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[Black Sheep]

............. and make sure it's a corded phone at that !! Wireless ones won't cut the mustard.

[snadge]

............. and make sure it's a corded phone at that !! Wireless ones won't cut the mustard.

+1 

[guest]

As PPO duty is a completely different part of the business to mine, I wouldn't have a clue as to the timescales for attendance ?? All you can do is ring Openreach and request a PPO visit. At least if you have and one doesn't turn up in time, and the contractor smashes your duct and cable up, you (or your contractors) may have an argument to have any subsequent charged work rescinded ?.

10 working days notice is the minimum required, which isn't unreasonable had I known the service existed. I do now so I'll bear it in mind for the future. Thanks for telling me that this was a free service

As it turns out, the conduit by the door goes down at least 400mm so I think we'll be OK. The conduit is very close to a mains gas pipe which is ~1m deep so I reckon they used the same trench, and if they did then the route doesn't cross the drive.

Thanks again and sorry to OP for the derail of thread.

[Mick]

No problem Rizla, it's amazing what we pick up in these forums.   

Now, the good news is that this nice Openreach man came along - or whoever went to the exchange the day after - and he replaced the faulty component.  My line resync'ed but got a higher rate and also my telephone works without any high pitch screeching in my ears. 

Problem solved for 15 or so households in this village.  Had I known the engineer was around I would have insisted that the wife drove down to the exchange to offer him some tea and biscuits.

[burakkucat]

   for the BT Operate engineer.

[snadge]

No problem Rizla, it's amazing what we pick up in these forums.   

Now, the good news is that this nice Openreach man came along - or whoever went to the exchange the day after - and he replaced the faulty component.  My line resync'ed but got a higher rate and also my telephone works without any high pitch screeching in my ears. 

Problem solved for 15 or so households in this village.  Had I known the engineer was around I would have insisted that the wife drove down to the exchange to offer him some tea and biscuits.

Glad you got sorted matey  :clap2:

[Mick]

Ha!  I spoke too early!   

The intervention at the exchange had all 15 or so households back on line last Thursday.  This only lasted 5 days.  Since yesterday the high pitch noise is back and a number of households have been affected again (including ours).  Re-reported by another neighbour and waiting for an engineer to arrive.  Let's see what it takes this time ...

PS.  I should have guessed this wasn't fixed because my BB was up and down like a yo-yo.  :-(

[burakkucat]

Oh dear!   

[snadge]

Be interesting if we find out the cause...

Sent from my Sony Xperia Miro on Tapatalk

[guest]

Brief OT again - guys have been around and dug out drive. They knew about tracing line but said, and I quote :

"Its a BT line so it'll have a proper conduit, if it was cable then we'd have to hand-dig as morons install that".

True to their word, after two hours of "extreme gardening" with a digger  the initial "scrape" was done. BT cable conduit exposed all the way (appears to be only 200mm below the pavement level) just using a digger. Total "damage" to my connection = 4 CRC errors.

Just thought I'd put that in here as although it was the builders who put that conduit in, its nice to see that I'm not the only one who thinks NTL are total cowboys

[Black Sheep]

Ha ha ........... it's not often we get 'praise' for our buried cables, or should I say, the depth of them. I don't work in mm's I'm afraid, but can tell you 17 inch is our required depth. I'll leave that one there, whilst the going's good. 

I'm guessing you live in a house possibly built 1980 or on ?? The reason being, we started to lay duct to properties about that time. Prior to that, we would lay an armoured cable down and the houses would be built on top of the cables. So, in a rough nutshell, pre-1980's it wouldn't be in a duct (or conduit as you call it), it would be 'Direct-in-ground' armoured cable. Anything after 1980 has a good chance of their premises being fed via a duct, from the 'Spine' cable running down the front of the houses.

[guest]

House built in 1990, planning permission around 1987 or so from the purchase documents we have.

The cable is (heavily) armoured and inside a 40mm rigid PVC duct.

Reason I know that is because the master socket installed by BT Ignite when we got ADSL has (lightly) armoured cable externally. Guy who installed it said "I'm going to have to use this stuff as I don't have standard cable - this is the stuff that normally goes underground." The cable from house->pavement is more than twice the diameter and you can't bend it anywhere near 90 degrees - bend radius is maybe 6" for a 90 degree bend. I have armoured mains cable that has roughly the same diameter....

Its nowhere near 17" below the pavement when it exits the boundary of the property but the pavement has been resurfaced at least once since the house was built so if it ain't broken and all that....

[Black Sheep]

Wey hey !! Double mechanical protection for your UG feed .......... Duct AND Armouring !!

[guest]

It was probably the only cable the builders had left

[Mick]

Back to the OP, the fault was repaired the day after and no high pitch noise anymore.

However, we now have a lot of crackling and BB is dropping half a dozen times a day at random intervals; so there must be a dodgy connection somewhere.  It seems that I will have to call out an engineer soon.