>>The only time I can think that there would be a bridge tap in the network ...

As with many things there will be regional differences.

In my manor there are quite a few exchanges that have some teed up local main cables. One bar pair feeding 2 different cabinets. In some cases cabinets being a couple of km apart!

There are also frames that were condensed / moved and the old frames left teed in in the cable chamber or manholes close by. I had a contract to recover the tees on one of the largest exchanges in the UK a year or two back.

I’ll take your word for it. I never once saw that myself.

I was incredibly confident in that “bridge tap” test result whenever I saw it even if I couldn’t find the actual culprit sometimes, maybe it was buried behind a wall or that sort of thing. If I couldn’t locate it I’d run a new lead-in entirely straight into the master socket and that would then return a normal test result.

I used to be like you ... had heard a couple of colleagues claim they’d had it, but I was very dubious myself.

.. but, about three weeks ago, had exactly this . You could fit an NTE on the UG pair in the 66, put your tester in sync, and get the ‘bridge tap’ test result on FT2. This was repeatable. Two pair armoured feed. It was on the green/black already. Passed the PQ well. I tried a single ended test of the orange/white failed, small earth, very low A/C.
At the UG radial DP, it would test 100% OK, time after time.

Interestingly, I tested on FT2 to the 66 again, and then it was ‘potential HR’


Strange stuff.

Yes, that’s part of Openreach’s network.

I say get it reported, the engineer will be able to get up to the eaves and dis off the rogue wiring .... your set up is ‘star wired’ before the NTE.

The question has to be, who installed it? Was it an original BT or even GPO or a previous tenant/owner?

From a joint at the eaves ? Almost certainly not Joe Public. Too much effort.

Back in the day it was done a lot , but never the right way.

Do you come across man xNTE fitments?

That design, without a built in filter, was a bit of an own goal for OR? A bridge tap by design.

I remember seeing a picture and a description and wondered how a broadband filter could be implemented....

Cheers!

Domestic bridge-tap installations probably weren't a factor in the days of morse code and telegrams . Or even the pre-xDSL data transmission days.

I’ve come across plenty ... rolled out when ‘we’ already knew better. Bypass and fit an NTE on the first point in.

Sadly Bob, they were very much well into ADSL days.