"Jim Adney" wrote in message ...
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 05:34:11 GMT "Andy Sullivan"
wrote:

"Jim Adney" wrote in message ...

On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 08:45:01 -0400 "RichK" wrote:

I know it worked well before, but something has changed. They could have
re-routed the lines, although unlikely.

The first drop in speed occurred when they replaced a broken wire into
my house. They replaced a very old single pair (looked like large zip
cord, with copper coated steet wires in it) with a multiple pair
cable, even though I'm only using a single pair. The service man told
me that this was what they were doing everywhere, so that the next
time someone wanted to upgrade the wires would already be available.

If this splitter was put on the drop wire into your house,
that's likely the cause of your problem. You should call
your local telco and request they remove the splitter.
Tell them you're unable to get 9600bps service for faxes
(white lie) and they'll be legally obligated to remove it.

There's no splitter to my knowledge. They just replaced the old 2
conductor cable with a multiple pair cable but only connected 1 of the
new pairs. It is my understanding that the other pairs are just
sitting there for possible future expansion.

But at what point does the mutiple pair cable begin? It is likely
being divided (split) all the way from the telco's drop wire, since
splitting after the drop wouldn't allow for any expansion. This
means the signal strength on your phone line is much lower than
it was prior to the multi-pair cable being installed. You wouldn't
be able to hear a difference, i.e. the phone line might still sound ok.

The new pair is smaller diameter, but solid copper rather than the old
large diameter copper covered steel. The drop is about 80 yards long.
I wouldn't expect this to be significant.

Would the presence of the unused conductors in close proximity have
any bad effect?

No. But again, the likely problem is signal strength, not interference
from unused pairs. A call to your telco will (or at least should) get
you answers to these questions.