[email protected] wrote: >(A) hairline >fracture(s) might explain why sometimes the service is OK, >sometimes it keeps breaking and can restore and sometimes >there is no connection at all. We are fed from a telegraph >pole across the lane and last year a county council man on a >tractor with a hedge cutter arm misjudged his route and >walloped the pole making the wires twang, this could have >adversely affected the integrity of the wire across to my house.
We are also supplied by overhead line (across the fields). We are only about 1.5 miles from the exchange as the crow flies, but the wire is less direct - don't know how far it is by wire. Back in the days when we used dial-up internet access we had problems with a lot of crackling on the line during voice calls and dropouts of the internet connection. I eventually got BT out and the chap found a problem with the wire which ran down the side of the house from the high level attachment of the overhead wire to the point where it enters the house. The two-core figure-of-eight cable had clearly been damaged in the past - the insulation was almost cut through across both cores, water had got in and one of the conductors had corroded to the extent that there was just point to point contact between the fractured ends of the wire. They replaced the whole length at no cost to us and the problem was solved. Since then part of the overhead line has been replaced as our next door neighbour objected to it running across their garden, and paid for it to be rerouted along the lane. We now have a reliable, if not over-fast, telephone and broadband connection. ISP is Madasafish who have given pretty good and reasonably competitively-priced service over the years. We also pay them for the phone line now. (PM me for a discount code if you're thinking of changing ISP). David Mack
