Open Reach being proactive on joints in damp situations

An Open Reach van drew up outside our house today and the engineer opened up the manhole opposite.

My wife wandered across first to offer him a cup of tea or coffee, besides being cold, it had been raining and was trying to snow. I wandered across afterwards to have a nosey and his job there was to replace old style crimps (in blue plastic) with gel filled clear plastic ones. Seems that they are doing this where it is damp. It certainly is there, an hour earlier and rainwater had covered the road and was lapping on the manhole lid. There were a few inches of water in the manhole as well.

Hopefully may improve my FTTC connecting which some days looses synch 2 or three times. Plus when it is dry, some odd sizzles during phone calls. Old aluminium underground cable to the pole, not helping.

Cheers!

They've been actively replacing those for years.

In fact you have to recrimp any �blue beans� found on any joint you work on up to 100 pairs ...

As said, Openreach have been doing this for years. Blue beans are known for causing high resistance on lines.

If Ancient Mariner�s line is still being noisy, I�d suggest he reports it.