Basically, this is the situation, I have two houses next door to each other, the BT line is under the first house and the line enters and goes through one old GPO junction box then goes a further 3 or 4 metres in to an another old GPO junction box then finally travels about 2 more metres in to an old style LJU master socket then from that old style master socket around 4 or 5 extensions go around the house and then there is an old Telecoms(presumably which the electrician put there) box which goes through the wall upstairs in to the 2nd house and there is a further 3 or so extensions going round the 2nd house then there is a 10m DIY extension to my router which is connected to the 7th or so extension by a short RJ11 cable supplied with o2. This line also has a high resistance fault may I add as when the phone rings the connection drops even at the master socket from around 6.5meg and keeps dropping until it becomes stable at around 1.1meg. Here's my stats:

DSL Connection

Link Information

Uptime: 0 days, 0:51:01
DSL Type: G.992.5 annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,230 / 1,181
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 0.00 / 0.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 17.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 24.5 / 43.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6.5 / 6.5
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / BDCM
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 14 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 4 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 33 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 47 / 7,258,750
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 47 / 1,537
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 998,209 / 446

The router, games consoles, PC, lappies are all in the 2nd house so after the dormers are built we are thinking of phoning BT and telling them we are moving house to the house next door and then have 2 extensions made by an telecoms engineer using Cat5e/6 cabling, one going through the wall to the 1st house living room and 1 going to a bedroom upstairs. Obviously we want to take our broadband and phone number with us so will the broadband be sorted out on the day or will we have to wait around 3 weeks just for the broadband to be activated and will we have to arrange this with the ISP?

Also I'm interested to know what the engineer will do on the day(will he BB trained?), of course he'll feed a drop wire through the 2nd house, fit an NTE5(will he fit an SSFP if I request it?), what will he do then, if he knows that I'm just moving next door will he put the drop wire on the pole where the current one is already located or will it be a new line altogether? If he has fitted the NTE5, will he be visiting the exchange or PCP and what will he do.

Also what is the possibility of him putting me on the shortest e-side pair or one that'll give me the best broadband signal e.g. the shortest might have a low gauge of copper etc. if I request it. If there isn't a "space" on the shortest pair couldn't he swap me with a non ADSL customer? I'm around 850 metres as the crow flies from the exchange and I know there are some routes to the exchange more or less direct(there aren't many roads to go past!) so I'm not very happy with a 40db attenuation.

Finally will he use the unused the drop wire on the side of the 2nd house or will it be a new one? It has been hanging there for over 10 years and it looks like it has 2 speaker wires coming out of it.

Please reply peeps.

i'm guessing that your keeping both houses, so your best bet would be to req's a shift of overhead service. the engineer should then put up a new cable from the pole top(though depends if the current cable is of the current type used, the speaker cable is the old type so shouldn't be used), to where you would like the NTE5 to go. are you getting an independant sparky to run the cat5 ext'ns as we only use 6wire?
the chances are its the internal thats causing the prob's as if the polarity of the line isn't right throughout the chain it can cause probs with the ringing on dsl circuits.
though if you can disconnect them from the lju and see if it happens then.
if you decided to go down the cease and re-provide option then the engineer would probably have to visit the cab to do work, however he will only change a e-side if the one quoted is faulty. PM the number of the b/band and i'll look to see if your currently on the shortest link. you will also lose the b/band service for about 5 days, whilst you wait for O2 to move it onto the new line.
i would recommend the first option as it's less hassle(i.e contacting all the providers involved).

You mean the shift of overhead service.

OK, I'll PM you it but I hope I don't recieve any anonymous phone calls.

yeah, meant the shift of overhead service.
forgot to answer about the ssfp, the ratio of b/band trained to standard engineers is about 5-10% per staff depending on the type of area.
the area i cover is classed as semi rural, has 2 main exchanges(30,000+ lines capacity) and 5 satellite ex's(alot smaller) 16 engineers (3 frames, 4 underground, 6 overhead/installers, 2 b/band/overhead/installers, and 1 misc). us b/band engineers tend to get pinned b/band faults first thing and rarely do provision work so the chances the engineer will have a ssfp is rare.

Thanks m8, the attenuation you quoted me, is that for ADSL1?

EDIT: Would be of any help if I asked if they could send a BB trained engineer on the phone to calcutta.

that is the measured attenuation of the cable at 300Khz, which is the standard for all adsl, it shouldn't be different for adsl2+. when i've tested on adsl2 circuits its not deviated much from the expected attenuation.

unfortunately calcutta have no control over which engineer gets sent, it's all down to our control or "the machine" who gets the job. you can ask them to put the note on the job, wether they resource it though is another matter.

OK thanks, do you know the number to tell BT I want my overhead line shifting. Thanks.

to be honest, havn't a clue, couldn't even remember it when we were still part of BT. i'm guessing just the standard sales line. just tried 0800 800150 and sales is opt 2. hope this helps.

Thanks for all your help, I've been dying to know if there were anymore e-side pairs fed to my cab and you've told me and for that I thank you.

One final question mate, did it say anything about if it had a low or high gauge of copper?

your e-side is made up of 964M of 0.4mm copper then 639M 0.5mm copper, then 350M of 0.32mm copper. your d-side is made up of 150M 0.5mm Ali. wouldn't worry too much about the ali as it's such a short length.

So is the e-side more prone to interference?

It's really kind of you to be telling us this "top secret" info. I'm sure BT would charge to trace the actual length of your line right? Knowing them...

yes and no, the e-side is more prone to crosstalk, but is less metallic fault prone as it is pressurised and the joints are hardly ever gone in.

the d-side is more prone to REIN(depending on the strength of it) and metallic faults as it is frequently meddled in by the jointers.

it's not really top secret, as most b/band trained engineers should know about it and have access, obviously it can't be accessed by anyone outside of openreach unless they have been granted access, and i do believe that we charge CP's for a line loss measurement. i'm quite lucky in the fact that my line manager has no idea what it is i do when faulting b/band so when i ask for access for stuff he just authorises it.
the worse thing that came about with the split from BT was that i used to have access to wholesale's woosh system(allowed me to test any of their b/band lines to check for errors/sync from a remote location) but now i still have access but can only look at fault notes.

Now I'm all set, the only thing left to do is get my wiring done! I'll post back my stats once the rewiring's done in a month or two!