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

[#1]

If your reply #42 is anything to go by, someone needs their nuts stamping on.

[#2]

Possibly more than one...
But let's give the good guys at PN a chance to resolve this - one of the main problems, I think, is that support staff are probably judged on how quickly they turn around problems and they must all be dreading being allocated my support ticket as it is so long! Consequently, they don't read the history properly and only succeed in winding me up by missing the point or trying to fob me off because they're under pressure to answer the next call. I also have a bit of sympathy for the support guys as unusual or complex problems must be a nightmare to sort out. But, at the end of the day, I'm paying for a service that PN and BT have plainly not been providing adequately over the last 6-7 months and I think I'm entitled to feel somewhat aggrieved at the chronic lack of progress. I had considered changing ISP but PN had been good up until the middle of last year (I've been with them more than 5 years) and I really do think the problem lies within BT's infrastructure, so a new ISP probably wouldn't make much difference.

[#3]

Hi, having just read through your fault history i do hope you get it sorted soon, 7 months of dropped connections and hours of your personal time must be taking its toll on you. I would bet money on it being a BT issue i.e. the line card, but anything is possible in the mad world of ADSL!
Good luck!
p.s keep us updated, I'm keen on knowing the resolution on this.

[#4]

Thanks Rick - will do.
A BT engineer (no. 6) is due to visit next Tuesday (3rd Feb) and has been tasked with checking/changing the E-side and D-side cables, so I'll post an update after we've given that a try.
I've also posted a group of three pics that show the three BT line connections from the telegraph pole (my line is the lower one on the left) to the little white box under the eaves, and then to a couple of snap-on connectors I recently found in the roof (I had previously assumed the line was connected directly from the box under the eaves to the master socket) - the line then runs inside the roof space and down the wall to a standard BT NTE5 master socket (with no extensions). I'll ask the BT to double-check the connectors in the roof as they haven't done this before, although I guess tests at the master socket and the box under the eaves should have revealed any faults.

[#5]

Oh what a shame you didn't have the idea of posting those pics before - well I'm astounded at what I was looking at - almost lost for words, but not quite. Talk about a cowboy installation.
Well whoever the so called engineer was that put your overhead cable on that pole was not just unprofessional, but incompetant. You must insist on the cable being REPLACED, NOT just fixed with proper strain releif fastener and re-terminated as the cable will have been unduly strained where it goes over the hoop. There should also be a proper strain relief fastener at your house end as well.
And what is the overhead connected to in the white box? It looks like old type sheathed twin flex (possibly 5A). It's certainly not CW1308 spec cable and is a potential sourse of interference pickup. You must insist on this being replaced.
Ideally the cable from the NTE5 to the white box should be in one piece (no joints) and to CW1308, but if it's not readily possible, either because of difficult routing or messing up your decoration, then the overhead drop wire must run through with no joints to a (new) connector box in your loft, where the existing 6 core goes to your NTE5.

[#6]

Thanks, Anotherone - I'll raise that with PN as well. Digi camera's been out of action for a while due to dodgy battery, but when the new battery arrived I thought I'd take some pics and see what people thought of the BT handiwork. I hadn't actually looked at the wiring too closely before as I had assumed (never assume - I know!) that the BT engineer who moved my master socket (about 18 months ago) did a reasonable job. A couple of days ago, I traced the entire length of the cable in the roof space and discovered the snap-on connectors hidden away near the end of the central boarded-up area.
It's interesting what you said about the overhead cable - I hadn't noticed there was no strain relief at the pole end. The house end is probably ok as strain relief looks ok - but I'll try to post another pic tomorrow. The red/black wires from the white box do look very suspect, as you say, but I'd assumed (I know!) that using a thicker gauge wire wouldn't cause any problems. My opinion of BT engineers has now plumbed new depths...

[#7]

In a normal phone situation, that red and black core 'flex' wouldn't be an issue for a shortish length, but in a broadband situation because it is not twisted pair to cw1308 it can pick up undue interference.

[#8]

Just taken another couple of pics - the first one shows the overhead cable's strain relief at the house end...

[#9]

And the second pic shows the overhead cables at the pole end, from a different perspective (my line is the second from the left); there does appear to be strain relief fastening for my cable, but whether it's up to the job or not I'll leave for others to comment on.

[#10]

Well they say the camera doesn't lie! But, I've re-looked at your initial pic in reply #48 several times and can't be sure. There appears to be evidence or remnants of a strain relief which I've pointed to with a vertical arrow in the attached picture. Perhaps you could take another picture from exactly the same perspective as the original, but be certain the focus is exact on you cable. If the strain relief is there, then the cable isn't tensioned correctly.
If you could also take a pic sideways on to that first shot, I've indicated with a horizontal arrow, that looks like the crimped joints (for your cable?) exposed to the elements instead of inside the grey box.

[#11]

Thanks, Anotherone - I've attached a different view of the top of the pole (as seen from the road outside my property). My line is on the bottom right, and the line at top right belongs to my neighbour who currently gets around 7000-8000kbps download speed.

[#12]

Shame it's as dark, but looking at that and your original it's fairly clear that what I thought may be joints are nothing more than the cable retaining clips. I'd still like to see another shot taken from the original perspective as I think the cable strain relief may just have been a bit blurred.

[#13]

I agree that the original picture of the phone line at the pole made it appear to have no strain relief - but there is a shadow on the pole that clearly shows it in place. Having said that, that photo seems to show the cable coming away isn't tensioned very highly. The angle seems wrong (the cable drops too low?), and there are a couple of bends/waves in the wire that I wouldn't really expect.
Perhaps it's been over-stretched, and hasn't returned to tension correctly? A few years back, we had a storm of some kind of freezing drizzle that stuck to the overhead lines, stretching them immensely. My phone cable snapped from that, but some cables managed to stretch down to street level (both phone and power  ).
As for the electrical cable in the middle... If I remember correctly, the change in gauge will cause the impedence to change. That, combined with the lack of twist, and the mere existence of the extra joints, all probably make it react at the higher frequencies of broadband, and each joint will act a little like a mirror, reflecting some of the signal. The modems at either end should have some form of echo-cancellation to try to remove this kind of noise, but perhaps there's enough there to confuse them.
Mike

[#14]

I think the problem people are having with the picture is that they are not getting the full size - A) click on the attached image b)hover over the image and the pointer will have a plus symbol c) click and you get a full size good image
Selected part showing the wire in Question

[#15]

In the right hand picture at the top of this page, is the red wire damaged?