Tip - Slow NBN caused by phone sockets

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by gary

Thanks Marc and Merry Christmas!

Same to you and all the best for 2019 mate.

Originally Posted by gary

I am flabbergasted that they are sending installers out that would
get this wrong.

It really is so fundamental and not that difficult to train someone to do.

Plus it would be so easy to check that each phone socket is now on
the premises side of the modem and not going out on the network.

Contractors are outsourced to the lowest bidder. In the case of Telstra I recall a conversation I had with an old Telstra service guy at the joiner box pit in the street in front of my house about 15 years ago. He was about to retire and probably one of the last that were actually employed by Telstra. At the time I was moving from dialup to ADSL1 circa 2004 I reckon. He was lamenting about the "young ones" (outsourced contractors) being paid on a per job basis regardless if they spent 5min or 1h to sort out a problem so the incentive for them was to get in an out and clock the most amount of jobs per day as he had a fixed wage whether he was doing 10 or 20 jobs in the same period of time.

Originally Posted by gary

Having to send multiple people out to try and troubleshoot what should have
been done correctly the first time makes no economic sense either.

They could have pulled an optical fibre through using the existing twisted
pair as a draw cord and then there would have been no way to get it wrong.

You are lucky to get it sorted. There are probably plenty of poor souls
out there with the same problem getting the run around.

My migration from ADLS2 to NBN was a complete nightmare and went something like that. It was originally scheduled as 3 visits:

1_ Telstra Tech comes in and installs the modem
2_ NBN co tech comes in disable ADSL and connect NBN + phones
3_ Telstra tech follows up to make sure everything works.

I initiated the process in September 2017 and I had reliable NBN completed in May 2018. Between January 2018 and February I had no landline and patchy internet. Telstra, NBN Co, Telco Ombusdman, Telstra legal service, you name it and miles of emails and paper trails and refunds and apologies and what not. It 's working now but nobody made it simple.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Hmmmm
OK I think I understand (to a point), but...
How do you disconnect unused phone sockets???
I have the NBN connected but I'm pretty sure no one visited to disconnect all the other sockets ( I have two still on the wall)

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Merlin66

Hmmmm
OK I think I understand (to a point), but...
How do you disconnect unused phone sockets???
I have the NBN connected but I'm pretty sure no one visited to disconnect all the other sockets ( I have two still on the wall)

You don't. You make sure the existing phone sockets in the house are wired after the modem and not connected to the same incoming copper line as the NBN before the modem.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Ok, but I think this is not the case, the original phone connection and distribution within the house remains as was.....
Do I need an NBN techie to check the premises????

[AndyG (Andy)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

He was lamenting about the "young ones" (outsourced contractors) being paid on a per job basis regardless if they spent 5min or 1h to sort out a problem so the incentive for them was to get in an out and clock the most amount of jobs per day as he had a fixed wage whether he was doing 10 or 20 jobs in the same period of time.

I was yarning with an old Contractor (who used to be Telecom) about this a few months ago. He described a system which was essentially like Medicare, a code for a job, and payment for a code. More codes completed per day = more dough in the bank.

I always picked mangoes faster when I was paid per box. Sometimes I would skip past the higher, smaller mangoes to get to the fatter ones...

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by Merlin66

Hmmmm
OK I think I understand (to a point), but...
How do you disconnect unused phone sockets???
I have the NBN connected but I'm pretty sure no one visited to disconnect all the other sockets ( I have two still on the wall)

Phone sockets are typically interconnected by a possible combination of "daisy chain" (in series) and / or "star" (radiating back to a common point). In all the phone sockets, the respective contacts are inter-connected to all sockets, so you can plug a phone or ADSL modem into any socket.

FTTN / FTTC use much higher frequencies than voice / ADSL, and you can get major interference issues with any un-terminated lengths of cable, bad joins, etc. You want your internet line to run directly from the street to your modem, with no "branch" lines along the way or even "downstream" of the modem. Home owners have reported significant speed improvements by getting their phone points re-terminated after installation of NBN FTTN or FTTC.

