[Dave Baker]

Thanks again for all the helpful advice on here. After putting up with the
crackling line and internet dropping out for about two weeks I finally
agreed to an engineer visit even though BT kept telling me they could see no
fault on a line test.

Engineer arrived this morning and immediately found a corroded connection at
the top of the telephone pole. Having swapped my cabling over to a spare
line which he said there were plenty of up there I then had no signal at all
on the phone. Couldn't even get a ring tone.

So he says there must also be a problem inside the house. How on earth says
I can there now be no line at all unless the wrong wires are now connected
from the pole to the house? Anyway he was adamant he'd done the wiring right
up the pole so I told him my only worry was if he said there was any
internal fault on the job report I'd get a charge from BT. No worries he
says it'll all go down as an external fault so he came indoors and
pronounced the master socket kaput.

So you can imagine my skepticism that a socket that has always at least
worked to some degree, albeit apparently with a bad connection on the
telegraph pole, suddenly doesn't work at all with a brand new connection on
the pole.

Anyway he puts a new faceplate in on the indoors master socket and it all
works again! I'm mystified but my ADSL speed has now leapt from an average
of 2mbs and an occasional best of about 4mbs straight up to 6 mbs so all in
all a result.

I still wonder if he'd initially re-connected the two wires the wrong way
round on the external socket so they were in the wrong places on the
internal one but if anyone can come up with an alternative explanation of
why I suddenly also needed a new internal socket I'd be interested.
--
Dave Baker

[John Williamson]

Dave Baker wrote:

I still wonder if he'd initially re-connected the two wires the wrong way
round on the external socket so they were in the wrong places on the
internal one but if anyone can come up with an alternative explanation of
why I suddenly also needed a new internal socket I'd be interested.

Something that was about to fail was killed by the proper line voltage
now being there, maybe. Strange things often happen when old wiring is
diturbed.

As long as it works.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[Ian Jackson[_2_]]

In message , John
Rumm writes
On 22/01/2011 10:54, Dave Baker wrote:


I still wonder if he'd initially re-connected the two wires the wrong way
round on the external socket so they were in the wrong places on the
internal one but if anyone can come up with an alternative explanation of
why I suddenly also needed a new internal socket I'd be interested.

Well there are a limited number of permutations for connecting two
wires to two terminals - and both ought to work!

When you say "new faceplate" - I assume he replaced the whole faceplate
(i.e. both top and bottom bits) and not just the removable bottom bit?

Even though one wire is at 0V, and the other carries -48VDC, aren't
phone lines supposed to work *either* way round?
--
Ian

[Dave Liquorice[_2_]]

On Sat, 22 Jan 2011 10:54:49 -0000, Dave Baker wrote:

Engineer arrived this morning and immediately found a corroded
connection at the top of the telephone pole. Having swapped my cabling
over to a spare line which he said there were plenty of up there I then
had no signal at all on the phone. Couldn't even get a ring tone.

So he says there must also be a problem inside the house. How on earth
says I can there now be no line at all unless the wrong wires are now
connected from the pole to the house?

Well like you say if he has swapped the pair used in the dropwire
(pole top to your house) and not changed the pair in the house it
just ain't going to work...

Anyway he puts a new faceplate in on the indoors master socket and it
all works again!

Face saving? Swapped to the correct to pair in the dropwire whilst
changing the face plate? Which bit did he actually change? Just the
lower, detachable half or the upper and lower bits? Most BT engineers
are not daft enough to swap pairs at one end of a cable and not the
other...

--
Cheers
Dave.

[Dave Baker]

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.co.uk...
On Sat, 22 Jan 2011 10:54:49 -0000, Dave Baker wrote:

Engineer arrived this morning and immediately found a corroded
connection at the top of the telephone pole. Having swapped my cabling
over to a spare line which he said there were plenty of up there I then
had no signal at all on the phone. Couldn't even get a ring tone.

So he says there must also be a problem inside the house. How on earth
says I can there now be no line at all unless the wrong wires are now
connected from the pole to the house?

Well like you say if he has swapped the pair used in the dropwire
(pole top to your house) and not changed the pair in the house it
just ain't going to work...

Anyway he puts a new faceplate in on the indoors master socket and it
all works again!

Face saving?

I'm thinking so.

Swapped to the correct to pair in the dropwire whilst
changing the face plate? Which bit did he actually change? Just the
lower, detachable half or the upper and lower bits? Most BT engineers
are not daft enough to swap pairs at one end of a cable and not the
other...

My old faceplate was one piece. Not sure about the new one which doesn't
actually fit the old socket properly I see but that's something for another
day.
--
Dave Baker

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Ian Jackson ianREMOVET
writes

Even though one wire is at 0V, and the other carries -48VDC, aren't
phone lines supposed to work *either* way round?

They do. The wires are referred to as the A and B legs. I forget which
is supposed to be 0v and which at -48v. Never been sure why they are
supposed to be a certain way round.

