When BT installed the extensions ...

[#1]

Once you have an NTE5 ... remove the faceplate ... now what's attached to the wall (and beyond is BT)  you can fiddle with plate you have in your hand ... I wired both filtered and unfiltered lines out of this.

[#2]

As HPsauce has said it is not an urban myth. However OR records are not going to show whether the Bell-wire is connected. At some point in the future when there is a Fault, OR will replace the LJU with an NTE5a, no issue.

[#3]

How about "undocumented" if you don't like "urban myth"?  It's one of those things that everybody says is true but nobody can provide supporting documentation to prove.

[#4]

They used to know what NTE you had on the end, so they should know that it's not an NTE5a, but they will not have full details of the wiring.

[#5]

My master socket looks to be a early nte5 box, it had the lower face plate but without the front socket, just a blanking plate that plugs in to the test socket.
If you happen to have the older cable connection block that hard wired the phone, there is a good chance the drop wire is the old flat twin core grey cable with the hard drawn copper conductors, hardly optimal for adsl !
Paul.

[#6]

Yes the flat twin core drop-wire is a problem, the old grey stuff should have been replaced but there is still some about but there is a lot more of the later thicker twin flat black stuff which is also a problem for DSL. Your NTE is probably an NTE5b, it should still have the IDC terminal for extension wiring on the back of the plate!
Edit: correct spelling to read back "of" the plate.

[#7]

As i suffer from reduced bitloading on 198khz and 252khz (Radio 4 and RTE Ireland), do you think it is mainly overground lines that pick up this radio transmission  problem , and not underground lines ?
Also the line imbalance is different for both frequencies, if i null 252khz (at doing so increases bitloading substantially), the nulling  is set quite differently for 198khz.
This to me seems to indicate quite a length of line is not twisted, or the resistance  of each a/b line ,or capacitance to gnd of each is different ?
I could get BT to re route the dropwire to reduce the overhead part from approx 40-50metrs to approx 12 metres.
Appart from the dropwire, all the line back to the exchange (except a couple of green cabinets on route) is all underground.
As the line is approx 5.5 km long from the exchange, so uses bitloading up to approx tone 136 (586.5khz), the lower freq bitloading is important to maximise sync rate.
Thanks,
Paul.

[#8]

I apologise I'd forgotten about your PM many moons ago which I will respond to later. Gardening beckons at the mo, just on coffee break.

[#9]

By a curious co-incidence ... I just had a related saga (modern wiring , but still screwed up)  ...so I'm not convinced BT guys in the trucks actually understand this either...

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,108234.0.html