If your modem is going to go at the first phone socket from the street, it is a simple job for a licensed cabler to simply disconnect all "piggy-backed" (downstream) sockets, which can be abandoned in place, or may be able to be re-used for your landline phone service (if you retain one after switching to NBN) by installing a second phone socket adjacent to the incoming socket, and connecting the "piggy-backed" sockets to that point.

If your modem location is at the second or subsequent point on the incoming line, all "upstream" sockets need to be removed and the cables rejoined cleanly, and all "downstream" sockets need to be isolated from the incoming internet line.

NBN will connect your existing phone line to the FTTN or FTTC system, but all of this in-home cabling improvement is the home-owner's responsibility to provide, at the home-owner's expense. (This is one of the hidden costs of the Abbott & Turnbull "cheaper, faster, more affordable" MTM.)

There is some general information on the NBN web site, if you go hunting for it:
https://www2.nbnco.com.au/residentia...isation#wiring
https://www.nbnco.com.au/develop-or-...nstall/cabling

[luka]

Nicely said Andy, they all just want to complete jobs as quickly as possible. In new NBN roll-out areas they just do the straightforward installs. Any difficulty and the house gets skipped.

As an example, we don't have NBN but the house behind us does. In a 4-townhouse block next to us the first and the fourth townhouse are connected to NBN but two middle ones are not. On the other side similar story, the front unit is connected but the back is not.

And to make things worse, 8 months ago when they were laying fiber optic cables they did something and basically halved our ADSL speeds

So no surprise about the dodgy installs

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Julian,
Appreciate the reply...but it honestly doesn’t help me...
Should I ask NBN or my NBN supplier TPG??????
Who are “lincensed cablers”????

[doppler (Rick)]

"NBN will connect your existing phone line to the FTTN or FTTC system, but all of this in-home cabling improvement is the home-owner's responsibility to provide, at the home-owner's expense. (This is one of the hidden costs of the Abbott & Turnbull "cheaper, faster, more affordable" MTM.)"

My copper from the pit in the street out front to the house is not good, do I have to pay for a cabler to replace the wires from the street to my modem, and then pay again when they upgrade the network to fibre to the premises?

[DarkArts]

Originally Posted by Merlin66

Julian,
Appreciate the reply...but it honestly doesn’t help me...
Should I ask NBN or my NBN supplier TPG??????
Who are “lincensed cablers”????

Many electricians are also licensed data cablers - if unsure, just ask for their license number. You can look in the yellow pages for "phone cablers" or "data cablers" if you want. You don't need a specialist NBN or "internet" technician.

You want a short, well terminated line from street (external junction box) to NBN (VDSL2) modem. As long as that same incoming copper terminates cleanly at one and only one socket, you should be fine.

If your phone sockets are daisy chained, pick the first one (the one wired to the street/junction box), which is usually the one physically closest the street (but check that to be sure) and disconnect the downstream wires.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by Merlin66

Julian,
Appreciate the reply...but it honestly doesn’t help me...
Should I ask NBN or my NBN supplier TPG??????
Who are “lincensed cablers”????

Fixing the internal wiring is the home owner's responsibility, to be arranged with your own Contractor - neither your RSP nor the NBN will probably want anything to do with it at all, but they MIGHT point you in the right direction (if you're lucky enough to make contact with someone who knows what they are talking about!)

Most major electricians will have licensed data cablers - or you can look at this Whirlpool list https://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/centra...ter_installers or this website of registered data cablers http://www.registeredcablers.com.au/find-cablers/

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by doppler

My copper from the pit in the street out front to the house is not good, do I have to pay for a cabler to replace the wires from the street to my modem, and then pay again when they upgrade the network to fibre to the premises?

If you are getting FTTN or FTTC, they will try to re-use the existing copper phone lines. (Other MTM technologies do not use the existing phone lines.)

