Folks, I'd appreciate advice from any BT engineers in particular on steps and cost to fix my domestic phone wiring as it is currenly preventing me from getting full steady upload and download speeds

I use the ISP "Be" which requires a BT phone line to get fast ADSL2+ speeds. Through a process of elimination the Be tech support found out that that it seems there is something connected to my phone line even when nothing is there! Our guess is that there is some fault with the domestic wiring. (There is some noise on my phone line but there are no reported faults). Our wiring is pretty unusual - it enters the house and 4 exposed wires go into a BT joining box (including the orange ring wire). These wires are pretty tight and then travel to the lju2 master socket. Note the orange ring wire is not connected here and there is no test socket.

I am super close to gants hill telephone exchange (like 600m), so we should be getting super fast speeds (lines are correctly filtered etc).

Knowing that 21 CN is around the corner for our exchange. Will BT fix my domestic wiring? Can they work out if wiring is faulty from the house to the telegraph pole? Also if I want to maximize speeds, in future for 21 CN what cabling should I ask BT to update to, so that I am suitable future proofed?

Thanks!

Do you have any extensions wired off the master LJU that could be affecting whatever tests Be did? If you don't and Be were seeing a load on the line even with nothing plugged in then sounds like you may have a line fault which BT ought to fix for free.

If however you have extensions that were not wired in by BT and they are found to be the cause of the problem then BT will probably charge you. Plus if the extensions were wired into the back of the master LJU BT could be within their rights to disconnect them! It depends on where exactly they deem their line to be terminated. If it is in the junction box then anything after that is your responsibility. If it is at the LJU then legally only BT can take the lid off and wire into the back of it. So when you report the fault you may want to "forget" you took the lids off the junction box and LJU

Similarly if BT decide their line terminates at the junction box and the LJU is found to be faulty they could charge you to fix it. Though I am lead to believe that copious cups of tea and HobNobs can help make a BT engineer "overlook" such things (no guarantees though!)

Sounds as if your house is pretty old. Back in the "old days" pre BT the usual way a line was connected up was to run a cable from the pole into the house and land it on a junction box. The fact that there may be more than two wires on the incomming cable is probably more to do with what they had in the back of the van than any other reason! The incomming line only has two active wires, there is NO ring wire. Hence why only two are fed through to the LJU. The phone was then hooked up to the junction box, often with no socket! At some later stage obviously someone wired in a LJU socket.

Probably worth reporting to BT. They will probably go through a series of remote checks but hopefully if Be could see something BT ought to be able to see it as well. Though you may have to be persistent. Always worth mentioning that you can hear noise on the line as that may not show up on the remote checks.

Jack> Their remote checks still can't find problems, but Be are positive it is the wiring. Our wiring does look pretty shoddy, so it wouldn't surprise me. Should I ask for a special engineer, as one who came out at a time when we did have a fault on the line seemed to imply there was another type of engineer with specialist equipment who could better determine where the fault is. I absolutely want the top upload speeds when 21CN is available, so what should I ask these guys to do, perhaps remove the joint box and run the cable from the outside straight into a NTE5? I'm thinking this would be expensive as they would surely need to run a longer line from the outside into the house to reach a master socket position OR ask them to just put in their own Joint box and run to a NTE5 or something else?

"Perhaps BT just doesnt' care that ISPs depend upon the phone wiring".

Check your Terms and Conditions - BT are only obliged to provide a line which works with a voice service, nothing more. The fact we try to shove our super speed ADSL+ signals down them is the ISPs problem, not BTs!

If you've got a voice fault (noise etc) then report it and get them to fix it, but they can't "improve" your line for ASDL - there is no such "feature". I would at least ask them to come fit a NTE5 master socket - that would "future proof" you!!


LCDMAN...............The man with no sig!

Thanks LCD man. The BT terms and conditions are a good way to look at it from their angle.

The unfortunate thing is that the ISP pass responsibility of the phone line quality to BT, and as the customer I am looking at wiring costs of a couple of hundred pounds. I cannot legally alter the wiring, but wouldn't need to if the line ran straight into the master rather than terminating in a joining box above my front door . I wish I could make my point by moving from BT, but all of the ISPS with high upload speeds require a BT line so I'm stuck until high upload speeds from Virgin become available.

Is it safe to assume that if BT updates my exchange with 21 CN the bottleneck will still be my domestic wiring (meaning they wouldn't update domestic wiring as part of the upgrade?) Also if by the 1 in a million chance they decide to lay fiber down, I assume the domestic wiring would no longer be used?

i would report it as a intermittant noise fault, and at a bare minimum the engineer has to fit a nte5 if none exist's.

BT's 21CN is not about uprading the external network.
21CN is about changing BT's internal network (rather like when BT went digital with systemX).
If you are on Be then you are already on the same (or very similar) type of DSLAM that BT will be using on 21CN.

Folks thanks for your help so far. I have a couple of updates -

An OpenReach Engineer sent by BT came round. He coudl find no audible buzz with the line (it works okay as a phone line).

However Be are still convinced there is intereference on hte line. This effects me because my slingbox (device used to stream TV over the internet when you are out of the house) is of poor quality. We clock the upload speeds online at 600kbps instead of 2.2 Meg upload.

Which dept of BT should I ring, and which type of Open Reach Engineer should I ask for, so that they can isolate the problems from a ASDL 2+ perspective?

Thanks

to get the correct engineer(b/band trained) you have to go through your isp and req's a LLU SFI visit.

BT should replace any LJU master socket and any old Junction box which uses screw terminals I think.

Can't you get an LLU SFI through the sales team?