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[waltergmw]

Gentlefolk,

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article3794611.ece

(probably behind a pay-wall)

States that BT engineers (or possibly their subcontractors - ww edit) replacing stolen cables in the twin villages of Askam and Ireleth and in nearby Dalton in Cumbria were reconnected wrongly, diverting villagers’ inbound and outbound calls to the wrong houses to be answered by total strangers.

Kind regards,
Walter

[Black Sheep]

Yeah, can only read a couple of sentences without subscribing.

Not really big news though, as this can and does happen often. Obviously in the backwashes of some small Lake District villages, it's probably the most exciting thing to happen in the last decade ?? 

I can't see which kind of cable was stolen ?? E or D-side ?? The problem with crossed-pairs is that back in the day, a lot of cables (especially E-side) were what's called 'Random Jointed'. This means there was no 'pattern' to how the 'Pairs' were connected. As most will know, when jointing cables we follow a certain colour code so we know what is 'Pair1' or 'Pair 2' etc etc ....
With Random Jointing, rather than 'Form and read' the cable, the pairs were put through willy-nilly, the an oscillator was used to 'Prove' which pair went where.

So, once the thieving oiks have cut out a section of cable, it's impossible to joint the replacement cable up as it was before. The only way would be to use a 'Field Telephone', connected to one pair at a time at the cut cable going towards the customers. Using this device we can then ring the EU's phone. You then have to hope somebody is in to answer it, and that they will give you their telephone number. A lot wont worrying that it could be a scam.
Once we have this number, we can then joint through the correct circuit.

Imagine having to do this on a 4800 pair cable ?? Imagine the chances of everyone being at home whilst performing this operation ?? Imagine them all willing to give their numbers to a stranger on the phone ??

Now, apply reality and its quicker and easier to just joint up the new cable, and mop up the crossed connections as they are reported, which is the easiest of tasks an engineer will ever have to undertake.

There's usually a good reason behind most things, Walter. You just need to be aware of them.      

[waltergmw]

@ BS,

I do sympathise with your predicament.
What really annoys me are the stupid selfish criminals causing immeasurably more work compared to the tiny amounts of money they can steal.

It isn't as if you chaps were swanning around all day waiting for these utter buffoons !
Sooner or later the thieves will be responsible for the death of someone unable to make a 999 call.

Kind regards,
Walter

[Black Sheep]

Even more foolhardy, is when they've 'recovered' the cable,  they nick the actual manhole covers (approx. 100lb each in weight), leaving bloody great holes in the middle of the road !!
You will gather from my first reply, Walter, it's a travesty that BT get bad press when the real issue is the thieving scrotes and their activities.

[kitz]

According to this

On Monday [10/6/13], several hundred metres of cable was stolen from sites in Ulverston and Dalton.

Bill Johnston, managing director of The Bay, said on Monday: “We are on emergency back-up without usual programming.”

The Bay received a report from BT and Arqiva, blaming the problems on the theft of a 200 pair cable in Ulverston and another 400 pair cable in Dalton.

The report said 180 metres of each needed to be replaced before the station can return to the airwaves.

>>> once the thieving oiks have cut out a section of cable, it's impossible to joint the replacement cable up as it was before. The only way would be to use a 'Field Telephone', connected to one pair at a time at the cut cable going towards the customers.

Sounds like cable hell nightmare

>>> What really annoys me are the stupid selfish criminals causing immeasurably more work compared to the tiny amounts of money they can steal.

Exactly!  With Emergency Services not being available it could have disastrous consequences.

A BT spokeswoman said that as of yesterday  evening there were still 90 faults – down from a peak of 240 last week – affecting the area. She said engineers were due to finish reconnecting customers’ phone lines by the end of today. [article date 18/6/13]

link

[asbokid]

"Brenda Armistead, of Estuary Park, Askam, has been inundated with calls intended for the Askam and Ireleth Parish Council chairman George Twiname.

Meanwhile, all calls made to her number are being answered by another woman in the village.

Mrs Armistead said: “I daren’t ring out because I don’t know whether my phone calls will be going on to this other lady’s bill.

“I have a sister in Canada and a son in Saudi Arabia and I haven’t been able to get in touch with them,” she said."

“It’s awkward because I don’t want to be on somebody else’s number and have them getting billed for my phone calls.”

What a moaning minnie!   It sounds perfect.  International calls billed to someone else! Now who'd grumble at that?!

cheers, a

[c6em]

The best way for her line to fixed ASAP is to announce loudly that she will be using it to max now that someone else is being billed for it.
BT will be round the next minute to sort it
Create a Crisis Management  - never fails

[Black Sheep]

Thanks for the update, Kitz. It was definitely 'E-side' cable then, going from the cable-pair sizes being quoted.

