Inherited a poor BT line install - hurting VDSL2 sync speed?

Hey everyone,

I recently bought a house in London and bought Plusnet Fibre Unlimited (up to 76Mbps). Sadly, it's been a bit of a disappointment (not really Plusnet's fault, yet) - the house is very WiFi unfriendly, but worse it seems that the existing BT line install is extremely sub-par. The estimated speed test suggested I would see between 55-76Mbps downstream, and the Ofcom guaranteed speed is 47Mbps. Unfortunately after over 2 weeks of settling, I'm still only seeing a sync speed of 37Mbps at best.

Before raising a support ticket with Plusnet and possibly ditching FTTC in favour of Virgin Cable, I wanted to explore the signal path of the phone line on the premises. Turns out it's a bit of a horror show: https://imgur.com/a/kyqyWoQ

Am I right in thinking this is likely introducing a ton of noise into the line? What are my options to get this redone properly? Can I just pay for an engineer to come and redo the drop from the pole into the house?

I know there's a 120 quid callout fee for a BT engineer, so if this is obviously going to result in the charge and suggestion to call in a repairman (at further cost), I might as well just pay to get it redone properly (and ideally with a better placed master socket for my shiny new UniFi gear).

Thanks in advance,
Jim

The extension socket is backwired from the master but you've isolated it and the cut off cable by plugging into the test socket. The dropwire is not old.

If the speeds are below what you expected I would be giving Plusnet a chance to see if they can improve and if not happy off to Virgin.

With the TEST socket removed, does the other socket stop working?

If the line is simply backwired, which I think it is, that is fine and very common.

If both lines work with the TEST socket removed, you have a spliced / star-wired line which is very detrimental.

Purely out of interest, not sure what people with proper knowledge would say, but could you not just buy a master faceplate then unsplice the wire where it comes through the bedroom window directly from the pole (image 4) and then wire up the faceplate directly to the white and orange wires to then see what speed you get when plugging the router into that new test master faceplate?

Technically doing anything with the incoming cable is against the rules - you are not allowed to fiddle with those cables as they are owned by Openreach. Some would also say it could be dangerous as lines can carry a voltage.

If there was enough length on the drop wire I'd install a master in the loft by the hatch and then run a dedicated data extension from there.

In reply to a post by fusen:

Purely out of interest, not sure what people with proper knowledge would say, but could you not just buy a master faceplate then unsplice the wire where it comes through the bedroom window directly from the pole (image 4) and then wire up the faceplate directly to the white and orange wires to then see what speed you get when plugging the router into that new test master faceplate?

my thoughts entirely and although not strictly legal worth a try and if it works then redo the rest of the wiring from the extension terminals but DONT get the newer NTE 5c as the terminals are flaky to start with. stick with the older 5a and if you can find one a mk3 version
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Genuine-BT-Openreach-MK3-...

Edited by threelegs (Mon 01-Oct-18 17:43:44)