Speed Variation

Hi, moved house in Janurary and started with BT broadband (up to 8meg). Apart from one or two blips I had got consistent speed of around 2.8meg via speedtester. However in April for four consecutive days my speed increased to aprox 3.8meg, then dropped down to original 2.8ish where its remained. Just wondering if anyone would have any idea as to why? I would be keen to get the increased speed all the time.

An external noise source disappeared? Maybe a business was closed or a neighbour on holiday ...

Might be useful to know your line stats. See http://kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

Didn't realise that so little could make such a big impact. I always assumed it was the collective masses that caused slower speeds such as in peak times. Though I have had no peak time variance.

Thanks for taking the time to look. Interestingly the router stats show speeds as Downstream 3,776 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps
Though running the TB speedtester shows my ever faithful 2.8meg speed down and 376kb up. Below are my other stats, are these all thats required?

Latency type Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up) 13.4 dB / 23.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 36.0 dB / 19.0 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.0 dBm / 11.9 dBm
Loss of Framing (Local) 0
Loss of Signal (Local) 7
Loss of Power (Local) 0
FEC Errors (Down/Up) 2603698 / 4
CRC Errors (Down/Up) 548 / 2147480000
HEC Errors (Down/Up) nil / 1
Error Seconds (Local) 2974

You missed the point. I was not suggesting that your neighbour's usage caused the difference but that it is possible they have a device that is causing a lot of RFI - electronic noise and it has been turned off whilst they went on holiday.

Yes I did miss that point, my apologies. Though it does mean that one users problem can effect others. Does the kind of interference you suggest effect everyone connected to the same line? I have posted my router stats, will that show external sources of interference? Can BT do anything?

Thought I'd mention that the wiring in the house isn't complete so currently hub is conected to primary socket and the computer is connected via ethernet cable across a small room. It is this computer I use for my speedtests and link to my profile. Testing with a laptop in another room has shown mixed results with 0.1 to 1.0meg drop in speed.

Ummm .

You seem to have a serious problem somewhere there.

The most important figure is the attenuation. 36dB should get a connection speed of at least 7Mbps on ADSL Max, and I would expect around 12Mbps on ADSL2+. Do you know which you should be on?

Does your master socket look as though it opens as in this pic, or is it like an extension socket and a fair-sized grey box on the wall outside, as shown at the bottom of this page?

Is it a new-build house, and please can you post the URL of what samknows says about your exchange? (The latter tells us if it is BT ADSL2+ enabled).

You have a noise margin of 13.4dB. That indicates considerable instability. We could do with knowing what the figure is immediately after a reconnection. The BT norm is 6dB, and the connection-time setting rises in 3dB steps, so yours could be 12dB or 15dB. Each step costs 500-750kbps.

Even at 6dB though it doesn't look as though you would beat 6Mbps.

The high number of local error seconds is also a concern.

I suggest you turn the router off for 20-30 minutes. Then on and reconnect, read and post the stats. We can take things from there, and try to find the problem.

Do you have a Sky box?

Looking at the stats there is a definite problem somewhere ... you should be up in the 6 to 7 Mb region based on attenuation.

13dB of noise margin suggests that your line has been given a 12dB margin because of problems or your last resync was at a time of a "noise event" which caused the line to resync.

Get a copy of RouterStats Lite http://www.vwlowen.co.uk/internet/files.htm and run that for 24 hours with a 3000 point graph and 30 second updates - that will give a 24 hour graph. From that we can see what your noise margin does over a day - it will vary but teh graph will show major anomalies.

RFI can cause problems on one line, or a large number. Your flashing and cycling Christmas lights may only affect you, but wind them round the telegraph pole and you could affect 10. Put a large generator or compressor (as used in road works) next to a BT cabinet and 400 could be affected.

If you have a test socket within your BT master socket plug your router in there and get the stats again. If it shows a dramatic difference you probably have an internal wiring problem (which are usually straightforward to fix).

