ISP Signal Strength

[Genefreak]

Hi

I've recently moved into the countryside and although I expected a considerable drop in my ADSL signal strength, I didn't quite expect the hassle I've had.

I heard rumours that they were going to start to upgrade the line between the exchange and my house so in my infinite wisdom arranged for an ADSL2+ package from O2 (formally Be network). This is where the problems started.

On the day that my bb was activated, my router failed to connect. It connected through the test socket on the master switch no problem (with a rubbish total of 1mbps!!), so suddenly neither ISP nor BT wanted to know unless we paid a whopping great amount to the latter as it was now an internal issue.

After seeking advice and reading several forums, I decided that the problem was that I had too many phone sockets running from the one master (7 in total). I was getting a bit of hum on the line which didn't go away when I switched the power off to the house so I assumed this was an issue with a ground short somewhere in my many metres of hidden cabling. Rather than remove all skirting boards, I decided to systematically disconnect all the sockets.

The result was that the hum gradually reduced with each socket I removed. When I was down to one socket, I tried that and after 3 minutes trying to connect, it connected but only at a measly 0.4mbps (using data from speedtest.net), whereas the test socket was still giving me the full 1meg.

What is totally confusing me is HOW the last owner of this house (who we knew for a few weeks leading up to our purchase), was able to get bband on every socket (which I saw working with my own eyes). The only change was in ISP from Pipex to O2.

My question is, Is ADSL signal strength standard across all ISPs? If so, would the fact that I originally had an ADSL2+ connection to the house have made a difference because this is more sensitive to line noise than standard ADSL? (My O2 router is still saying that it's receiving an ADSL2+ connection even though O2 second line team are adamant that they've made the downgrade.)

Its really annoying because as it stands, I have to remove the faceplate any time I want to use the internet - rendering all phones useless... reminiscent of old dial-up days! Go Digital Britain!

Steve.