Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Weaver]

Just an idea. Does anyone know if it's possible to easily locate BTOR qualified field engineers who are working for themselves and who take on contract jobs ? I'd be interested in having someone who really knows what she / he is doing to inspect the village’s copper lines for damage and perform basic physical-layer tests.

I wouldn't know how to find such a person, nor how to assess experience and advanced skills. In my case geography makes things difficult of course.

Reason: I have intermittent copper faults - see earlier threads - which go away whenever any BT staff even think about the problem. (Psychic electrics.) In the absence of a very recent test-fail, my ISP doesn't seem to want to pay to send BTOR staff out on what is likely to be a wild goose chase, understandably. I wondered if a close inspection of the likely physical damage site might help, and I also wondered how many neighbours don't know that they have lurking problems, given that two of my lines were bad, one now possibly mended.

[licquorice]

Only BTOR employed engineers are allowed to touch the network and perform such tests.

[Black Sheep]

As above, and also certain elements of our contracted staff.

[aesmith]

Would OR do it as a chargeable job?

[aesmith]

Incidentally it's disappointing to hear that A&A can't resolve an issue like this.  Maybe I'm on a hiding to nothing getting them to take over our PSTN line - on the one hand they can't be worse than Pulse 8 who are simply refusing to act, on the other hand it costs £15 to get A&A to take it over.

[Weaver]

@BlackSheep et al - indeed, I understood that BT's kit is only to be tampered with by their own staff, quite understandably. I was thinking about someone doing a mere visible inspection of the highly likely damage site, and possibly sticking some test kit on my end of the line at the NTE. So non-intrusive stuff if you understand.

[Weaver]

As for AA, OR has possibly fixed line 3. However it doesn't appear to be the case, from the evidence of those logs I posted up in the relevant thread, that Aonghus Còir our BT engineer got stuck in while he was millimetres away from line 1, this despite my having given AA instructions to get it done and having given him the phone number for line 1 when he came to the house with his colleague.

AA simply felt they couldn't act if the line passes the remote copper test. But then it's going to fail straight away anyway next time you test it. So I told them I'm being a pest and sent them a smiley.

[Black Sheep]

@BlackSheep et al - indeed, I understood that BT's kit is only to be tampered with by their own staff, quite understandably. I was thinking about someone doing a mere visible inspection of the highly likely damage site, and possibly sticking some test kit on my end of the line at the NTE. So non-intrusive stuff if you understand.

There's hardly any tests that could be run to be honest.
'He' could check for a constant voltage reading, or perform a TDR if 'he' has the right kit ............ but I can't think off the top of my head what other tests of value could be conducted ?? Basically, a waste of your time and money, as it would be his.

[licquorice]

Agree with BS, visual inspection is unlikely to reveal anything either as the problem is likely to be in an underground/overhead joint inaccessible to the layman.

[4candles]

Thirded!

[Weaver]

Understood. Your experience valued as always.

[burakkucat]

I'll also add a brief note that the Isle of Skye is outside the range for Walter's Wheelbarrow. 

[Weaver]

The reasons I started thinking along these lines are twofold, ill thought-out though they may have been.

Firstly, the cable from Broadford to the village is completely exposed for ~ 75% of its length, there being no soil to bury it in on the high ground by the roadside, just bare rock. So it can easily be inspected for damage in some places. But probably the wrong ones.

Right near my house it used to be lying on the surface right by the road. This was many years back. Vehicles parking at the Heasta fank used to run over it all the time and were continually causing damage. Finally, BT came to their senses and buried it at that point, end of trouble.

Secondly, the recent trouble at the start of the year is linked to to a similar phenomenon, where, at the Harrapul fank, so I believe, which is near to Broadford, the cable is shallowly buried, but at least buried, in soil by the roadside. Vehicles use a patch of soft ground plus stone there to pull off the road for activities connected with that second fank. Mrs Weaver tells me that a big lorry dumped many tons of tree trunks there at the start of the year, a possible explanation for the trouble with the cable at that location which was supposedly fixed by BT at the start of this year - see earlier thread. BT have presumably already exposed the cable last week. So if no one has inspected my line #1, only line 3, which was worked on by BT and I presume was fixed, then I am disappointed, and was hoping for a re-inspection to examine the physical condition of both lines at that point. Not necessarily well thought through. If I were fit, I would go and look at the site myself to get an idea of how bad any possible lorry attack might have been.