topic Re: Broken Phone Cable in Tech Help - Software/Hardware etc

Broken Phone Cable

ReedRichards — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 06:07:45 GMT

My telephone cable takes a measured ~35m to go from my phone socket to the junction at the manhole just if front of my drive, which must be about 10m in a straight line. Using some sort of pingy device the engineers who visited on Friday reckoned it goes almost there then off up the street and back down again. And it is broken about 2m away from the manhole cover so now I have to wait for some contractors to come and dig a hole before Openreach can try to fix it.
The cable would have been put in when the house was built in the late 1960s. Will the wire be in a duct to the house or simply buried? I' wondering If I can ask Openreach to do something to improve the cable run when they come back?
Did I miss a trick by not asking them to run a temporary loose wire to the house to restore my telephone connection? The engineers managed to take this from very noisy to dead (no-dial-tone) as a result of their visit, although this has stabilised my internet connection (at 1/20th normal speed with 12dB of attenuation added).

Re: Broken Phone Cable

Foggy — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 10:52:41 GMT

Do you have to pay for the repair or is it BT`s responsibility?

Re: Broken Phone Cable

Alex — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 14:39:45 GMT

I suspect that anything before the master socket is theirs, anything after is yours.
Similar to gas and electric. Anything before the meter is theirs, anything after is yours.

Re: Broken Phone Cable

ReedRichards — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 19:52:43 GMT

No, this is some buried junction belonging to BT that has decided to fail. I don't have to pay for the repair, just wait for it.

Re: Broken Phone Cable

ffox — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 14:35:52 GMT

The cabling in my street runs under the grass verges on the house side of the pavements about one spade-depth down. It is often damaged during driveway improvements, fence post installation and digging by new arrivals. Every time, Openreach contractors dig a hole, engineers rejoin the wires and the contractors come back to fill in the hole. This has happened five times in the last 3 years to my knowledge but no thought has been given to putting the cables in a duct to improve the situation.

Re: Broken Phone Cable

ReedRichards — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 08:21:40 GMT

I presume the bulge in the top wire to the right of the loose metal sheathing wires is the location of the junction where my phone line has failed. The thinner disconnected wire must be the remains of some redundant telephone connection.