Final full launch of BT Wholesale I-Plate
Wednesday 01 October 2008 11:53:14 by Andrew Ferguson
News about the BT Wholesale I-Plate is hardly new, it was announced in April 2008. The I-Plate is designed to remove the interference that the ring wire used in telephone extensions can introduce to the ADSL signal.
Todays press release from BT Wholesale informs us that the I-Plate is finally available to broadband providers, but warns it may take some time for providers to start offering the plate. How long this time frame will be is unclear, the I-Plate has been available from a number of sources for sometime, and one would hope all sensible providers had looked into it, and it is just a case of deciding how to retail the product.
The I-Plate is of course only of benefit to those with telephone extensions and a BT NTE5 master socket. If you have an older style faceplate, and you want to fit a master socket this can be done for a fee by Openreach by contacting your telephone line rental provider. People with the newer Openreach branded faceplate will already have the I-Plate components built into the faceplate. The improvements possible will vary greatly from line to line, but the survey by BT Wholesale suggesting typical speed improvements of 1.5Mbps on some 7 out of 10 lines are backed up by the evidence we've seen over the years from people carrying out DIY improvements to their telephone extension wiring.
It has been well known for sometime that simply removing the ring wire (connected to pin 3 on faceplate) at the master socket can improve many peoples ADSL connection speeds. The I-Plate while it may cost some money, may prove simpler for people to fit and given the confusion with the wide variety of wiring methods used in phone extensions this is probably a good thing.
Exactly what price providers will charge for the I-Plate is not known, but current retail prices are £10 to £20, suggesting it is supplied for well under £10 at the wholesale level. This price point means providers could add it as a free device to be sent to those with broadband speed issues when their home wiring is suspected as the problem. For those with ADSL2+ the state of your phone wiring in the home is even more important, so fitting an ADSL master socket faceplate, removing the ring wire or fitting an I-Plate may help to squeeze yet more speed from the line, or failing that make things more stable.
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yep, the price of idiocy and laziness these days.... they cannot inform themselves how to cut a wire, and then moan about the cost of equipment, and labour costs for BT to do it...
Is this the NTE5 offered by www.clarity.it ? I got one, cut the ringer and received an immediate & substantial boost in download speeds. Or is it something else? Now, was the increase due to cutting the ringer or the new NTE5? Re-connecting the ringer left the speed elevated.
The whole point i was making comnut as muymalestado touches on above is similar equipment costs alot less. Maybe if tighter regulation was bought in see BT are held responsible for your broadband connection and the wires they (in most cases) wired up, instead of just the voice side of things they wouldnt be able to get away ripping people off for a 200mil by 200mil bit of plastic.
yes, it may cost less, and some ISPs may do it for free.. it very much depends on how good/bad/scrooge your isp is!!
In case you did not se, the link shows you how do remove the wire/s YOURSELF, with pictures...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.html#235
NTE%, master sockets, etc, here...
http://www.solwise.co.uk/adsl_splitters.htm
http://www.adslnation.com/support/extensions.php
even ebay has them...
I got the ADSL nation faceplate and the 65p clip to put the wires for the extensions back in, and it's the best money I've ever spent.
the adslnation faceplate I got is poor quality, feels cheap and now when I use it when someone rings the adsl loses synch, its to blame because all my dangly filters and old adsl 2000 faceplate dont have the problem. the adslnation x1-fe on the other hand appears to be very good quality and is the only filter that allows me 1meg upload synch.
We've been selling these for a good while now and initially BT wholesale charged a trial fee of £6 per unit but since the official launch on 1st October they have increased the cost per unit to over double the trial price!
This is probably why most sites are charging closer to £20 for them now as they can't sell them for less than they purchased them for.
The big boys may well offer these as part of a package or at signup though.
thanks for the insight adsl24, so its not all down to greed as everyone thinks, well maybe on BT's side. I got mine from yourselves unfortenatly I got no boost at all from it.
No problem at all. They are particularly helpful to increase stability so where no obvious speed increase may be apparent they may still help the overall stability and lower error counts thus increasing throughput even at the same SYNC rates.
Worth pointing out that a lot of us old geezers keep a spare old-style bell phone in the house for use during a power-cut. This dates from the brief period after the invention of the home cordless phone but before mobile phones (when Amstrads roamed the Earth). I assume this fix will make that pointless? Mind you, I can't remember where I put it, and the kitchen ain't even on fire.
well you dont need to have that old a phone... my main phone is a BT Prelude I got at a carboot - It works ok without the batts, they are only needed for the display and number memory...
Doesnt any phone that is not DECT and can use tone or pulse dialing work in a power cut??? I have a resonably modern wired phone here and as comnut says the only thing batteries in it do is the LCD display, without them it works fine and in a power cut it also works fine.
>> The I-Plate is of course only of benefit to those with telephone extensions
Is this correct, if you connect direct to the master the i-plate makes no difference?
The I-plate i would say (just my opinion) is only of benefit to those that currently used el-cheapo filters (you know the 1-2 quid things) and have no clue how to undo the box and lever the ring wire out of a connection... Otherwise its pretty much a waste of £20 and unlikely to do anything for you.
20 quid....... surely they are having a laugh?