Here in NC I have had the phone company make a repair on cable cut by a
contractor and they don't ask for names so I assume they are not charging
anybody. It surprised the heck out of me. Maybe they prefer a good free
fix rather than a burried amateur splice that they will have to find in a
few years.


"meirman" wrote in message
news
In alt.home.repair on Sun, 21 Aug 2005 20:09:20 GMT Dick Yuknavech
I-give-up.@dontspamcom posted:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 23:14:47 -0400, meirman wrote in alt.home.repair:

The neighbor's contractor cut my phone line

Is soldering and taping good enough for an outdoor phone line repair?

Or should I have the phone company come and do it according to its
standards?

Call the phone company.

Last month the people burying the TV cable made hash out of my phone
cable. BellSouth came in promptly and repaired it free. If you can be

They didn't charge you because you didn't do it. But either they
charged the cable tv people, or they have some sort of deal between
mutual repeat offenders.

BTW, I forgot that although my dial-up connection speed varies quite a
bit, in about 15 connections since then, it has never gotten to the
speed it used to get to often. At least 13K short.

I know with cable a bad connection can cause reflections, maybe like
splicing a heavy rope to a string or light rope, and then shaking the
light rope, I think it is. You'll see a wave go down the light rope
until the splice and then part of the wave will continue onto the
heavy rope, and part will reflect back on the light rope. This will
cause ghosts with cable tv sometimes.

I don't know if a solder joint that is thicker than the original wire
was, or more or less conductive than the original wire, can cause a
reflection or some other phenomenon, but I wouldn't be surprised.

In fact, I'm not sure now any repair they can do will leave me in as
good as a situation as I was.

But you've convinced me that it would be better than what I did.


home when the repair person does the job, watch it and marvel at the
technology in that splice.

Besides, it's a real hoot going through the automated menu system as it
tries to suggest different possibilities for where the problem might be
while you're sitting there holding a foot of severed cable in your hand
and no way to say so.


Meirman
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