Unresolved support ticket open for more than six months - is this a record?

[#1]

No, the red wire is fine (apart from being the wrong type, of course...) - I double-checked and there's a bit of fabric cord inside the cable sheath that looks a lot like exposed copper core.
I also had another look at the overhead cables in the light of WWWombat's comments and it does look as if my line is not tensioned as much as my neighbour's line. I'll try to take another photo to illustrate this.

[#2]

Ok, here's a general view of the overhead cables - mine is the one looping down to the left-hand centre of the pic. The perspective does exaggerate the difference in tension but it's quite breezy this morning and my cable is swaying in the wind a lot more than my neighbour's. That said, some of the other cables from the same pole are less tensioned than mine and this seems to have been done to prevent them getting too close to the overhead power lines running to other houses in the road. Thankfully, my phone cable doesn't go anywhere near my power line (it's on the opposite side of the house), but the mix of overhead cables and phone cables does resemble a "cat's cradle" in some parts of the road! One of the things I want to clarify with the BT engineer on Tuesday is exactly how my phone line is routed down the road i.e. could it run near any sources of interference on the way?

[#3]

When your line blows about is it going to come in contact with trees or anything else?

[#4]

No, my line has a clear run from pole to house and cannot come into contact with anything else. I've also attached a couple more pics - the first one shows one of the "cat's cradles" of power and phone cables opposite my house (hope you can make it out as I tried to keep a wide angle). My cable runs from top right corner of pic to pole on the left - note the pole just left of centre as two cables run from "my" pole to this pole, and this has a "box of tricks" on the top that I hadn't noticed before - anyone like to hazard a guess as to what this might be?

[#5]

by the look of it your pole hasnt got a drop wire and your cable feeds to the other pole which has the drop wires?

[#6]

Not really sure what you mean by "drop wire" - I thought these were the wires that dropped from the pole to the house i.e. the overhead cables we've been discussing in previous posts. If you can clarify then I'll go and have another look at the poles - thanks for your interest, by the way.

[#7]

the power cable running close to the phone lines isnt going to be doing any favours. but in theroy the ferquences of the elecy line shouldnt cause interfrence but its just one more thing on a all ready long list of things that can cause interfrence

[#8]

Its the wire that goes from the big black box on the far away pole down to the underground feed to the exchange, that is assuming it goes underground

[#9]

So that's what Pole-land looks like. 

[#10]

Pole-land for sure! One of the property owners on the other side of the road tried to get EDF to shift an unsightly power pole, but the four-figure quote was enough to to put them off for life....
As to the drop cable question, "my" telegraph pole has no drop cable (but it does have a blanked-off conduit about a metre high at the base of the pole - see first pic). The pole on the other side of the road (with the "box of tricks" that I mentioned in post #63) does have a drop cable that goes underground, as do most of the other poles down the road. Another question to ask the BT engineer on Tuesday, I guess i.e. why hasn't "my" pole been fitted with a drop cable?
I've also attached another pic of the top of "my" pole, as requested in post #54 (sorry, just re-read the post - not sure the pic helps much, though).

[#11]

On the second picture, unless they enlarge and look carefully, it looks like your wire hasnt got a strain wire, your other pictures prove it did.  It seems like your pole only supplies you and your neighbour and then goes to the next pole, more places to loose signal

[#12]

Thanks for those extra pics Catweazle, gives a clearer picture of what appears to be going on.
Re Another pole pic, that confirms that I should have looked a bit more carefully even though I'd not only zoomed it, but saved it to disk and looked at an even higher magnification with another program, it's just the unfortunate angle of the shot coupled with the poor cable tension (and a bit limited by the picture definition).
As I said previously, I'd be wanting the overhead cable replacing through to the joint in the loft (no joint at the white box) and of course correctly tensioned.
I think  Pierre is getting his terminology mixed up, the overhead "drop" wire to your house is what often gets referred to as the drop wire, it traditionally dropped down the outside of the house to enter via the ground floor. Quite a few overheads go into peoples' houses via the loft when rewiring jobs are done these days.
The "box of tricks" at the top of the adjacent pole is just the termination of the underground cable that goes down the pole and off to the exchange.
It appears that yours' and your neighbour's overhead cables go to your pole along with another cable from another nieghbour (or two) via another pole (the one on the extreme right of the cat's cradle picture). You all then go via two cables to the "next" pole where there are more incoming overheads from surrounding properties and all of you then connect to the underground cable to the exchange. The reason there is no underground cable from your pole is simply that it is more expensive to underground than overhead when only a small number of circuits are involved, unless inclement location means frequent repairs to overheads when it then becomes cost effective to go underground.
I don't think the overhead power cables are an issue, where they run parallel to phone cables they aren't really close enough (unless there were any bad joints and arcing!).  Where it's close to the main cable to the exchange, it is orthogonal.
Whilst we've all been looking at the pics, you meantioned it was "breezy" and your cable was swaying about in the wind, did you get any drops in sync?

[#13]

Might have, its just that I am not a BT man and any wire that comes down a pole from the top is a drop - what does BT call it?

[#14]

Synch speed has been 2080kbps all day (well, at least since 09:00 when I switched the pc on....). Routerstats has shown some variation in noise margin, but nothing that I could tie in to the breezy conditions i.e. the margin was consistently high (about 20Db) from 09:00 until 16:20, when it dropped to about 5Db. I've just had my first disconnection of the day (at 19:52) and the noise margin has increased to 18.5Db (synch rate is still 2080kbps).
I'll see whether I can persuade the BT engineer to run a new overhead cable into the roof space and make the connection with the line to the master socket there - certainly seems to make sense to keep the joints out of the weather.

[#15]

Although it's possible, I'm surprised you can't hear any noise on your phone line when you get such dramatic changes in SNRM.
One thing the BT engineer MUST do at the very least, is get rid of that bit of untwisted flex!