The orange ring wire can be removed,

Whilst bell wire removal is a fix for a possible cause of intermittent errors and lowered sync. I would suggest however that the ‘orange ring wire’ is a very vague term, because the bell wire, if attached is by no means always orange. In fact one leg of the main incoming feed will be orange, removal of this will cause a complete loss of service.

I think the suggestion of having a single NTE direct on the feed is the best idea, and get the filters replaced.

There's an earlier version of the NTE5c on the other side of the room, connected by a long cable (seen going off to the left in the photos) which is connected to the cable coming in from outside. I believe this has a built-in filter as it has two sockets - one for phone and one for broadband. The router is plugged in here.

Aha !
So you already an NTE and SSFP where the router is connected, then the voice is back ended to feed the phones elsewhere.
So all this talk of possible start wiring is most likely a smoke screen *unless* the install of the NTE has been botched.

Back then to my first reply … it’s not REIN. Replace the router and leads as a next step. If that doesn’t fix it, the OP must persevere with the service provider and get the line checked out.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Replace the router and leads as a next step.

To be on the safe side I think replacing the NTE and SSFP might be a good idea also...certainly doesn't look like an Openreach guy would have done that wiring job!

To be on the safe side I think replacing the NTE and SSFP might be a good idea also...certainly doesn't look like an Openreach guy would have done that wiring job!

No harm in replacing those for sure. It would be another box ticked.

On your second point …. I would differ I’m afraid to say.
As the years pass, many of those who were slavishly taught to run wiring ‘just so’, and took a little pride in their work are becoming thinner on the ground.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

To be on the safe side I think replacing the NTE and SSFP might be a good idea also...certainly doesn't look like an Openreach guy would have done that wiring job!

No harm in replacing those for sure. It would be another box ticked.

On your second point …. I would differ I’m afraid to say.
As the years pass, many of those who were slavishly taught to run wiring ‘just so’, and took a little pride in their work are becoming thinner on the ground.

Theres no harm in the wiring replacement as its a mess and whilst David does seem to have a filter nte box in the system, any test he would currently do wouldn't test for the wire-mess!. He's not going to have a worse service.

I do agree on the second point, as time has gone by we now have standards to work to; which have become stricter over time.

In reply to a post by Taras:

... whilst David does seem to have a filter nte box in the system ...

... but from what we know it almost certainly is not doing anything useful, because there is other wiring and a phone on the incoming line ...

In reply to a post by DFScale:

In reply to a post by Taras:

... whilst David does seem to have a filter nte box in the system ...

... but from what we know it almost certainly is not doing anything useful, because there is other wiring and a phone on the incoming line ...

yeah its in a pointless place in the "phone cabling network"

I still reckon the voice is ‘back ended’ from the NTE …

Just to add another layer of intrigue, I think my router may be playing up which could be the cause of, or contributing to, this occasional issue. For quite a while now when I access the router's admin page (i.e. 192.168.1.1 for me) it sometimes takes 15-20 seconds to load.

I still have the Raspberry Pi, via telnet, logging SNR every few seconds. Today when I went to the admin page it took a while to load and I noticed the SNR dropped from 5.5-6.5ish to about 4.3. Once the page loaded, the SNR rose again to 6ish. I tried it a few times and the slow-loading admin page definitely hit the SNR.

I wondered if it was to do with load on the router, so I tested downloaing a large file and the SNR did the same during the download - in fact it even stopped telnet reporting the SNR for a while.

I don't know why accessing the admin page is sometimes slow, but I don't see why it'd actually affect SNR. Same for downloading a large file. Is this something to do with the way the router's reporting the SNR, or is it possible the router's playing up and it's not able to process the DSL signal properly?!

The router is a Billion 8800NL which is 4.5 years old.

Edited by davidw87 (Sun 19-Jan-25 13:05:10)

In reply to a post by davidw87:

Just to add another layer of intrigue, ...

In your position, I would be getting the wiring sorted and not looking too closely until that is done. Obviously the router is not happy, but you won't make sense of anything until the wiring is resolved.