Going fibre broadband & moving master socket.

Monkeh said:

bernardgreen said:

Bodgeitandleggit said:

forget about the old extension wiring and get some cat5/6 and run that in

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The ADSL signal is designed to make the best use of low twist telephone cable CW1308, If you use CAT 5 or 6 cable to take the ADSL signal to the router / modem then the much higher twist will reduce the quality of the ADSL signals to and from the router / modem.

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Do you happen to have meaningful measurements to back up this oft-repeated theory?

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No I do not have meaningful measurementsl, only the experiences of replacing Cat 5 with CW1308 at four locations and the overall improvement of the broadband, These were houses more than a mile from the exchange meaning the ADSL signal was already "weak".

The theory comes from people I know who were involved in the early designs of broadband equipment and the transmission of ADSL signals along the existing telephone cables.

CluelessDIYer1 said:

cajar said:

depends where the pole is. but the guy still has to put the socket where you ask, so it's up to him to deal with that.

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Pole is outside about 3 or 4 houses down the street.

Having said that, when i go tomorrow & look, it'll be more like 6 or 7

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depends which 'side' the poles on, the guy can move the fixing and if the poles on the 'hall' side he'll have plenty of existing cable. otherwise he'll have to cut and extend it.

Pole is on our side but unfortunately it's living room side, not hall.


I've just realised I don't actually know how you go about this:

Do I contact BT to get everything fibre enabled & a socket installed or do I have to contact the fibre/phone provider (& pay for their deal immediately) & they will get BT out?

Which then brings me on to the subject of Sky, since that's who we'll be getting fibre/broadband & phone through. We'll eventually get TV with them but weren't planning on getting it so soon - so can you get the fibre broadband & the phone without the tv deal?

you phone the provider and buy the product you want, they will arrange for sub contractors to deliver the service (Bt)

With my pedant's hat on ...
If you go with (eg) Sky, then "BT OpenReach" will install the line and socket. BT are not allowed to be involved - it was part of making the market competitive.

Of course, BT OpenReach is wholly owned by BT, and we all believe that BT gets the same "arms length" treatment that every other customer gets - don't we


EDIT: And it may well not even be BTOR who do the install. They employ a lot of contractors - round here I see a lot of Kelly Communications vans. That's by way of cutting labour costs - instead of employing lots of "expensive" and hard to get rid of employees, you employ lots of very easy to dump contractors who have to be cut-throat on margins to get a look in.
That's why the guy that comes these days won't have time to spend sorting out anything other than the bare minimum. He'll have been scheduled to do more installs during the day than is practical, and he'll take it in the ear from both customers and management when he's running late in the afternoon.

So make his job really easy, and offer incentives, and you'll get better treatment. Eg, if you can decide on somewhere the existing cable can come into the house (without much work) and join to an internal cable that you've already run, and he'll be happy to join it up and put the socket on. If he's got to spend lots of time up a ladder running a cable across and down the house then he'll be "less accommodating"
Of course, if you prefer the cable running across and down the outside of the house then he'll do that (they have outside joint boxes they use for that).

SimonH2 said:

and we all believe that BT gets the same "arms length" treatment that every other customer gets - don't we

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Even BT Sales cannot speak directly with OpenReach. They have to communicate via the "BT Liaison Department" ( or a similar name )

This means that technical information supplied by the customer to BT sales cannot reach OpenReach so the OpenReach technician arrives on site un-aware of the details.

BT sales were told the new line to a retail unit would require a new cable installed to the unit. What happened was that the new line was assigned to a pair that ended in the adjacent cottage ( my cottage ) and then BT Sales called the customer on her mobile and told her that her phone was installed and working. BT Sales were adamant it was installed. I had to contact OpenReach directly before the matter was resolved and the necessary cable installed.

bernardgreen said:

This means that technical information supplied by the customer to BT sales cannot reach OpenReach ...

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I doubt that. Just because it doesn't happen doesn't mean it can't happen. Variation of the old saying "don't attribute to malice that which can be accounted for by incompetence".

I've got similar tales of incompetence by BT (and BTOR) over the years.

The latest was when we were arranging phone lines for a customer opening 3 high street offices for a new business. Needless to say, BT were made very aware that the premises were currently empty and all correspondence was to come to our address. And also needless to say, that was totally ignored and the appointment letters were sent to empty shops.
Of the 3, for two of them the OR engineers came and went - so the orders got cancelled as "customer not there". For just one, the OR technician had the gumption to phone, and we were able to tell them that a key was available at a neighbouring shop. Oh what fun we had sorting out that - with the customer running from mobile phones and 3G dongles* for a while.
For one site they were adamant that there was no cable anywhere nearby, even though we were able to give them the phone numbers of the businesses either side. I had to go round, and get the DP number off the DP on the back wall of the building before they'd consider anything

* Fortunately the routers were were using supported these directly, but at one site it had to be in the window to work, very professional impression !

