Broadband missing wires in telephone cable.

ABN

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Some 5yrs ago I moved the telephone socket. Didn’t have the correct cable so just extended the 2 wires that were physically connected in the socket. That cable was buried under concrete so is not accessible.

Phone works fine but now thinking of getting fast broadband via the telephone rather than the virgin cable that I presently have.

What wires does the broadband use?
Will the fact that only 2 of the wires were extended mean that the broadband won’t work?
 
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Thanks so the broadband will work OK then. Will place the order tomorrow then.

Wonder what all the other wires were for.
 
Trust you used proper telephone cable otherwise your 'fast' broadband will be slowed down a bit.
 
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No not proper telephone wire. Can't remember what wire but not "mains cable"

Thought you had a cooling off period with BT but seems not so not so keen anymore in case there is a problem.

How much effect is the wrong cable likely to make? Its only about 6ft of wrong cable + a joint
 
You will have to wait and see - If you live close to the exchange, there is unlikely to be a problem. You can log into your router and look at the SYNC speed - don't use an online speed tester, as although these give you your actual speed at that time, they take into account the whole internet connection, including portions where you and your neighbourhood are using. Looking at the routers SYNC speed shows YOUR connection speed to the exchange.

Why did you use the incorrect cable if you knew it was incorrect? Not exactly expensive, and burying it in concrete is not particularly a good idea either.
 
If you are thinking of high speed fibre then Openreach will have to fit a new box and I do not think that they will connect it if it is the wrong cable. If the joint you made is inaccessible then you may have to pay for a new drop wire.
 
Some 5yrs ago I moved the telephone socket. Didn’t have the correct cable so just extended the 2 wires that were physically connected in the socket. That cable was buried under concrete so is not accessible.

Phone works fine but now thinking of getting fast broadband via the telephone rather than the virgin cable that I presently have.

What wires does the broadband use?
Will the fact that only 2 of the wires were extended mean that the broadband won’t work?

Do you mean the joint was buried? If so I would have some serious doubts about its efficiency in transmitting broadband and I suspect BT won't be too amused either! Just out of interest, why go to BT when you already have cable?
 
Because Virgin are crap?

Why are they 'crap?'

No problems here & I've been with them since Telewest days.

Broadband (100mg), phone & TV

My experience cancels yours out doesn't it. So they are not, as you say, crap.

Why don't you get them to sort out what ever problems you have instead of giving such a generalisation of their service?
 
Because Virgin are crap?

Why are they 'crap?'

Throttling, insufficient network capacity, forcing unreliable hardware on customers..

Why don't you get them to sort out what ever problems you have instead of giving such a generalisation of their service?

I sorted my problem out by switching to a provider offering a service worth paying for.
 
Yeh virgins network management (throttling, traffic shaping etc) leaves a lot to be desired. They also seem to have contention issues, certainly in some areas its extremely bad at peak times due to the local cabinets being overloaded.


If you get VDSL installed (AKA "fibre" (which its not) or BT Infinity) you'll find the BT installers will remove and replace the NTE5 faceplace with a VDSL filtered version, and they will install their VDSL modem beside the new master socket.

As said, they might get a bit annoyed if they find you've hacked around with BT's wiring, and bodged in some non-standard cable.
 
Try this on Virgin, see how you get on..

[code:1]Billing Period Total Bandwidth Usage
21 May 2013 - 20 Jun 2013 406.31 GB
21 Apr 2013 - 20 May 2013 477.39 GB
21 Mar 2013 - 20 Apr 2013 488.23 GB
21 Feb 2013 - 20 Mar 2013 229.27 GB
21 Jan 2013 - 20 Feb 2013 510.47 GB
21 Dec 2012 - 20 Jan 2013 619.5 GB
21 Nov 2012 - 20 Dec 2012 669.04 GB
21 Oct 2012 - 20 Nov 2012 884.26 GB
21 Sep 2012 - 20 Oct 2012 567.76 GB
23 Aug 2012 - 20 Sep 2012 1.12 TB[/code:1]
 
Thanks for the replies.

It buried because we have solid floors and had the extend the wooden floor over that area. The wood floor is glued to the concrete. The rest of the cable is also buried so not just my extension.

BT wanted £100+ to do it and was in a bit of a rush to get things done so just used what was available.

A little while ago we did have a fault, well the whole area was effected as someone stole some important cable. Once that cable was replace phone was working again but BT called round cause our line was not responding correctly to one of their tests. The master socket was the original as fitted some 50yrs ago. The BT engineer replaced it with a new faceplate that had a capacitor fitted (or something like that can’t fully remember why it needed changing). So he changed it for the new master plate but didn’t make any comment about the non standard wiring (I was sweating it at the time must admit)

Virgin is expensive for old customers and their thresholds (which they keep changing) quite frankly make having fast broadband pointless. Currently your only allowed 2.7G 4pm to 11pm weekdays and 2.7G 11am to 11pm weekends. Means you can’t even stream a HD movie if you want.

Been looking around and seems that Plusnet have a 14 day cooling off period so most likely will go with them. Not sure if they send an engineer to set it up or not (no mention of it on their web site)
 

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