BT Wholesale launching £10 device to speed up broadband
Thursday 13 March 2008
Reports are coming in that BT Wholesale is planning to launch a new device that could potential increase the speed of ADSL broadband connections.
The £10 device is claimed to speed up connections by reducing electrical interference from household objects such as televisions, set-top boxes and fairy lights - common objects that
BT says can reduce a broadband connection to a snail's pace.
According to the telecoms firm, interference from these household objects is caused by excessive noise on the line. The new device called an Interstitial Plate (iPlate) is said to reduce this phenomenon and after being placed in the master telephone socket it is designed to eliminate noise and subsequently boost broadband speed.
BT says that it's provided around 1,000 customers with the iPlate for an initial trial run and has been happy with the results. "We've seen huge increases in speed," said Ashley Pickering from BT Wholesale. "On average, it makes one and a half megs of difference."
The iPlate is expected to launch with the next couple of months and BT says that it should be simple enough to fit without an engineer. The device would be installed by unscrewing a plate in the master socket and slotting in the iPlate.
In similar news, PC Pro has posted an article revealing that BT claimed it managed to fix the broadband connection of an entire neighbourhood by buying one of its customers a new television.
As a result of electrical interference from the faulty TV broadband services were affected within a 200m radius: "Lots of people in that neighbourhood were experience connection problems because of one person in that area," said BT Wholesale's Ashley Pickering. After tracking down the cause of the problem Pickering said that BT had trouble convincing the owner of the TV that he was causing problems for his neighbours: "It's very difficult to tell people they have a faulty television when they're watching it. In the end, we bought the guy a new television."
Source:
PC Pro