Exchange stats show Serves (approx): 1,839 premises.
Broadband availability overview
ADSL:
Yes
SDSL:
No
LLU services:
Yes
Cable:
No
Wireless:
No
BT Wholesale information
ADSL status:
Enabled as of 29/04/2004
ADSL Max status:
Enabled as of 31/03/2006
SDSL status:
Not available
21CN WBC status:
Not available
FTTC status:
Available in some areas

I currently only have one socket which is the master. I thought the electrition had wired this directly to the grey service wire from outside but on further inspection I see it does have a face plate which I have removed and pluged my hub directly into the underneath test socket. Master socket is similar to RobertoS first pic link. I did not turn my router off for any length of time but will give that a go and see if there is any difference. Though without the reboot stats read via test socket Noise margin (Down/Up)9.5 dB / 23.0 dBLine attenuation (Down/Up)36.0 dB / 19.5 dBOutput power (Down/Up)19.8 dBm / 12.3 dBm but download speed was rated as 8.1meg. Rechecked on TB speedtester and guess what, 2.8 meg speed. The electritian has only one blue and one white wire wired to my test socket of the multiple that spew from my grey main line. Thanks for the help everyone. Will follow all the advice and post as the info comes through.

Actually I think it was openreach that but in my main solo socket and the electrician is yet to wire up the rest.

Do you mean the download connection speed showed 8128kbps?

If so, then there is probably a wiring problem, and maybe an unlucky low speed connection last time as well.

Were there any wires attached to the faceplate when you removed it?

Is the grey box outside like the one in the second link, or much smaller, more like a socket size?

Don't worry about the actual speed test speeds. They take a few days to rise when the connection speed has done. See my IP Profile page for an explanation and a table.

There was one blue wire attached to the outer socket. This blue wire comes from a white coated group of wires installed by the electrician and goes to another room or box in the roof to feed throughout the house. Of course none of these have any plates so am assuming that this wire is not actually active. There is no grey box. The pole is on the road right outside our lane enterance. There appears to be a small grey/silver box at the top of the pole. Our reinforced grey line is wired into this box on the pole and travels down the pole, down our lane (200m) and directly into the house. The cream plate on the wall has Openreach BT logo and one socket. Taking off the face there is the test/primary socket underneath and this socket has a blue and white wire attached which is from the group of wires taken directly from the 200m grey line from the pole. I did disconect my hub for and turn of the router for half an hour and retested. Below are the results.

ADSL line status
Connection information

Downstream 8,128 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps
ADSL settings
VPI/VCI
Type
Modulation
Latency type Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up) 9.9 dB / 22.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 36.0 dB / 19.0 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.8 dBm / 12.3 dBm

Downloaded RouterStats Lite but there is no setup for BT home hub v 2. Not sure if I should just use the BT home Hub v 1 or if this will a) not work or b) give incorrect stats? Does anyone know if this program will work with a version 2 home hub and if so what router should it be placed on in setup?

Those syncs are the best you can get from standard ADSL. What has changed since the last time you got the stats?

Sorry john2007 I'm not exactly sure what you mean. But if your refering to the first set of router Stats I posted today then the difference is I plugged my hub directly into the test socket under the face place socket of my solitary connection point.. Also I've disconected the panasonice phone base/reciever that sits beside my home hub (as I only have the one socket thats the only place it can be for now.) That reminds me that I need to plug it back in! Will do so and recheck router stats again and post them.

Post deleted by RobertoS

I didn't phrase it very well.

The first stats you posted were 3776/448
The second were 8128/448

The second set of stats is much better. If you identify what kit varied between those stats that will show the kit which is causing the problem.

We have proved your line will connect at 8128kbps. That will give you an IP Profile of 7150kbps after a few days, then depending on BT you will get 6500kbps or more actual at good times.

What we have to do is get the same performance from the outer socket.

What might be worth trying is to replace it, still without the phone, and again get the full stats immediately. Purely a confirmation test that there is a problem with the wiring to that removable faceplate, as opposed to a one-off incident as mentioned by MHC.

Sorry to get long-winded in what follows, but we are trying to get you up to those high speeds permanently through the master, and once they are installed any of the extensions as well.

What I'd like really is two or three photos, as I can't quite follow your description and some of it seems odd. Also, the terminals on the faceplate are numbered. What is/are the colour(s) of the wire on each terminal, and what number is that terminal? Which one disappears off into the rest of the house, and what's this about a box in the roof? Daft though it will seem to you, the colours and numbers are very important.

Are you saying the cable from the pole goes underground to the house, and if so does it come in through the wall to the master, or go into the roof to that internal box, and then down to the master rather than as you described?

Phew!

The good stats are using the test socket John .

