They used what?

Just back from house sitting for a friend of a friend and getting his broadband working.

It had been running "OK" until about 6 months back when it failed. It was repaired but was significantly lower than before - 300 to 400 kbps on a good day compared to the 1.2-1.5 Mbps previously but they survived. The whole line failed last week including voice which so bad and noisy!

The BT Openreach tech soon diagnosed a drop wire problem and installed a new one going back three poles to a box at the top of one, which feeds further overheads for another mile.

He showed me the problem - the last repair was done by a contractor who, according to BT records, had replaced the drop, but the friend confirmed it had not been done. What had happened was that he had used "another pair" - except that they were not a "pair" but two of the steel strain wires and in the gable box they were just twisted with the wire to the inside.

Cowboy/Con-man is the only description.

The steel obviously caused extra attenuation, not-being a twisted pair added to the noise pick up on both ADSL and voice and the unprotected joints created more noise as they got wet and corroded.

I did a bit if tidying up inside ... and they are running at a healthy 1.8Mbps.

You mean to say those steel wires arn't supposed to be used?

Guess i'm going to have to re-label the dropwire drums as 2pr instead of 3 and a half pair...

or even one pr on the stuff we get now !