BT old wiring HALVES my Orange Broadband speed!

I've previously sought help on here, trying to improve my Orange broadband speed. It now appears that the problem lies with BT's old wiring of my property. This may help others who have lived in the same property for a number of years, and can't get to the bottom of the cause of permanently lower line speeds experienced - regardless of time of day/night.
My problem lies with old style wired telephone points provided upstairs and downstairs by BT. Orange have now advised, after months of correspondence and speed & router stats/tests, etc., etc., that my max speed offered in my postcode area is 14Mb. As my overhead BT wiring splits into two from a gutter-board mounted junction 'box', to two wires: one serving a hard wired telephone in our upstairs bedroom (via a filter/splitter), the other running down the outside of the house, to our main wired house ansa-phone situated downstairs, near the front door. The latter's faceplate has a filter/splitter also, one connection to the phone, the other to my wired router and computer. Now the crunch! Orange have confirmed that the 14Mb broadband supply automatically splits into two, due to my old BT wiring plan; so the max speed I can get to my router is 7Mb !! 14Mb divided by two. I'm not using the line upstairs for a computer router, so I have 7Mb being literally wasted!
So you would think after contacting BT, who I pay my monthly line rental & phone calls to, that they would make the very quick and low-cost changes to my phone lines (i.e., remove the upstairs telephone wiring, so that the full-on 14Mb speed comes storming down to the groundfloor phone & router. Well I then had my first taste of dealing with BT Customer service now based in India - all I say is that my particular work required totally flumoxed them (at least 4 requests from the Indian lady for time-out to talk to "her coach"). We eventually agreed that a British telephone engineer would visit me today, and that there may be a charge of £139.50p to do this work, or it may be free. I agreed to this, as I was convinced that it was just a simple disconnection of one line in. However, when the local BT Engineer contacted me this morning to discuss the work, it unfortunately was going to be far more than the £139.50p and certainly no chance of a freebie. So I cancelled, as I thought it was taking the proverbial pee, and God help us with the cost of the much vaunted future installation of the super-highway optic fibre revolution! If nothing else, I hope that I have perhaps cast off one of the blankets of mystique about experiencing low broadband speed, for other forum members, if they should also have the same Victorian BT wiring system in their homes

Don't just tell Orange your router stats, tell us if you want advice.

Do you have 2 telephone numbers or just 1 with 2 sockets?

If the latter, which is the master socket?

Or don't you have any sockets? You say 1 phone is hard-wired; you mean it is not plugged into any socket? How can it have a filter? Victorians didn't have filters.Yet you say the other phone has a faceplate; you mean its socket has?

You are confusing phone handsets and phone sockets.

It is a fallacy that multi sockets divide your bandwidth!

Edited by XRaySpeX (Fri 11-Mar-11 07:26:07)

Of course it does not divide the bandwidth by 2.

Your wiring is a star configuration and in some houses there will be more than 2 circuits.

The days of BT doing anything for free are long gone.

Read this article to see how your phone is wired:

http://yarwell.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_yarwell_archi...

http://www.wppltd.demon.co.uk/WPP/Wiring/UK_telephon...

Keith

Edited by keithwjones (Fri 11-Mar-11 10:20:35)

In reply to a post by keithwjones:

Of course it does not divide the bandwidth by 2.

I know, I just said so.

The charge is I believe fixed at £144+VAT charged to the ISP for an SFI visit. They may charge it to you. As your installation is not up to BT current standards there should be no charge.

My price may be out of date, but you get the general idea.

Hi Xray, 1) You've previously had all my router stats and line speeds.
2) I'm not an ex-telephone engineer, so I'm now into clutching @ straws; the diluted Broadband speed theory spewed out by an British Orange Customer Service man the other night sounded plausible, and until the BT engineer visits my property this coming Monday, I'm not doing anything else.
However, if Monday's BT actions fail to improve my [censored] line speed - then Orange will get a MAC number request from me. As I'm not stupid, I've seen the B/band ISP league tables, and surprise, surprise Orange are rock bottom.
3) When it comes to my current phone wiring configuration, I thought I'd explained it quite succinctly, but obviously not. So here we go again:
Do you have 2 telephone numbers or just 1 with 2 sockets? No, ONE tel number, with two sockets (one upstairs, one downstairs).
It is not clear which is the master socket (they both look the same). However, I've always presumed its downstairs, as we had the upstairs one installed way after the original downstairs one.
Both of my phones are permanently connected by std phone wire/cable or whatever is the correct description. Downstairs handset is bog-standard. Upstairs is a "wanda fone handset" which is recharged when placed back in it's cradle.
When I first went on Broadband with SKY a few years ago, I duly fitted (as instructed) micro-filters to each internal telephone socket - sorry for previously calling them splitters or just filters.
My wired router is connected to the downstairs line, via the micro-filter. Unfortunately my main computer is about 20 metres away from the router, so I know my line-speed is automatically weakened via the connecting length of cable from router to computer. The router also serves my son's laptop upstairs via "a dongle".
Thanks.