As an aside, (and just for info), the damage may not just stop at where the thieves struck. As the E-side cables are pressurised, the section of cable left unpressurised can easily see moisture tracking up it. The SSR (Second Stage Repair) lads who attended site will have had to 'Set up a bottle' (compressed air), to try and keep the remaining in-situ cable fault free, whilst pulling in the new cable and repairs carried out.

The other thing to bear in mind, is that the rotters (biting my lip here), always cut the cable at the duct mouths, so they may have pinched lets say 200mtrs of cable, but the actual replacement may need over 300mtrs pulling in to be able to joint in the carriageway boxes.

As I've said, the press are quick to jump on a BT story (that's their job I suppose). It makes for a good headline professing 'x' amount of customers have crossed lines, but I feel it's my duty  to make folk aware of the behind-the-scenes reality of it all. 

[Black Sheep]

The best way for her line to fixed ASAP is to announce loudly that she will be using it to max now that someone else is being billed for it.
BT will be round the next minute to sort it
Create a Crisis Management  - never fails

Urban myth !! We will get there when we're good and ready ..... ie: after the café, and possibly before Xmas. 

[kitz]

^^^ 

[c6em]

On a more serious note - I've had it happen to me.
2 pm one afternoon would you believe it - E side cable sections.
A local resident even drove past the "crew" doing the thieving and thought nothing of it - well they were workmen working on something weren't they!
Obviously BT had to cut back to the nearest joint boxes beyond the damage - yes some 300 yards apart.
BT were there for just over a week working dawn to dusk 7 days/weeek inc the weekend.
A large site-office type van at each end of the section as I recall plus a number of standard BT vans - traffic lights between the ends.
Very close to the exchange actually.

Curiously round me we all seemed to go live around the same time - I would have thought that each line would go live as it was itself re-connected so some lucky ones would only be off for a day - obviously not.
Anedotally I only heard of one mis-connection.  A residential line x'd with a commercial line....I guess the network records were wrong on that one.
To be honest I think BT did a good quick job on this one.  No difference in the ADSL2 performance at all post mend.
They only niggle is in the informing residents bit.  I was on the phone and internet when it was cut so was one of the first to report it.  I got all the usual **** from the call centre about checking my NTE5 and they could not get line checker to work at all. People phoning me got an engaged signal all the time.  I was told a BT engineer needed to visit in x days.  After that I never heard anything ever - and no, the BT engineer never came to visit. It was left to residents to mobile phone among themselves to figure out what was happening and make wild guesses as to how long.

I did hear some story that not only was it our E-sides but they also took out part of the exchange side connections feeding the next exchange beyond (a small ADSLmax 400 subscriber exchange).  This indeed the logical route for this second exchange cable feed to run (CITY- our exchange[21CN/4000 subscribers] - other exchange)

[Black Sheep]

'Informing residents'. Tough call.

Lets say the cable gets cut at 2pm. You're the first EU out of anywhere between 200 and 4800 EU's to notice, and ring the Fault Reception (Usually India). They will, of course, go through their routine script as they are unawares at this point as to the severity of the problem.
This will continue to happen until either a) Our systems pick up that there are lots of 'Common' faults being reported, or b) Somebody actually reports a cable theft and an engineer attends site, who in turn informs the relevant departments.

All this takes time.

If it's classed as a serious enough 'Outage', then voice messages will be left on Fault Reception stating as much. I've been asked by EU's why we don't knock on doors informing the EU's of the problem ?? Again, imagine the timescales involved of lets say 10 engineers walking around trying to inform the EU's of the circumstances ?? Some would be happy with a 2-line explanation, some would want to know the in's and out's of a ducks ar5e, some would spend long minutes explaining how they rely on the phone/Internet for a variety of reasons ............ the list is endless and in no way practical use of engineering staff.
Another factor to consider, is that how many of the pairs in the cut cable are in use, and more importantly, which houses are connected to the working pairs ?? To collate this info and inform the same individuals would take longer to achieve than the actual repair.

You've hit upon the best way to get the message across, by word of mouth from the EU's affected.

The reason you didn't get an engineering visit would have been that our 'Commons' control would have ceased issuing the tasks related to the cut cable. They put them in a holding queue until the SSR lads have done the business, then they perform bulk remote line tests. Any 'faulty' test result, will see that particular task put back into the normal engineering queues to be re-issued.

As I always try to get over, try and see the bigger picture when something like this happens. We are really good at this stuff, and there are hundreds of examples of our success on this kind of incident.