BT line help

[sx_turbo]

Hi all

So gonna try keep this short

Gigaclear rocked up yesterday to fit fibre broadband, accidentally drilled through the current openreach telephone line.

Gigaclear broadband then stopped working within minutes of the leaving the house much to my dismay.

I've read this happens a lot with gigaclear so I ensured I didn't cancel my now TV broadband package as I wanted to wait for gigaclear to be fully operational and reliable first.

So yesterday I patched up the open reach line, I had a reel of cable left over from when I extended the line previously, I only had 2 jelly connectors though so I had to solder the orange wire and jelly connector the blue wire.

Unfortunately since then the speed and reliability has been poor, it now has a tendency to drop the internet every few hours (though seems to have got more stable overnight) but my speeds are all over the place.

My download speeds are 3mbps (should be 35mbps) and my upload speed is 6 Mbps which is what it should be.

I'm not feeling to great at the mo so I was awake at 1am this morning and the download speed **** up to 18mbps, which was better but now it's dropped to 3mbps again.

When I log into the router it states the speed as upload of 6015 bits and download of 34109 bits, which would be correct.

But why aren't I getting these speeds?

The wiring is correct, it's been fine for the past 5 years we've lived here.

Anyone have any ideas on what maybe up?

I've restarted the router quite a few times, the last time being 10 pm last night.

 

[sx_turbo]

Is this your BT line FTTC I take it? i.e. 40/10 or 80/20 product. Contact your ISP, could be the DLM needs resetting.

Or you likely have a fault with the cut cable, in which case I'd simply report to your ISP still, that a contractor has been working on your property and accidently cut the cable... Probably send an OR engineer out to properly repair the line.

Not a whole lot else you can do, if that's the only variable that's changed (the physical line being cut).

Edit: I guess it'd also be nice to understand why Gigaclear's shiny new fibre line immediately failed after being installed..?

Yeah the old fttc line.

Ok thanks will contact nowtv.

I stripped the cut cables back a few cm so as to ensure the cable wasn't faulty.

Yeah really disappointed with gigaclear, they weren't really helpful on the phone, the lady on the end found it funny.... Apparently they can't contact their engineers direct to get them to turn round and fix it. She done a line test and said there is no signal to the cabinet, so I'm guessing a connection hasn't been made correctly.

Knowing gigaclear and the fact they are using the telegraph pole to get to my property it will likely be another 3 weeks at least till they get round to fixing it after they've cancelled the appointment 3 times because they need a special piece of equipment to reach it

 

[sx_turbo]

Not sure if this helps

Screenshot-2023-10-29-07-00-40-68-40deb401b9ffe8e1df2f1cc5ba480b12 hosted at ImgBB

Image Screenshot-2023-10-29-07-00-40-68-40deb401b9ffe8e1df2f1cc5ba480b12 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

 

[sx_turbo]

The phone line was crackly, so I remember I connected the 2 brown wires also yesterday as the brown and the orange look similar on the cable I've got unless in bright light, I connected the correct ones eventually but left the brown connected, I've since disconnected the brown and the phone line no longer crackles.

The attenuation doesn't seem to have changed though.

Think the slow speeds is the router keeps dropping connection I'm hoping it will stop dropping the connection now the phone line no longer crackles and the speed will increase over time

 

[sx_turbo]

Line stats look normal from my memory of VDSL lol.

Regardless with the line being cut, crackling on phone line it 100% needs an OR engineer to properly repair/replace.

Yeah I might have a problem with that.

The WiFi on the telly is shockingly poor it's a crap lg designed WiFi card in it, any way I had to run a cable in the concrete floor and I put the BT master socket there.

I tried using the extension side of the BT master socket but after trying 3 different sockets and multiple cables I came to the realisation that the extension side of the master socket is frankly crap and of poor design, so I ended up joining the wires in a back box and moving the master socket to behind the telly. Been perfect for 4 years till the cable got cut

Anyway I'm pretty certain that OR will not be willing to help with this,

 

[sx_turbo]

Have you got any pictures of the damage/repair to get a clearer picture of the wiring setup?