Your phrase was fine, I'm just learning and I am aware that you guys need accurate info. plugged my phone line back in and these are the stats.
ADSL line status
Connection information


Downstream 8,128 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps
ADSL settings

Latency type Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up) 9.2 dB / 23.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 36.0 dB / 19.0 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.8 dBm / 12.1 dBm

Again much better. The only thing that has changed is the fact that my hub is now pluged directly into the test socket under the mains' socket plate. Though despite this all TB speedtests show consistent 2.8Mdownload and 446Kish up.

Read the link I gave to my IP Profile page. That's why it makes no difference - yet! As I said a few minutes ago, you are looking to get 6500kbps once we have things sorted.

The BT systems throttle you to the lowest recent sync speed. It takes up to five days for the throttle to be reset. That's the reason it will take time for speed tests to improve.

Ok if i want to link/add an image to this thread how do I go about it?

In reply to a post by Speedchaser:

Ok if i want to link/add an image to this thread how do I go about it?

You can't add an image, just a link. To see how to do a link, click Quote instead of Reply to this post and look at the wrapper round the URL there, which is followed by what you see in the post, then another small end marker. So, here's another link to my IP Profile page. (Edit - you don't need the line feed before that string, that's just inserted by the display of the quote because the string won't fit on the original line. Just a single space after the previous word is fine.).

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 11-May-11 18:30:36)

Sorry this took so long. Here is a link to some photos of the main (only) socket currently. The grey black cable comming up from the inernal socket goes through the wall to the outside then 200m to the roadside pole. the wite cable goes up to somewhere. The electrician said he still has to wire that all up so phone lines will work in other parts of the house not that there are even plates at those points yet.link

Afraid the photos aren't close-up enough, on zoom to 200% they go very fuzzy as well. 400% can make some sense of the middle one, but everything else just becomes a blur.

Am I right in saying that the cable from the pole has two wires connected to terminals marked A and B on the back of the bit you have pulled out of the wall, which has the test socket on its front? Possibly blue and brown?

If so, are there any other wires connected to that bit?

You still don't say what is connected to where on the removable faceplate. Does everything that is connected to the faceplate come from the white cable?

You say "grey black cable comming up from the inernal socket". But I see that cable going down from all the master socket stuff. Is there something lower down we can't see? (Not that that really matters, as we know the test socket is fine).

Sorry for any confusion. I guess thats the trouble when someone skilled in a particular area is talking to someone unskilled. The unskilled person perhaps uses incorrect terminology cofusing the matter. The grey/black line comes directly from the street pole without interuption. This line from the pole comes directly through the wall via a duct to the socket shown in the photos. This group of wires coming directly into the house consists of 5 white wires and one green, one grey, one blue, one orange and one brown. Of these wires one white is conected to the B and the blue wire is conected to the A on the back of the base plate that connects directly to the wall. There are no other wires connected to this socket and no other places for connections on this base plate. There is of course a face plate that screws onto this base plate as I call it. It consists of the connection/pins that fits into the test plug, a plug where you would normally put a line into and then a terminal which you can connect three individual wires to, numbered 2/ 3 /5.

So as not to confuse there is a seperate group of wires. These are internal wiring by the electrician. It is the white line that runs from the hole in the wall up the wall and connect the various phone points throughout the house to the main line. This part of the houses' phone line connections is not yet complete as face plates/sockets are not yet conected to the wires that run to them. This white line is a group of wires consisting of one green, one blue, one orange and three white wires (the white wires also have some color dashes one being green dashes one orange and one blue) . Of thes wires the blue wire is conected to the nubered terminal on the face plate at the position marked 2. As far as I'm aware this blue wire runs to some other part of the house not yet wired up. My understanding is though that the electrician, besides installing face plates sockets to the other rooms has yet to do some work to mesh( I know this is not correct terminology) the incomming wires to this interal white line group of wires that feeds the rest of the house. Im not sure if he just has to wire it up to this plate in the photos or has to add some box? On posting my inital router stasts the hub was pluged into face plate of the base plate(via the broadband filter). The improved stats were given when the hub was plugged into the test socket on the base plate( via broadband filter). Hope this helps clarify the set up.

Bob, I've got good enough resolution to confirm that, in Picture 2, from the incoming drop cable there is the pair, blue to A & white to B connected to the rear IDC of the NTE5A.

Looking at Pic 3 and then Pic 1, I can see that blue/white is connected to the EU faceplate, whilst its corresponding white/blue is disconnected.

