lounge and although this line wasn’t crackly if I made or received a call, the broadband disconnected when I used the phone. The modem and hub are connected to the socket in my office which is only just across the hall from the main socket. I can make and receive calls fine as long as the phone is connected to the same socket as the broadband.

I tried to test the sockets both with and without filters and the filters made no difference (the broadband disconnected whether a filter was attached or not to the lounge phone).

My question is: are these crackly phone sockets in other rooms slowing down my fibre to the cabinet broadband and if so, is it an easy job for BT to disconnect these sockets? I don’t need the use of the bedroom sockets, evidently these sockets must have been fitted before the advent of mobile phones.

It is a bit of a mystery why there is so much interference on my line that is slowing down the broadband – is it likely that these other sockets are effectively diluting the quality of the line?

Are you saying you have moved the Openreach modem away from the VDSL2 faceplate the engineer fitted to the master socket?

No, sorry if my listing was unclear, the engineer installed the broadband in my office originally. There is a socket in the office which is about 3 feet from the master socket, the engineer saw no problem in connecting the broadband in the office as my desktop is located there.

Just a quick question - is it recommended that filters should be used on all sockets or only sockets which have a landline phone connected to them? I have no intention of using 2 sockets so do I still need to connect a filter to them?

I didn't realise the bedroom sockets were 'live' when the broadband was connected so I didnt mention them to the engineer.

Sorry to bang on about this, but there is a slight chance you have an incorrect installation. With a correct installation you should not need any filters anywhere. There are some recent recruits and it seems some of them are less than perfectly trained.

Did the engineer run a new cable from the master to the socket you use? If not, how long is the existing cable, as in does it go up and down walls to get from one to the other, and what quality cable is it? Did he make any changes to the wiring inside the master socket?

With a dodgy installation then phones in other sockets would be unusable in other sockets, but a filter should solve it. So there is an oddity there as well.

Have you got anything else attached to the phone line, such as a Sky box or burglar alarm?

you don't need filters on empty sockets, but you shouldn't have unfiltered connections in a correct FTTC install as a single central filtered faceplate should do it all.

Edited by yarwell (Fri 25-May-12 16:49:03)

Sounds to me as though you have had a duff installation, if you only have 2 meg sync rate, then the engineer should not have left the service as such. I am suspicious, as the estimates given are always conservative, and the set up sounds iffy also, if I were you, I'd be raising a fault via your FTTC service provider.