Yeah will do, I've had to heath Robinson it for now

The jelly connector is there and the red tape is where I've soldered the wires together then insulated with tape.

Screenshot-2023-10-29-13-16-58-33-99c04817c0de5652397fc8b56c3b3817 hosted at ImgBB

Image Screenshot-2023-10-29-13-16-58-33-99c04817c0de5652397fc8b56c3b3817 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

Outside is the same, except I've put a sandwich bag over it for now as it hammering down with rain.

Currently I have the wires connected to cat 5 cable the cat 5 cable runs across the lounge in the concrete floor to behind the telly, and behind the telly is the openreach socket.

IMG20231029132024 hosted at ImgBB

Image IMG20231029132024 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

I will drill through the back box in the pic straight outside in the very near future. I've got a double face plate to install there sonincan have the phone socket, and turn the cat 5 cable into an ethernet lead, so behind the telly will have an ethernet switch for the telly and games consoles to run off and leave the router connected to the gigaclear incoming box

IMG20231029132825 hosted at ImgBB

Image IMG20231029132825 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

 

[sx_turbo]

Your router should have a log that can tell you if the line is resyncing. Interested in what the bt engineer is going to say, really its only their problem to the master socket which you moved and is now on an extension.

Need to find out where in the router that information is stored.

I'm pretty certain the openreach will tell me to do one.

Was hoping someone might be able to give me some things to try

It's been pretty stable today, 8 hours so far without a drop out. Just really slow speeds, as I said this it dropped out lol

 

[sx_turbo]

So to get things clear. How is your openreach line set up wiring wise?

Are you fed via a pole or is it underground?

Where does the feed from outside come in?

What does the outside feed connect to and where does it then lead?

What is the white Cat5 lead in your pics and where is that coming from? and what is the black cable and where is that connected to? ( and is the socket in the pic an extension?)

It comes over telegraph pole

Connects to soffit and then travels down to just under front window into a grey genuine BT junction box. This I installed myself. As originally the phone socket was in the master bedroom

I then went from the junction box with genuine BT cable across the front of my house, then down the side and into the living room (this is the black cable).

Originally I put the BT face plate here 5c master socket).

The wife wanted the TV and the WiFi box etc on the internal wall of the house, so

The cat 5e cable (white/grey cable) was put in and chased into the concrete floor.

Originally the cat 5 was connected to the extension side of the BT face plate. But this was very problematic, and after 3 face plates I concluded that the issue lay with BT face plate being of poor quality and the extension side of them are no good. The plate used is bt 5c at the time it was the latest face plate.

So i wired the black BT cable to the cat5 cable (using just 2 wires) and moved the BT faceplate to the internal wall of the house.

The wires in the BT cable are the new colour scheme and there are 4 wires, blue, orange brown and green. Only the blue and orange wires are used as per official BT requirements.

This has been fine for the past 4 years.

Gigaclear then drilled through the BT cable on the external wall.

I had a large length of genuine BT cable left over but only 2 jelly connectors so I used 2 jelly connectors and soldered the other 2 wires.

My plan going forward when gigaclear was up and running the gigaclear router would stay on the external wall and I would put the modular face plate on the wall, with a telephone socket and a cat5 socket.

Behind the telly would then have a cat 5 socket and I'd put an ethernet switch in place for the various electrical items that don't like WiFi.

The cut bt wire I have bodged for now as I'll need to either get a other BT junction box or replace the whole cable back to the first termination box

 

[sx_turbo]

Thanks for that.

So if I've understood it correctly. That black cable goes all the way back to the external junction box outside?

If so, what I was thinking as a temporary measure until you get your giga fibre line working was to attach the master socket 5c to the end of that black cable after removing the double joint you've currently got. Then plug your router into that. (Basically trying to remove the damaged section from the equation)

Thanks,

Yeah was thinking the same as I was writing it. I'll need another junction box outside as the cable is too short now (unless I replace the whole line again)

As it happens though since the last outage 12.5 hours ago the connection speed has increased to 28 Mbps, if it stays like this and stable I'll probably just leave it till the gigaclear connection is sorted then do a permanent proper fix