I moved to BT Broadband in June, until recently it was fine but now I'm having issues.

The internet goes down momentarily when someone in the house picks up/puts down the phone. Other times the speed varies hugely, a lot of the time it is painfully slow.

I've checked the service status and online it said there was no fault on my line.

Can anyone give me any tips on what it might be?

Thanks.

Remove the lower section of the faceplate on your master socket and plug the HomeHub into the test socket that is now revealed. Test it on there, though be aware none of your extensions will work.

If you get the same issues on the test socket try another filter and retest. If you still get issues then try a different phone plugged into the filter.

If after all this you are still having the same issue then the chances are it's either the HomeHub or the line. Working out which could be a problem. Might be difficult to swap the HomeHub to eliminate that. In that case it might be time to beat up BT.

However if everything works perfectly on the test socket the fault is likely to be your extension wiring or something plugged into an extension. So first thing is to check the state of the wiring to look for any damage. Especially if any cable goes under carpet or round the edge of a door frame rather than through a hole to get to the other side of the wall.

If the cable is OK unplug all extension phones etc. that you have. Test again to confirm whether it is working OK. If so plug things back in one at a time and test each time. When the problem comes back whatever you last plugged in could be the problem. Try it with another filter just in case it's the filter not the phone/whatever. I assume you do have filters on all extensions (unless you have fitted a filtered faceplate on the master socket).

Another thing to do if you have extensions and while the faceplate is off on the master. Remove any wires on terminals 3 and 4 on the back of the faceplate. Leave just 2 and 5 connected, Go round all extensions and do the same. The wire(s) on 3 and 4 can act like aerials for interference. Many modern phones don't need any connection to these terminals.

BT will probably tell you to try at least the test socket if you call them to report a fault. And be aware that if they do send an Openreach guy out to investigate and it's your home wiring at fault they won't fix that and will probably charge you for the call out (which could be the thick end of £100).

It still sounds like a line fault to me.

As Chris said, report the problem to your ISP who will get you to check from the Test Socket.

Thanks to you both for your replies. I had a busy weekend so have only been able to try out your suggestions today.

Now I set everything up myself when we moved to BT but on looking around the house it seems someone took one of the filters out of a phone socket. I don't know if that could have caused anything.

But the wiring does look a bit iffy. That's inside the master socket.

I'll see what happens now.

If someone has plugged a phone directly into a socket without a filter then that could disrupt the broadband. If the socket was empty then it won't make any difference whether there is a filter plugged in or not.

And define "iffy"

It is not unusual to use 2 or 3 pair cable for extensions. Only one pair is actually needed so not unusual to see loads of spare wires coiled up inside the socket. As long as the wires on the extension terminals on the back of the faceplate are secure the aesthetics don't really matter much

There was a phone plugged into the socket. When I set up the home hub in June I would certainly have put a filter on it, but it looks like when the furniture in the living room was rearranged someone thought they'd take out the filter.

I have to say since then I've been calling the home phone with my mobile and the internet has not gone down when I've picked up. And a couple of speed tests have been getting up to 14mb when before I was barely limping past 10 or 11.

I feel kind of silly now.

If you have the router plugged into the master socket then one option might be a filtered faceplate. This has the ADSL filter components built into the faceplate. It not only provides separate filtered phone socket and router socket on the faceplate but also filtered terminals for the extensions.

So if there is someone in the household prone to "forgetting" to plug filters back in the problem is solved. As there would be no filters to forget.

Example

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ATL-ADSL-Fac...dp/B0025X4OJS/

I might not be stupid after all.

Two BT engineers turned up out of the blue today saying they were there to investigate a possible fault on the line. A while later they said they were going to install some new cable and there would be no charge for this.

Since they left, the hissing and crackling I would hear while using the phone has gone and the internet has been lovely and stable.

I guess it was a fault on the line all along!

A classic HR (High resistance) fault, usually caused by a bad connection.