Removing pin 3 bell wire from phone extensions.

If filters are correctly in play that shouldn't happen

You are right to suspect the bell wire BUT I have also had this with a bad (BT) line connection. The ring current when it starts creating micro arcs can spread dissent up to the RF where ADSL lives...

rather than having internal wiring with filters at each extension, you'd be better off having a single faceplate filter at the point of the master socket, and then take phone extensions and one xDSL extension from the rear of the master ... depending how new your master is you're likely to have to replace it with one that allows that.

Yes, I just run 2+5 to phones, anything new enough that it doesn't say 'GPO' on it should ring anyway

or if it doesn't just install another master face plate.

You'd be far better off to situate your router at the master socket and cable to your computers with CAT 5/6. Or just use Wi-Fi, if cabling is a problem. And leave the phones to themselves.

I thought the reason it was not needed was because modern phones don't need a bell wire. I thought the reason for removing it was to stop it acting as an aerial. I could be entirely wrong.

This is indeed the reason to remove it.

When we first moved here I was getting about 3.5Mbps. Once I'd had the lads in to tidy up the phone wiring and remove the bell wire it went up to more than 6Mbps.

That went down to around 4.5Mbps after some scroats removed 400 metres of cable between us and the exchange (Openreach fixed this and patched in a new 400 pair cable within 24 hours).

I thought it would go down to 0.0Mbps in that event.

I have done. A single run of cat5e runs from the BT home hub gigabit socket to a netgear GS105 that feeds TV and computer.

The only BT phone I have is marked BT relate 80, about 20 years old, but that is all that is plugged into an extension next to my computer (with a BT caller display 30 inline).

That's what I thought, but what constitutes a 'modern' phone ?. Is it anything with a keypad that generates tones ?.

Oh how witty. Oddly enough I meant after they'd spliced the new cable in.

Yes, I thought so too :-)

In general its any phone with a bit of electronics inside it.

Run off the line voltage Or batteries.

In article , Scott writes

I think you are correct on both counts.

Anything that doesn't use pin 3.

No, you're pretty well correct. Modern handsets have the bell capacitor built in and don't rely upon a third bell wire to complete a bell circuit. This means that the bell wire connection at the master socket can be disconnected if all the plug in phones are of the modern high impedance low capacitance incorporated sounder type (an old fashioned BT phone would still ring to incoming calls if plugged into the master socket).

Disconnecting the bell wire circuit on the extension socket wiring eliminates the imbalance otherwise introduced by the bell wire connection. Since any imbalance of the line impairs its rejection of strong MW broadcast signals, the presence of a bell wire connection can effect the levels of such interference to a greater or lesser degree, affecting the performance of any ADSL connections which also depends on the line length.

If the line length is only two or three Km and you only have 20 or 30 metres of extension wiring, it probably won't make any noticeable difference. However, if you have a very large property with 50 metres or more of extension wiring and you're on the end of a 7Km line with two or more spans of overhead feed to a hilltop property, eliminating the bell wire connection will almost certainly improve the speed of your ADSL connection to a noticeable degree.

Unless you have a houseful of antique phones adapted to the plug and socket standard, you can safely disconnect the bell circuit wire at the master socket connection. If in doubt, it's unlikely to do any harm and may provide a surprising improvement of your broadband connection speed (especially in the case of longer lines).

One real concern is the amount of interference which can be picked up on house telephone wiring. All sorts in the average house, from SMPS, dimmers, etc. Hence it making sense to separate the phone and broadband signals as early as possible - and properly balanced cable to feed the broadband round the house. That should have better immunity to interference than telephone stuff.

And be aware that filters are not created equal. I bought a faceplate filter to "tidy things up" based on good reviews etc. And yes during the day it did give a small increase in speed over the "soap on a rope" BT badged MF50 filter. But come night time that day light rate couldn't be sustained and it would drop back below the normal rate that the MF50 would allow and not recover the next day.