On Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:19:13 -0800, Don Bowey wrote:

:On 2/7/08 2:10 AM, in article ,
:"Ross Herbert" wrote:
:
: Glad to know the problem is solved. It seems that the tech/liney just took
pot
: luck on both occasions and grabbed whatever free pair was available in the
: cable.
:
:The repairman does not just "grab" whatever free pair is available. He
btains a new cable/pair assignment from the cable assignment group, who
:will use whatever pair is unassigned and zoned for the location/service that
:was ordered. So what's the problem?

It depends on whether the cable pair which was swapped was in a main cable from
the exchange or simply a local drop cable feeding a particular street from a sub
distribution point (pillar). Also, depending upon the methods used to correctly
identify and amend cable pair records, these can become horribly out of whack
over many years of accumulated non-report and/or repair and the faulty pairs are
left until a major upgrade is required.

Back in the late 80's early 90's as much as 30% of manually maintained cable
pair records were estimated to be incorrect in the major cities of Australia,
and our design group was charged with producing an automated cable pair check
and logging system which was used to thoroughly log every main frame and cable
pillar record in the country. The system proved the estimates were in fact
correct and the Switch Number Identifier was able to carry out the project in
only 2 years. It was estimated that a manual jumper trace and record would have
taken about 1000 man-years to do the same thing.

If what you say is true then how come the first "assigned" pair was faulty? One
would assume that all faulty pairs would have been already logged and the cable
assigner would know what pairs NOT to assign. This procedure obviously didn't
happen. These days many telco's who also have responsibility for residential
cable networks don't bother too much with accurate record keeping as far as
local drop cables from street pillars are concerned, and liney's are known to
take short cuts to save time and trouble if they have a heavy workload. If they
have been assigned a pair which proves faulty they generally just pick another
local drop pair and simply check to see if it is already jumpered. If
unjumpered, they grab it without more testing than a check with their butt to
see if it sounds bad (hum or noise), and then if they feel inclined, tell the
cable assigner - generally too much troble and paperwork. Anyway, failure to
report the pair faulty (when subsequently discovered months down the track) is
just seen as an oversight in a busy day and anyway, the next liney will find it
and report it - but usually only after it has been re-assigned and another
customer complains.

:
: The first time he struck out and the second time he got lucky.
:
:What does your cynical view do to explain the situation?

Experience, see above.

:
: I'll bet
: he didn't log that first pair he tried (or your original pair either) as
: 'faulty', so the next customer who experiences similar symptoms will have an
: even greater chance of getting a dud pair. Bloody, lineys, - duh.. what's a
: line test?
:
:HE didn't log it, but HE did report the trouble to the assignment office
:that gave him the new pair. They will flag it as defective and initiate a
:trouble ticket for a cable repairman to fix. They do it, because if one
air is in trouble, there may be a condition that will spread to other
airs.

You know for a fact that he did report it do you? Then what happened in the case
of the first pair assigned to fix the OP's problem? One would assume that if the
cable records were kept up to date then he wouldn't have been assigned a known
faulty pair in the first place. Going by the non-workability of the initial pair
assigned to the OP's service, and then getting another faulty pair assigned at
the first attempt to fix the problem, I would say that the local cable records
are in a woeful state. It is obvious that there are at least 2 local drop pairs
to the OP's area which are faulty, so there is a very good chance that there are
several more in that cable as well. Until all good pairs in the cable are in use
the telco won't bother to upgrade or repair the faulty pairs - it costs too much
to just fix one or two pairs so they wait till they absolutely have to do
something - I know how they work.