Just as a quick follow up to this, they reported the voice fault and an engineer visited this morning which I thought was a pretty quick response.

The engineer tested the line at the internal junction box and declared the line quality to the exchange as good and said he believed the fault was with the old socket so he has fitted them a new master socket and tidied up the cabling from the internal junction box to the socket.

He was told about the junction box on the eaves and the extra line taken from it but he didn't look at either and thought they weren't a problem as from the internal junction box his tester said the connection was good and that was enough for him.

After replacing the master socket and they checked that the broadband speeds which were still slow and he left saying try that for a week or two and see how it goes.

They've just sent me a copy of the technical log from the router and it looks like it's done nothing, and the speeds have actually reduced further to 3.4mbps down.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17x5cktph7ZS1kpJqhyD...

The 17070 quiet test is still a bit fuzzy but it's possible the phone they are using is old and not the best.

I'll drop them off another router and lead to test with just to make sure that it's not a problem with their router but I think it's going to have to now be reported as a broadband fault which hopefully they will investigate as the speeds are lower than the hand back speeds.

So is the money on the bridge tap and upstairs extension being the problem or the fault being further upstream?

(Your Google Drive link is protected)

If the neighbours are achieving 80Mbps, I don't think a bridge tap will reduce from 80M to 3.4M.

If the ISP provided a router, use that one while the fault is being investigated.

Sorry about the link, it should work now.

Main takeaway is line attenuation has gone from 39.6db to 39.1db.

Thanks for your thoughts on the bridge tap and extra line.

They are using their ISP provided router, a BT Home Hub 6. I have a spare HH5 that I can lend them so I'll drop that off for them to try.

Edited by StuB (Thu 27-Aug-20 16:16:05)

Just a thought: such a drastic loss of speed can be seen if one of the two wires in the circuit is broken.

Can you try with a different cable between the master socket and the router?

If that doesn't work, then as you say, try with another router (because a pin or PCB trace might have broken inside the router itself)

When I drop them off another router I'll drop another cable off too and tell them to try that first.

I would normally have popped around and tried a different router and cable first however they are shielding due to covid and health issues with one of the house occupants hence trying to fix this remotely.

I''m surprised they didn't meet the engineer in a full hazmat suit

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Just a thought: such a drastic loss of speed can be seen if one of the two wires in the circuit is broken.

If a single wire of the pair is broken the phone wouldn't work at all. But the broadband would behave as you say.

The second wire from the box under the eaves still sounds not ideal, and if the contacts inside that box are corroded, affecting either or both pairs that too would be a factor.

The line is still on ADSL2+ as far as I remember, originally at 17Mbps. That would tie in with a detached or perhaps corroded terminal) wire of the pair.

Hopefully they'll check the cable in the next day or so but are you saying that adsl and vdsl can still function with just one wire of the pair connected?

If so I didn't realise that.

Also I did post in one of the updates that it turns out they do actually have FTTC and they current;y get about 3.4 down and 0.8 up.

Ah, yes. I remember that now.

Yes, xDSLx can work with just one wire connected. I'm not sure whether or not it depends which one of the pair is still connected.

This seems more likely to be a fault in the fibre cab, anything from a duff port on the card to a faulty or not fully inserted filter and anything in between.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Yes, xDSLx can work with just one wire connected. I'm not sure whether or not it depends which one of the pair is still connected.

I'm really surprised about that, my logical head says that shouldn't be possible and that the two wires are needed for a circuit but clearly not.