Having moved recently from Peterborough to North Wales I was prepared for a drop in broadband speed and had already looked at the estimated speeds for the new area – it seemed that I could possibly get 1Mb on an ADSL line.

When we moved and I checked the actual broadband speed once it had settled down I was concerned to see that it had dropped from 1MB to just over 0.5Mb – my work depends on having a reliable connection at as fast a speed as I could get it.

Researching on the net, I came across several articles that mentioned the ring wire on the internal telephone wiring (in particular this article at Kitz on improving your ADSL speed) and they all mentioned the fact that having the ringwire connected meant that it could act as an antenna and was not needed on modern telephones.

I decided to take a look at the wiring in the house and immediately found that there was not an up-to-date socket anywhere which meant that I had to find the master socket another way.  A quick read-up showed me that the mater socket would have a capacitor in it so it was a case of opening each of the 6 telephone wall sockets (one at a time) to find the one I was looking for.  Fortunately it only took me 3 sockets before I found the right one and when I looked at it it seemed that someone else had had the same idea.  The ring wire had been disconnected from one side of the socket – but whoever had done this had taken it from the input side and not disconnected it from the side that ran around the house.

So, making sure that what I was doing was legal – you can’t interfer with wires on the BT side of the socket, I disconnected the ringwire and rebooted the ADSL router.  I was amazed to get an immediate speed of 1.6Mb on the line (remember that I had been struggling to get anything over 0.5Mb) and since then the line speed seems to have settled at 1.4Mb – still nearly a mb more than I was getting.

If you are having problems with your broadband and have access to the telephone wiring this is something that I would recommend that you consider – although as I have said, you must make sure that anything you do is not on the BT side of the master socket, this is illegal and could result in prosecution and/or a fine by BT.