I have a BT line tester which has a "REV" light to indicate that
polarity is reversed. Whenever I've come across a line like this I have
corrected it but am not sure if it's actually needed.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Dave Baker
writes

My old faceplate was one piece. Not sure about the new one which doesn't
actually fit the old socket properly I see but that's something for another
day.

He's replaced your old one-piece socket with an NTE5 (the one with the
user-detachable part that can be unplugged to isolate any extension
wiring to aid in diagnosing faults.)

It's 'regularisation' - bringing the installation up to current
standard. Actually, he's almost certainly fitted an NTE5a which
contains modifications that would have contributed to your ADSL speed
improvement in addition to fixing the dodgy connection on the pole.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

[Lobster]

On 22/01/2011 21:28, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jan 2011 10:54:49 -0000, Dave Baker wrote:

Engineer arrived this morning and immediately found a corroded
connection at the top of the telephone pole. Having swapped my cabling
over to a spare line which he said there were plenty of up there I then
had no signal at all on the phone. Couldn't even get a ring tone.

So he says there must also be a problem inside the house. How on earth
says I can there now be no line at all unless the wrong wires are now
connected from the pole to the house?

Well like you say if he has swapped the pair used in the dropwire
(pole top to your house) and not changed the pair in the house it
just ain't going to work...

Anyway he puts a new faceplate in on the indoors master socket and it
all works again!

Face saving? Swapped to the correct to pair in the dropwire whilst
changing the face plate?

But wouldn't that be face *wasting*?

David

[Dave Baker]

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.co.uk...
On Sat, 22 Jan 2011 10:54:49 -0000, Dave Baker wrote:

Engineer arrived this morning and immediately found a corroded
connection at the top of the telephone pole. Having swapped my cabling
over to a spare line which he said there were plenty of up there I then
had no signal at all on the phone. Couldn't even get a ring tone.

So he says there must also be a problem inside the house. How on earth
says I can there now be no line at all unless the wrong wires are now
connected from the pole to the house?

Well like you say if he has swapped the pair used in the dropwire
(pole top to your house) and not changed the pair in the house it
just ain't going to work...

Just been out to have a shuftie inside the master socket again. The dropwire
contains about 6 or 7 wires of which only two are used. I'm pretty sure they
used to be a red and black pair and I can see those still have protruding
shiny copper ends as though they were recently in use. All the others had
always been snipped off flush. Now it's using a green and orange pair
(maybe - cos I'm colourblind which doesn't help).

Those are then clipped directly to the two out of four wires coming from the
inside line so at worst I guess he could have reversed the polarity to the
inside socket but it seems that shouldn't matter. Guess I'll never know.

It was a rather weird experience all round though. When he arrived at the
door he asked what the problem was and I'd barely got half a dozen words out
about the crackling line when he just wandered off right in the middle of my
sentence to go and look at the outside socket round the back of the house.
Left me standing in the porch in my socks mid speech wondering what the hell
he was up to.

Later he asked what other sockets I had in use and I said there was a line
out to the garage and a second socket in the downstairs hall (master is in
the lounge directly across the wall from the external socket outside) but
neither of those had anything in use on them. So he just didn't bother
reconnecting them having pulled all the wiring apart during the fix!

So when he's finally got the main phone working I grab an old corded phone
and say I'll just go and check the socket in the hall for a good signal. "I
thought you said you didn't use that?" he asks.

"Well it isn't in use at the moment but I want it working!"

"Oh - hmmmpf - give me a minute" and he connects it back up again. Very odd.

Then I go out and have a look inside the external socket and the line to the
garage has just been left hanging. Same bloody story. Finally we get it all
connected back up again as it had been but he'd have been quite happy to
bugger off and leave me with just the main phone line.

20 minutes after he'd finished and after having had a good check on the
internet and making sure it was all working fine I go into the kitchen to
make a coffee and he's still sat outside in the van chatting on his mobile,
killing time no doubt before the next job. Exactly what the water company
guy who came to clear a blocked sewer did a few years ago.

I wonder how much we'd actually have to pay for these sort of services if
they weren't run so terribly inefficiently with every job being clocked out
at twice as long as was actually spent on it.

Anyway my ADSL has been steady at 6016 kbps ever since rather than mostly
2000 and at best 4000 so I'm not complaining - at least as long as BT don't
try sending me a bill.
--
Dave Baker

[Dave Liquorice[_2_]]

On Sun, 23 Jan 2011 09:48:50 +0000, Lobster wrote:

Anyway he puts a new faceplate in on the indoors master socket
and it
all works again!

Face saving? Swapped to the correct to pair in the dropwire whilst
changing the face plate?

But wouldn't that be face *wasting*?

No by pretending there is another fault that requires the faceplate
to be replaced he can quietly switch to the correct pair in the
dropwire without having to admit (losing face) that he only swapped
pairs at one one of said dropwire.

--
Cheers
Dave.

[Another John]

In article , "Dave Baker"
wrote:

...I finally
agreed to an engineer visit even though BT kept telling me they could see no
fault on a line test....

