Internet via 1950s era wiring - help!

An elderly neighbour, three doors down from where I live has never had decent broadband. In fact prior to me going for FTTC my ADSL was rubbish and dial up was around 19k after BT swapped our pair - old aluminium underground cable being likely.

Anyway, our neighbours modem router failed in that no wifi connection to his pc. Contacted TalkTalk his supplier who supplied a new one.

I just called round to plug it in and set up the password etc and found that using Think Broadband's speed test, I was getting 0.6 bursting 0.7 Mb/s down and 0.3 up Not good...

He has a single telephone and on dialing a digit to suppress the dial tone a fairly quiet line.

Looked at his wiring and OMG!

There is a Protector Box & Fuses No1.2/2, with earth wire, a couple of BT80As, the old bakelite junction box GPO No.20/4 where the plaited cable used to be connected and externally a drop wire junction box (an above ground drop wire closure?) There is no split face NTE, just a 2/2A Master socket. All this mounted on the frame of his front door.

Their bungalow was built late 1950s and until a couple of years ago? the overhead came from the pole to the remains of a pair of openwire insulators which were mounted on the chimney stack. Openreach attended one day and removed the drop wire and insulators and fitted a new drop wire (hence the external joint) to a new bracket 22 screwed onto a facia board.

So currently not only very, very slow broadband but the tension on the drop wire is pulling the facia board off the ends of the roof rafters!

It’s a mess.

So what can I advise him to do? He is very late 80s and not technically minded.

It is a pity that when the drop wire was replaced that they did not go the whole distance and fit a NTE, but they didn't.

Sorry for the long post.

Cheers!

I’d guess the best way forward would be to have him see if he can get an SFI visit via the CP, this should see the archaic wiring, socket and junctions replaced at very least.

Would there be a risk of OR raising a charge to fix this mess? The voice side of things appear to be fine. Clear as a bell.

Would a SFI visit start of a fixing of the now damaged facia board?

Apparently the drop wire was moved due to incidents of vehicles causing drop wires to be pulled resulting in collapses of chimneys. Problem now is that if I stand on the driveway under the lowest part, I can almost reach the drop wire, it is quite low.

Cheers!

Personally, if I had the opportunity I might try and catch any visiting sons or daughters and point out the issues in the hope that they might do something. After previous similar experiences, I would be very reluctant to get any further involved!

Damage to the facia boards?

That's more a question of whether OR accept responsibility for the damage, too low drop wire and unacceptable fitting.

From your short description it would seem they should. That in itself would seem to justify a free callout, and if such a free visit takes place AIUI a modern NTE should be fitted free as a matter of course. Scroll to the bottom.

I think such a free replacement would also cause free re-arrangement of existing wiring to connect to the new NTE. Zarjaz might correct me. Or it may depend on the judgement of the engineer involved.

Dropwires are not allowed to be fixed to chimney stacks ... (for the reason you gave)

OR are not allowed to attach a new dropwire, or refix an old one. So I suspect your neighbour’s was moved due to the above ruling. This has however resulted in the span being very low over the driveway ... catch 22 really. I’m guessing this is a bungalow.

The reason I suggested an SFI, was because the attending engineer will be looking at sync rates at various points, and not just a basic ‘line tests OK’ visit.

Hopefully a reasonable ISP will see the lines under performance and attempt to address it. AIUI charges for an SFI visit are not normally passed on to the customer, unless the fault is clearly their fault, incorrect set up, double filtering etc.

That ought to work too Bob .... but won’t get any testing done, apart from very basic ones, so a faulty old dropwire, or duff UG pair might get overlooked.

That’s true. I forgot about the speed side of things.

I had the same problem 30 years ago: our overhead line runs 30m from a pole on the far side of our busy road, and its mounting point was pulling out of the facia. BT as it was then attended within 24 hours and installed a fixing hook in the gable wall.

About four years ago I noticed this hook was very badly corroded and through my binocs appeared to be eaten half through. Once again the fitter responded very quickly, commenting that the fixing was the worst he had seen. Suggest you should stress the danger posed by a falling cable or facia. Good luck, this sort of thing is hard for older folk to manage.