In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Rip it out and or charge you.

Since when was alarm cable suitable for a complex rf signal?

BT use alot of aluminium in many areas and haven't bothered to change it to copper for decades. Doubt they will ever change it in my area.

Crucially, alarm cable isn't twisted pair. Likely to have a negative impact on a VDSL connection

Yes.

If it was me, I'd rip out the alarm wire so that it can't possibly be re-used in whatever solution you eventually end up having, screw the faceplate back on and then say "I dunno what the [censored] previous tenant did...". As has been said, BT don't know your internal wiring and they don't know when you moved in, or what the previous tenants did to the wiring. Or indeed what you did to the wiring.

How did it go?

Good, the engineer wasn't bothered, he just installed the face plate and the modem. I now have a good stable speed of about 25Mbps. I Dont even know why I worried about it lol.

So the aluminium untwisted pair cable is still in place?

How does the 25 Mbps compare to the estimate? 25 Mbps is the sort of speed you would expect for a 900m or longer cabinet to premises distance

Yes it is still alarm wire, but I will probably change it after the ten day testing period, the estimate is 40mbps but my friend 3 doors away down the road is only get 25Mbps as well. and may cabinet is about 0.6miles away or slightly more, thought there is one about 200meters away but the engineer says I'm not connected to that one. I used the cool web home website the fibre checker and the speed increase is only 5.51 from the cabinet I am connected to which when i times my old speed with the 5.51 it gave around 25Mbps. The engineer said the speed I had was the maximum I would get anyway due to the distance of the cabinet from my house.

Edited by Computerman142 (Tue 02-Apr-13 17:25:39)

You need to get that alarm wire out of there. Seriously.

5.51 is the figure which you should expect to multiply your ADSL2+ speed by. The engineer was of course just making chit-chat and getting out of there. You might have left it too late now, though. Involving the alarm wire was a mistake, sadly.

The cabinet info given to you by the engineer will be correct though, it doesn't have to be the cabinet nearest to you. And he'll have definitely been at your cabinet in order to connect you to FTTC, so he won't have made a mistake.

Edited by gazzyk1ns (Tue 02-Apr-13 21:45:16)

Yes I will hopefully its just I have to strip half of the wall to remove the wires so it may be a few weeks to a month before I do it. I have been looking for some telephone cable but whats the difference between 4W and 6W telephone cable? http://www.maplin.co.uk/telephone-cable-type-cw1308-66 I saw this and I thought that would be ok, but I would have to order 20 units as that makes 20 meters, just to make sure I have enough spare just in case. Doesn't FTTC have a 10 day training period?, if so is it best to wait until after the 10 days before I fit the telephone cable? Odd thing is the Engineer said the cable was ok, I am starting to wonder whether if it was alarm cable I used or whether he just want to go which is most likely.

In reply to a post by Computerman142:

Yes I will hopefully its just I have to strip half of the wall to remove the wires so it may be a few weeks to a month before I do it. I have been looking for some telephone cable but whats the difference between 4W and 6W telephone cable? http://www.maplin.co.uk/telephone-cable-type-cw1308-66 I saw this and I thought that would be ok, but I would have to order 20 units as that makes 20 meters, just to make sure I have enough spare just in case. Doesn't FTTC have a 10 day training period?, if so is it best to wait until after the 10 days before I fit the telephone cable? Odd thing is the Engineer said the cable was ok, I am starting to wonder whether if it was alarm cable I used or whether he just want to go which is most likely.

He probably saw it was connected and thought "that will do" and wanted to get to the next job. If he was an old-school openreach guy he might have thought its a low sync but assumed there was ali in the street perhaps. The lack of regular twists will likely have more effect than the ali at that distance - but without changing it you won't know.

Don't worry about the 10 day thing, that's generally completely misunderstood.