Expect me to remember your router stats?

... Ah yes! You're the one capped to 8 Meg on ADSL2+.

EDIT: Your Line attenuation wouldn't be 25 dB (downstream) if Orange's hypothesis was true that your bandwidth is halved because you have 2 extensions. How on earth would the exchange know how many extensions you have?

Idea: Have you tried with all phones disconnected? Are stats and speedtests any better?

Edited by XRaySpeX (Fri 11-Mar-11 23:51:01)

Thanks yarwell, you have opened my eyes to a few other things to be checked e.g. MaxDSL diagnostics.
However, the BT Engineer is coming this Monday, so hope he identifies any problems with my overhead cable to my property, and/or my sockets wiring.

BTW, I picked up on the bell wire etc., a week or so ago, and disconnected them @ the master socket. I only have two wires connected in the master socket now. I thought it made an improvement @ the time, but my speed seems to have dropped back to poor levels again:
Date Day Downstream Upstream IP Address Connection
12/03/11 00:13 Sat 3332 Kbps 507 Kbps 91.104.171.150 my home DSL
11/03/11 20:54 Fri 2628 Kbps 289 Kbps 91.104.144.71 my home DSL
11/03/11 01:20 Fri 3310 Kbps 449 Kbps 91.104.144.71 my home DSL
10/03/11 23:03 Thu 3314 Kbps 449 Kbps 91.104.144.71 my home DSL
10/03/11 13:51 Thu 3342 Kbps 443 Kbps 91.104.144.71 my home DSL
10/03/11 02:06 Thu 3294 Kbps 510 Kbps 91.104.144.252 my home DSL
10/03/11 00:21 Thu 3364 Kbps 509 Kbps 91.104.144.252 my home DSL
09/03/11 19:04 Wed 3131 Kbps 477 Kbps 91.107.9.229 my home DSL
09/03/11 01:48 Wed 3331 Kbps 509 Kbps 91.107.33.145 my home DSL
08/03/11 15:50 Tue 3365 Kbps 496 Kbps 91.104.164.250 my home DSL
08/03/11 15:24 Tue 3366 Kbps 496 Kbps 91.104.164.250 my home DSL
08/03/11 11:45 Tue 3348 Kbps 508 Kbps 91.104.174.182 my home DSL
07/03/11 23:42 Mon 2155 Kbps 350 Kbps 91.104.174.182 my home DSL
07/03/11 21:59 Mon 5098 Kbps 419 Kbps 91.104.190.101 my home DSL
07/03/11 19:55 Mon 5015 Kbps 698 Kbps 91.107.13.196 my home DSL

The last two readings dated 07/03/11, were taken when the computer and router were temporarily within a metre of my master socket, the other 07/03/11 reading, was the first one taken, with the computer & router re-situated back in our lounge - connected via some 20 metres of telephone wire extension to the master socket (where it's been for the last 5 years). In this time we have had SKY (2 years) and Orange (current ISP for 3 years).
Just to recap - Orange have very recently informed me that they have cranked up my line-speed to 14Mb (the max my BT config. can take - they say). So that's why I swallowed the story that it's splitting @ the external junction point, with 7mb going to the upstairs BT socket, and 7Mb to the master socket downstairs. As apparently very few Bband clients get the max speed in reality, the 5Mb I recorded when directly connecting the router & computer @ the master socket, seemed to support Orange's explanation. After all, I am only a qualified accountant and Registered HMRC Corporate Tax Agent, not a Comms Engineer

p.s. as I've got a spare Linksys router, perhaps I could connect that upstairs and see what speed that gives my son's laptop, while I'm feeding off the Orange router downstairs - could be interesting?!

connected via some 20 metres of telephone wire extension to the master socket

is that a high quality twisted pair cable ?

You need to get a new NTE5 master socket where you want the router to be, and extension wiring (if required) from that via a fully filtered faceplate. Anything else is a compromise

If you don't need to have wired extensions (eg using DECT phones) then a single socket on the end of the incoming phone line is goo.

In reply to a post by shrimper1:

p.s. as I've got a spare Linksys router, perhaps I could connect that upstairs and see what speed that gives my son's laptop, while I'm feeding off the Orange router downstairs - could be interesting?

Doubt it will work! It will either pick up the 1st one that connects or the 2nd one with discon the 1st.