From what the OP has said, I think it is fairly certain that having the EU faceplate (with it's semi-connected extension wiring) plugged into the NTE5A body will be contributing to this issue.

Would you agree?

TB Speedtest this morning showed 6.1Meg download speed and 0.4Meg upload. Thats fantastic! Still running hub straight to test plate. I'm assuming that if I put the face plate back on and connect my hub via it then my speed will drop again. If I test this theory out and switch back again is this going to mess with the system.? I'm guessing I should also try the face plate with the blue internal wire that runs to nowhere removed to help establish if it is the faceplate that is to blame or the incomplete wiring.

I think burakkucat is correct and you have a disconnected wire.

Would it be possible to get a close-up of the detachable face plate where the blue/white wires are attached, and a close-up of where those wires are attached at the other end?

Do you have a working phone at home?

eta: I don't want to call you, just assumed your home phone wouldn't work!

Edited by deleted (Thu 12-May-11 11:20:05)

I have addae extra photos (LINK) and will make more sense of my at length description in previous post. I have a cordless phone which has always worked fine.( It is attached to the splitter the hub is conected to as this is my only socket)

Left hub conected overnight to test socket and tested this morning. The blue wire to the faceplate was effectively disconnected/isolated as I was plugged straight into the test socket. Recieved the following stats
Downstream 8,128 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps

Noise margin (Down/Up) 9.0 dB / 23.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 36.0 dB / 19.0 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.8 dBm / 12.1 dBm
Running TB speedtester showed 6.1Meg down which is about double what I have ever got since I was connected in January

Detached the blue wire from faceplate pin 2. (This wire is part of the white line that runs from the single downstairs socket to the upstairs. Further investigation has found it just ends upstairs directly at one socket only but no plate at all yet so this line just ends dead) Anyway detached the blue wire and rerun test with hub pluged into faceplate, obtaining the following.
Downstream 8,128 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps

Noise margin (Down/Up) 9.3 dB / 23.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 36.0 dB / 19.0 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.8 dBm / 12.4 dBm

Then I reconected blue wire to faceplate pin 2 as it had been as left by openreach/electrician and re run test with hub pluged into faceplate obtaining the following:
Downstream 5,120 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps

Noise margin (Down/Up) 8.4 dB / 22.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 36.0 dB / 19.0 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.8 dBm / 12.3 dBm

Finally I disconected the blue wire and with the haub plugged into the faceplate obtained:
Downstream 8,128 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps
Noise margin (Down/Up) 9.2 dB / 23.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 36.0 dB / 19.0 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.8 dBm / 12.2 dBm

So it seems that the attaching of the blue wire to the faceplate causes the problem?

TB Speedtester is now showing speed of 4.1Meg. I'm taking that it has dropped because of my one reading of 5meg on my router stats during testing, so its sync'ed to this speed? Router tests currently still confirm 8128K down so Im taking it the over the next day or two if left as is speeds will again rise to 6+Meg?

I think not connecting the white wire to the face plate is the problem. Connect it to terminal 5.

As a temporary measure you could remove the blue wire, but you will need both wires for corded phones.

eta: I just noticed you have removed the blue wire. Just remember to put blue and white back if you need corded phones.

Edited by deleted (Thu 12-May-11 13:43:50)

I got there eventually!

When I first asked for help I was hoping I might be able to see the extra meg speed I got for four days. To now be getting speeds of over 6Meg is just great. But I've been thinking that the spike in speed I saw four four days may have had nothing to do with the dragging of my speed below 3meg?? ie it was a blip in the entire picture. Etheir way I'm estatic as to the outcome and finding the major flaw. Although as asked in the above post, I'm assuming in a few days my TB Speedtest results will increase to match the router stat results?

Sorry, I should have said, yes your speeds will improve. See http://www.robertos.me.uk/html/bt_ip_profiles.html

A big thankyou to everyone.

Spot on! You are now an expert .

The problem was that the wires from the white cable to the detachable faceplate are in pairs. So blue/white goes with white/blue. Each wire picks up interference, just like the ring wire you will have read about. But its pair and it are twisted round each other all the way along the cable. They both therefore pick up roughly the same interference, but this interference is then fed (again roughly) equally to T2 and T5. I don't fully understand how, but this means that somewhere in the sytems they cancel each other out. Almost zero noise.

