BT / Openreach cable confusion.

[Del-inquent]

Odd one this, my parents have developed significant issues with their internet and asked me to have a look. They live in the middle of nowhere so it’s always been iffy but now it’s absolute crap.

 

My first assumption was a mouse has lunched on the cable in their roof somewhere, so I was going to run a new cable from the point the Openreach cable becomes their cable to the router to test it.

 

Every installation I’ve ever seen has black and green as one line, orange and white as another on the Openreach cables. I’ve looked up as many references as possible and they all concur.

 

at my parents place, black and green are crimped together and fed to one wire in their internal, orange and white are crimped together and fed to another wire in their internal?!

 

anyone ever seen this before? Only ever been touched by BT/Openreach previously! I’m leaving it well alone until we can get hold of BT but of course that is a nightmare in itself.

[joe90]

As an ex BT engineer that’s an odd one, perhaps an engineer doubled up because of previous problems, however it should not compromise the signal. You could try un crimping one end and test the loop to the crimped ends with a multimeter to prove continuity. In rural areas cable length to the cab/exchange has always been problematic and you only need damp in one of the many joints to cause problems. Call them out, they will do a test from the exchange to prove cable continuity.

[Alan Ambrose]

Does your ISP provide speed history stats? Might make interesting reading.

 

We had, what turned out to be a branch rubbing against the cable about 10m away. Speed got worse and worse and eventually stopped altogether. OR man came with quite a comprehensive test set-up. I think he measured the distance to the break with a tdr type setup. He called in another man with a cherry picker and a ‘bandage’ kit and all is good now.

[Del-inquent]

On 25/02/2024 at 18:33, Alan Ambrose said:

Does your ISP provide speed history stats? Might make interesting reading.

 

We had, what turned out to be a branch rubbing against the cable about 10m away. Speed got worse and worse and eventually stopped altogether. OR man came with quite a comprehensive test set-up. I think he measured the distance to the break with a tdr type setup. He called in another man with a cherry picker and a ‘bandage’ kit and all is good now.

I've got trace software on there. It's beyond pathetic. I'm going to be moving them to a new ISP regardless as they're paying full fibre prices for dial up connectivity and the ISP has no interest whatsoever in resolving it.

 

[Del-inquent]

On 25/02/2024 at 17:25, joe90 said:

As an ex BT engineer that’s an odd one, perhaps an engineer doubled up because of previous problems, however it should not compromise the signal. You could try un crimping one end and test the loop to the crimped ends with a multimeter to prove continuity. In rural areas cable length to the cab/exchange has always been problematic and you only need damp in one of the many joints to cause problems. Call them out, they will do a test from the exchange to prove cable continuity.

We called them and BT confirmed that there is a definite fault on the line, so when the engineer comes out we will also query the way it's been wired as well, hopefully that will at least be a step in the right direction!