All this was 100% BT balls-up, at one site when I was recounting the hassles we'd been having, the technician pointed to the "OpenReach" logo on the back of his coat and took pride in not being BT.
Other paperwork got to us OK, and I really really don't believe there is no scope for different install and admin addresses in the interface between OR and it's customers.

there has always been a facility for different billing / installation addresses as far as I can remember, it's just that bt are consistently bad at screwing things up. we often get instructions to install a line in what turns out to be the billing address, when the customer needs the line in a different exchange area somewhere else in the country. and the old chestnut of a customer asking for 3 lines and instead of grouping the jobs for each, they'll issue them to 3 different guys who turn up separately and get in each other's way.

there's no incentive for bt to improve this. and even blue chip companies with lucrative accounts face this sort of crap. from time to time they complain at director level and it gets special attention for a while then it goes back to square one. what chance has joe public got.

bernardgreen said:

Monkeh said:

bernardgreen said:

Bodgeitandleggit said:

forget about the old extension wiring and get some cat5/6 and run that in

Click to expand...

The ADSL signal is designed to make the best use of low twist telephone cable CW1308, If you use CAT 5 or 6 cable to take the ADSL signal to the router / modem then the much higher twist will reduce the quality of the ADSL signals to and from the router / modem.

Click to expand...

Do you happen to have meaningful measurements to back up this oft-repeated theory?

Click to expand...

No I do not have meaningful measurementsl, only the experiences of replacing Cat 5 with CW1308 at four locations and the overall improvement of the broadband, These were houses more than a mile from the exchange meaning the ADSL signal was already "weak".

Click to expand...

And while I don't doubt you've experienced that, I remain unconvinced a couple meters of mismatched cable can have that substantial a difference after a thousand or more of irregularly jointed cable.

It would be interesting to get an engineer to perform a proper line test with and without say, five metres of assorted types of cable on the end of the line.

I wonder how many different cables there are that have been specifically designed and made for specific jobs?

Europlex said:

I wonder how many different cables there are that have been specifically designed and made for specific jobs?

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Many. And CW1308 is not in any way designed to handle high speed data.

SimonH2 said:

EDIT: And it may well not even be BTOR who do the install. They employ a lot of contractors - round here I see a lot of Kelly Communications vans. That's by way of cutting labour costs - instead of employing lots of "expensive" and hard to get rid of employees, you employ lots of very easy to dump contractors who have to be cut-throat on margins to get a look in.
That's why the guy that comes these days won't have time to spend sorting out anything other than the bare minimum. He'll have been scheduled to do more installs during the day than is practical, and he'll take it in the ear from both customers and management when he's running late in the afternoon.

So make his job really easy, and offer incentives, and you'll get better treatment. Eg, if you can decide on somewhere the existing cable can come into the house (without much work) and join to an internal cable that you've already run, and he'll be happy to join it up and put the socket on. If he's got to spend lots of time up a ladder running a cable across and down the house then he'll be "less accommodating"
Of course, if you prefer the cable running across and down the outside of the house then he'll do that (they have outside joint boxes they use for that).

Click to expand...

Yeah i see them Kelly Comms vans around here too.

So do they not send out a guy to look out the job first so that they know what they need to be doing come work day? Or is that too much to expect?

As i guess they'll have a set amount of jobs in the day & a set amount of time to do these jobs in.

Since the line ends at the living room side of the house, he would surely then have to faff around trailing wire in at the hall side which he wont have time allocated for & will be behind in his work.

I don't know what trailing off would entail but i'm not very fussy about having a wire trailing across the top of my house & then down. It wouldn't have to go direct to the hall side.

Either way, if they just turn up on job day then the job will no doubt be much bigger than they had planned for.

Monkeh said:

Many. And CW1308 is not in any way designed to handle high speed data.

Click to expand...

But it does, thanks to some clever designers who found a type of modulation that does carry data at a rate the cable was never intended to carry.

In fact the humble twisted pair telephone cable with the right equipment at the ends can carry a lot more than just a single POTS ( Plain Old Telephone Service. )

It would be interesting to get an engineer to perform a proper line test with and without say, five metres of assorted types of cable on the end of the line.

Click to expand...

I knew several who worked at the Martlesham Heath BT research centre up until couple of years ago who would have been able to do just that. Unfortunately, like me, now retired.

When I next see them I will ask if they ever carried out any research there using different types of cables.

CluelessDIYer1 said:

So do they not send out a guy to look out the job first so that they know what they need to be doing come work day? Or is that too much to expect?

Click to expand...

Unless they have reason to think it's "out of the ordinary" then no, they don't. I guess they've worked out it's cheaper to work on averages and reallocate jobs/apologise to customers if someone gets behind.

Now, for business installations (multiple lines, ISDN 30, fibre, etc) they do send a planner out. Over the years I've had a few conversations of the "well we'll be coming in here, there's a route round this way, we want the NTE here" type.