You had one of the pair connected - very bad news. The noise from it was not cancelled out.

You could probably have connected the white/blue to T5, but let him do that.

When he comes, tell him you only want T2 and T5 connected at all sockets. Specifically, do not connect anything to T3, even if that's what his "instructions" say. That is the bell wire, and just the same happens - an unbalanced noise is fed back onto the line, as it indirectly gets onto one of the main pair.

So - well done . (You see why we needed such detail?) You have also confirmed along the way that the correct type of white cable seems to have been used, judging by the colours. Not guaranteed, but almost certain. So get back to us if the speed drops again when everything is connected. It shouldn't.

In reply to a post by burakkucat:

Bob, I've got good enough resolution to confirm that, in Picture 2, from the incoming drop cable there is the pair, blue to A & white to B connected to the rear IDC of the NTE5A.

Looking at Pic 3 and then Pic 1, I can see that blue/white is connected to the EU faceplate, whilst its corresponding white/blue is disconnected.

From what the OP has said, I think it is fairly certain that having the EU faceplate (with it's semi-connected extension wiring) plugged into the NTE5A body will be contributing to this issue.

Would you agree?

Thanks .

By the time I got here just now it was all sorted, otherwise that would have helped me a lot. Yes, you're right, as you can see from the later posts by the others. A single wire of the pair puts noise on the line.

Also if I could ask a couple of more questions. What is the purpose/ potential purpose of the other wires ie brown, green, orange etc? Are they so you could have a extra separate line/ broadband? Also through all the tests the upload speed remained constant at around 400kbps. Why does it not increase even slightly?

In reply to a post by john2007:

I got there eventually!

And yes, I agree, as you can see from my reply to the OP, connecting the white/blue to T5 would be optimum, but I doubt if he has an IDC tool, so the less he messes the better. The electrician I assume has one.

A good team effort lol.

The theory and practice are starting to gel. Thanks so much for all the insight. My friend who lives in an older house, on the same exchange and with same provider had BT out to check the line as his internet was slow. Engineer said his speed to house was 6meg. As my friend could only get around 2meg and I with Virgin at old house was getting 900kbp tops.. we thought he was lying!! Perhaps there is a similar problem with his wiring. You've turned me into an amature engineer.

Don't know whether it will work with V2 ... try V1 but it may well fail.

Try the Custom / User Defined Modem option - if you can provide the link to the page where the stats are.

I've only just caught up with the latest posts to this thread. Excellent news!

To answer your question about the other colours --

(1) In the BT drop cable from the pole, there are just multiple pairs: for redundancy, for multiple lines or whatever the local requirements dictate. If you count up the white wires and the other coloured wires within that cable you will see that they are equal. Look even closer and you will see that each colour is part of a twisted pair with a white wire. It is important that a twisted pair is used, just as RobertoS has explained earlier. If the wrong white wire was used (obviously at both ends) that would be described as "split legs" and the circuit would be very prone to induced noise, etc, thus under performing.

(2) In the internal, white sheathed, cable you will note an even number of conductors as they are arranged in twisted pairs (as above). Modern telephony cable, used in domestic situations, could range from just a one pair cable to a three pair cable (the most common) which your electrician has used. In the three pair cable, the pairs are: green (with white stripe) & white (with green stripe), blue (with white stripe) & white (with blue strip) and orange (with white stripe) & white (with orange stripe). Hence you will see reference to "the blue pair", "the orange pair", "the green pair", etc. This three pair (six core) cable dates back to the early 1980s when BT introduced a newer wiring style. The original idea was that each internal socket had all six cores connected: green/w to 1, blue/w to 2, orange/w to 3, while/o to 4, white/b to 5 and white/g to 6. That wiring was very rarely needed and soon was superseded by: b/w to 2, o/w to 3, w/o to 4 and w/b to 5. Note that you may still find sockets connected that way to this day. You can see the symmetry of having two pairs connected. The voice/data is on the blue pair (2 & 5) which corresponds to the B- & A-wire of the incoming BT pair (-50v and approx. 0v, each w.r.t. earth) and the orange pair, o/w (3) was required for the "bell" circuit, whilst the w/o (4) was used to supply an earth ("ground"). Come right up to the present and the orange pair are really not necessary. Having one or both of the orange pair connected will degrade the broadband speed obtainable.