Whenever I have had broadband problems (mainly: line dropping when we
put the phone down after a call) I have never *dared* call BT, in case
they decide that there is "no fault". I was told by Plusnet, last time
we had such an episode (it's happened a couple of times in our B/B
history), that the BT charge for a call-out (and "no fault found") is
now £180!!

So basically they're saying: "Go one: take a punt on whether it's our
line or your own set-up."

Along with Plusnet's diagnostic and helpline support, I've always
determined that the problem is "somewhere" in the Great Beyond past our
BT faceplate. However I've never dared call 'em up: I might get a good
engineer, or I might get a bad one who simply declares: "Nah: it's not
our gear mate".

Each time this has happened (3 times in about 5 years IIRC), I've ended
up letting the matter drop (because the fault is bloody annoying, but
not crippling). And the fault has eventually gone away (the last time,
it went away, and as in Dave's case, our linespeed has gone up
*dramatically*).

My guess is that Plusnet raised the problem with BT, sooner or later
someone tinkered about at the exchange, and -- possibly accidentally --
fixed our fault.


To be fair, I empathise with both BT and the ISPs: they must have
thousands of calls coming in every day from people who have *no clue
whatever* about how any of "it" works, and will, for example, interpret
a switched-off router as an "Internet Fault", and ring the ISP (or BT).

In fact, it's a bloody miracle how it does work. It seems to me (who has
spent decades working in computing and IT) to be an awfully fragile
chain on which to build the national infrastructure. All around us,
corporate businesses are closing down branches and shops, to be replaced
by ... two tiny wires!

[whoops, sorry: got completely carried away there.]

John

[Mike Clarke]

On 23/01/2011 18:17, John Rumm wrote:
On 23/01/2011 12:05, Dave Baker wrote:


[snip]

Anyway my ADSL has been steady at 6016 kbps ever since rather than mostly
2000 and at best 4000 so I'm not complaining - at least as long as BT
don't try sending me a bill.

Can't see how they can.

They might try. An interesting article at
//aaisp.net.uk/kb-broadband-sfi.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6hppbws suggests that BT can resort to some
very unreasonable terms and conditions to extract this charge.

--
Mike Clarke

[Frank Erskine]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:17:46 +0000, Mike Clarke
wrote:

On 23/01/2011 18:17, John Rumm wrote:
On 23/01/2011 12:05, Dave Baker wrote:


[snip]

Anyway my ADSL has been steady at 6016 kbps ever since rather than mostly
2000 and at best 4000 so I'm not complaining - at least as long as BT
don't try sending me a bill.

Can't see how they can.

They might try. An interesting article at
//aaisp.net.uk/kb-broadband-sfi.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6hppbws suggests that BT can resort to some
very unreasonable terms and conditions to extract this charge.

I was once told by an Openreach engineer that once when a number of
NTE5s were damaged by lightning he was supposed to insist on payment
for replacements; the customer was then expected to claim against
his/her insurance.

--
Frank Erskine

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Dave Baker
writes

Anyway my ADSL has been steady at 6016 kbps ever since rather than mostly
2000 and at best 4000 so I'm not complaining - at least as long as BT don't
try sending me a bill.

*If* he claims in his report that the fault was caused by your extension
wiring (anything after the master socket) you can be sure they will send
you a bill, so be on the lookout.

They are only responsible for providing service up to and including the
master socket. Anything else is chargeable.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

[Lobster]

On 23/01/2011 12:57, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jan 2011 09:48:50 +0000, Lobster wrote:

Anyway he puts a new faceplate in on the indoors master socket
and it
all works again!

Face saving? Swapped to the correct to pair in the dropwire whilst
changing the face plate?

But wouldn't that be face *wasting*?

No by pretending there is another fault that requires the faceplate
to be replaced he can quietly switch to the correct pair in the
dropwire without having to admit (losing face) that he only swapped
pairs at one one of said dropwire.

Whoosh...

[Old Codger[_4_]]

On 23/01/2011 21:24, Another John wrote:
In , "Dave
wrote:

...I finally
agreed to an engineer visit even though BT kept telling me they could see no
fault on a line test....

Whenever I have had broadband problems (mainly: line dropping when we
put the phone down after a call) I have never *dared* call BT, in case
they decide that there is "no fault". I was told by Plusnet, last time
we had such an episode (it's happened a couple of times in our B/B
history), that the BT charge for a call-out (and "no fault found") is
now £180!!

That maybe so but I believe that if the ISP calls out BT for a broadband
fault they have to pay BT, unless the fault is within your premises.


--
Old Codger
e-mail use reply to field

What matters in politics is not what happens, but what you can make
people believe has happened. [Janet Daley 27/8/2003]

[Dave Liquorice[_2_]]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:06:48 +0000, Lobster wrote:

Face saving? Swapped to the correct to pair in the dropwire
whilst
changing the face plate?

But wouldn't that be face *wasting*?

No by pretending there is another fault that requires the
faceplate
to be replaced he can quietly switch to the correct pair in the
dropwire without having to admit (losing face) that he only
swapped
pairs at one one of said dropwire.

Whoosh...

Meh.