Three phone lines going into my house?

Hello!

New here so apologies if this is the wrong section. I'm due to move to my new house in a few months, it's rural but by the DSL checker it still pulls about 50mbps maximum which is fine given its location. However when viewing I noticed that there was what looked like three phone lines going into the house compared to the neighbours single one?

Is this even possible? I've attached some screenshots (apologies for the quality, straight outta street view!) to show what I mean of the corner of the house and telegraph pole it's linked to, also - does my line look bridge tapped or am I just being stupid?

Screenshots here:
Telegraph pole: https://ibb.co/b7pFvb
Corner of house: https://ibb.co/drOsab

Any help would be very much appreciated, slightly confused!

Cheers

Yes, it is possible. They may well have been running a business from the property. However, you can just order one service and they will use one of the lines to deliver. I don't think from the photos it would be possible to make any comment about bridge taps.

What kind of effect would three lines have on the broadband speed of one line out of curiosity? Obviously its hard to say but would it render it potentially VDSL Range B (Impacted) as per the DSL checker or could it still have a clean line regardless?

Apologies for the newbie questions!

While I've had no experience in running multiple lines, at least not until the 13th when A&A will be installing my second line (first is currently with Zen which I will most likely cancel at the end of the contract term next year and perhaps move that to A&A and bond it), I've read that having two lines won't quite give double the speed. It's also possible for one line to perform differently to the other too, apparently. So, I imagine what might happen if I'm lucky is that as my first line syncs (uncapped) at 56/13 I might see both lines syncing around 45-50/9-12 perhaps (due to added crosstalk). From that I'd like to hope I could at least get 90Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream by bonding both lines. I've also read that having more than two lines will offer less and less of an effective speed boost, plus if you're bonding FTTC connections then there's also a limit on maximum throughput due to current hardware capability.

In reply to a post by Ixel:

While I've had no experience in running multiple lines, at least not until the 13th when A&A will be installing my second line (first is currently with Zen which I will most likely cancel at the end of the contract term next year and perhaps move that to A&A and bond it), I've read that having two lines won't quite give double the speed. It's also possible for one line to perform differently to the other too, apparently. So, I imagine what might happen if I'm lucky is that as my first line syncs (uncapped) at 56/13 I might see both lines syncing around 45-50/9-12 perhaps (due to added crosstalk). From that I'd like to hope I could at least get 90Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream by bonding both lines. I've also read that having more than two lines will offer less and less of an effective speed boost, plus if you're bonding FTTC connections then there's also a limit on maximum throughput due to current hardware capability.

I was actually considering this if the additional two lines were active, perhaps this is what's happened here in the past with the current owners? I was more wondering however whether because there's three lines connected to the property whether or not it would impact the speeds of just using one line, would the other two lines cause any interference etc with the one service or could I expect this to run at the VDSL Range A (Clean) category?

Cheers for the responses so far!

If those additional lines were ceased then I don't imagine interference. Additionally if for some reason they still had an FTTC signal (doubtful) they would still need a modem connected in order to cause more crosstalk. Basically I don't feel they should cause problems.

It's possible the previous owner may have had multiple DSL connections, but can't be sure.

Edited by Ixel (Tue 03-Oct-17 12:37:03)

If you order service over one line then the presence of the others is immaterial

Very possible. I have 8 lines (four cables). When I ordered Home Highway the engineer got a shock when he went to move my master socket. He unwired the original socket then went outside and undid the cover - and a load of cables sprang out. He then spent ten minutes trying to work out which ones were live followed by five minutes trying to stuff them all back in the duct again

I would find out the phone number of each line and then put the number into the BT line checker to see what the estinated speed and cabinet details are.

The heavier lines at the top of the pole appear to be "3 Phase + Neutral" Mains electricity supply.

And two of the connecting lines are parallel, as one would expect for a Single Phase and Neutral to a house.

In the second photo, there are two lines, similarly parallel, terminating in a typical Mains Electricity mode.

The Insulators do not look like any that I have seen on phone lines.

So I suspect there is some confusion here.

The lines from lower down the pole appear to be the phone lines.

Is this a case of Pole Sharing from an earlier era?

I think you could be right, the pictures are poor so can't see clearly but it could well be Live and Neutral power and a single phone cable.

Very strange, as the other houses aren't fed from above - only my (soon to be) house!
Having said that, the houses that aren't fed from above do have a slightly newer brick to mine - so could have just been built in a different time.

Apologies for the lack of clarity in the photos, good ol streetview had to do for this one as I had no time to do a proper rekkie. During the viewing there was a sky router plugged into the master socket in the hallway, so i'm guessing that's my active line if anything.

DSL checker details here FYI: https://ibb.co/nOxuOw - am I right in thinking the VDSL stats are relatively accurate if the line is already on FTTC?

Unable to do a phone line check as I have no number to do this with!

It's power.

Try ringing 17070. (Using a land-line phone, plugged in, in that house.)

If QLT facility available on that line, it will tell you the phone line number.

Edited by deleted (Tue 03-Oct-17 22:39:48)

Or just ask the owners as if they are willing to give access to make calls they are probably willing to tell the OP the phone number.

Looking at the mains power wiring at the top of that pole, the looped and twisted jointing of the four main cables looks rather messy.

Potential problems?

As others have said that�s an electricity pole, owned by the power company. Openreach have a pole sharing agreement with that company and since there�s no telephone pole opposite your house they are bouncing off the electricity poles to reach you. I can confirm this, it is definitely not an Openreach owned pole!

About ¾ of the way up the pole you can see the Openreach DP (black rectangle), it looks like it is fed by an aerial cable coming from the right as you look at the photo. Your telephone drop wire will be the lowest of the three cables coming from that pole to your house. Openreach would usually work from a cherry picker on a joint user pole like that, and so their wires need to be low enough down to do that safely.

Edited by deleted (Wed 04-Oct-17 16:25:45)