As you have three pairs in the internal, white cable they can be used to carry the filtered voice circuit to other telephone sockets in the house (using, say, the blue pair) and the unfiltered ADSL (broadband) signal to another location (using, say, the green pair), if you do not want to have the modem/router sited at the NTE5A (the "master" socket). This can be done by employing a difference EU faceplate that incorporates the relevant filtering. As this latter paragraph is going OT for this thread, I would recommend you start a new thread, if that is something you would like to consider.

Just adding to that, for the OP's benefit as you already know it, extension wiring can be a star system - where the master has one pair from the faceplate feeding a junction box, and the extensions are fed from the junction box, (it sounds as though this is what the electrician is installing), or daisy-chained, where the faceplate cable feeds one pair to one extension, then another cable/pair runs from there to the second extension and so on, or a mixture of the two methods.

In reply to a post by burakkucat:

As this latter paragraph is going OT for this thread, I would recommend you start a new thread, if that is something you would like to consider.

Looks OK to me . In threaded mode I set Collapsed Threads and 99 per page, in Flat mode I have 99 per page as well.

Both work well for me.

Just a suggestion.

Just adding to that, for the OP's benefit . . .

Absolutely, Bob. If the OP would like further advice on this aspect, I guess clear pictures of what the electrician has currently installed, along with details of how he proposes to finish the job would be the best way forward.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In threaded mode I set Collapsed Threads and 99 per page, in Flat mode I have 99 per page as well.

Both work well for me.

Just a suggestion.

That's the way I have my account configured, also.

It was in the early hours of the morning when I posted that message and I guess I was thinking with my X-forum moderator's hat on, rather than as a TBB-forum user.

Edited by burakkucat (Fri 13-May-11 18:57:25)

Thanks again everyone for the time to explain things so clearly. I will have a chat to the electrician and ask him what he exactly intends on doing with the wiring. I perhaps could then start another thread to run it by you all.

Super result and excellent fault finding by all the respondants.

Can I ask an odd question, it's bugging me...

The OP says the premises is pole fed direct from pole to NTE, so I assumed most probably by dropwire 10b.

But having a glimpse at the photos shows a 5 pair cable coming out the cavity feeding the NTE. The colours are not dropwire colours, they are ug cable colours and also BT don't do 5 pair overhead cables (except aerial, but they don't bring them into residential premises or direct onto the NTE). Also the 5 pair cable in the photo looks armoured, see the outer grey poly sheathing?

Of course now the issue is resolved this is not particularly relevent but it is a little odd?

In reply to a post by polemonkey:

Super result and excellent fault finding by all the respondants.

Can I ask an odd question, it's bugging me...

The OP says the premises is pole fed direct from pole to NTE, so I assumed most probably by dropwire 10b.

But having a glimpse at the photos shows a 5 pair cable coming out the cavity feeding the NTE. The colours are not dropwire colours, they are ug cable colours and also BT don't do 5 pair overhead cables (except aerial, but they don't bring them into residential premises or direct onto the NTE). Also the 5 pair cable in the photo looks armoured, see the outer grey poly sheathing?

Of course now the issue is resolved this is not particularly relevent but it is a little odd?

Now that you mention it, yes it is a little bit odd. We needed your trained eye to comment on (what is now, as you've explained it) the obvious and, reviewing this thread from the beginning, I see that last Wednesday the OP wrote --

The pole is on the road right outside our lane enterance. There appears to be a small grey/silver box at the top of the pole. Our reinforced grey line is wired into this box on the pole and travels down the pole, down our lane (200m) and directly into the house. The cream plate on the wall has Openreach BT logo and one socket. Taking off the face there is the test/primary socket underneath and this socket has a blue and white wire attached which is from the group of wires taken directly from the 200m grey line from the pole.

RobertoS then asked --

Are you saying the cable from the pole goes underground to the house, and if so does it come in through the wall to the master, or go into the roof to that internal box, and then down to the master rather than as you described?

To which the OP replied --

The grey black cable comming up from the inernal socket goes through the wall to the outside then 200m to the roadside pole. the wite cable goes up to somewhere. The electrician said he still has to wire that all up so phone lines will work in other parts of the house not that there are even plates at those points yet.

None of us then continued that line of enquiry. Oops!

Ah, after re-reading it, now I see.

Its one of those, up one pole, span overheadh to another pole(s), then back down the pole to ug for the final run to the sub. Saves the planners loads o' money! Mystery solved