NBN is responsible for the entire connection up to and including the point of connection within the home. You should not need to do anything about getting the copper out to the street upgraded. If they are able to achieve 25 Mbps when the connection is made, they will declare the job a "success"; if not, they may replace the copper, or declare your property to be a problem ("more work is required") which they will get back to eventually (by 2020 - or maybe later ...)

Note that the deployment is actually being carried out by contractors, and they have some discretion as to exactly what remedial work they will do in each area in which they work - but in general, they are paid on a per-premises basis, so they will try to get in and out as quickly as possible, and in practice, this means a lot of "difficult" homes are skipped in the initial roll-out.

[E23 (Andras)]

Originally Posted by Terry B

Not to show off but FTTP can be very good. This is my work taken this morning with others using the system. I only pay for 50/5 on the NBN.
They seem to be happy to give much faster than that.

Terry

You forgot "Thank you Barnaby Joyce"

Merry Christmas all

Andras

[Terry B]

Originally Posted by E23

Terry

You forgot "Thank you Barnaby Joyce"

Merry Christmas all

Andras

We are in the first streets in Australia to get NBN although it took 2 years to get it connected because we are a business and needed a corporate plan which wasn't available at the time. All good now though.

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Originally Posted by gary

Hi Jim,
But add unterminated branches to the transmission line such as unused
phone sockets and you could have multiple reflections which would
degrade your network performance.

Any additional phone lines should have just come from the appropriate
sockets on your modem.

If this is what happened in your case, then it begs the question how many
other FTTN and FTTC network connections have been improperly
installed around the continent.

I would suggest millions (Mainly FTTN given they are really only just gathering steam on FTTC)


I had to disconnect the phone extensions at a mates place for exactly the same reason. They don't even look at it, they come in, plonk the modem down plug it in and if it syncs up and works, job done.


The difference in his case was not as stark but it was still there, they were not the winners of nodelotto and even now only just top 25mbps so they must be an unfavorable distance from the node or have poor copper, though they are in a relatively new estate.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by The_bluester

I would suggest millions (Mainly FTTN given they are really only just gathering steam on FTTC)

Virtually none of the millions of premises which will be connected to FTTN or FTTC will get the internal wiring rectified by the NBN contractors when they are connected. Most existing homes in Australia would have two or more phone points. Almost all of those homes will get a sub-optimal FTTN / FTTC internet connection if the home wiring isn't fixed.

In many cases, the connection is "good enough" (especially if you're only going for a 25 Mbps connection or slower), but if you want to get the best internet connection you can, you really should look at testing your synch speeds, and getting the wiring fixed.

As I said - this is one of the hidden costs of the Abbott & Turnbull "cheaper, faster, more affordable" MTM - and most people aren't even aware that it is an issue.

[Exfso (Peter)]

The NBN techs are worse than useless, I had all sorts of dropout issues, had something in the order of 12 visits by NBN before the problem was found by an ex Telstra Tech. Up until then I had this procession of Indian lads who had absolutely no idea of what the problem was and at one stage one of them called some number in India and supposedly found out that I had internal issues within my house causing the problem. How someone in India could find this out is beyond me, but in any case after 6 months of me getting p1ssed off and the ombudsman getting involved it took this ex Telstra tech to find I had a high resistance in the line from my house to the pole. He replaced the wire and since then all good.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by Exfso

How someone in India could find this out is beyond me

Maybe that Indian guy who keeps ringing me really IS from the Windows Help Desk, and he really can fix my computer?!

[sharpiel]

Originally Posted by julianh72

Maybe that Indian guy who keeps ringing me really IS from the Windows Help Desk, and he really can fix my computer?!

Only if his name is Koothrapali

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Originally Posted by julianh72

Virtually none of the millions of premises which will be connected to FTTN or FTTC will get the internal wiring rectified by the NBN contractors when they are connected. Most existing homes in Australia would have two or more phone points. Almost all of those homes will get a sub-optimal FTTN / FTTC internet connection if the home wiring isn't fixed.

In many cases, the connection is "good enough" (especially if you're only going for a 25 Mbps connection or slower), but if you want to get the best internet connection you can, you really should look at testing your synch speeds, and getting the wiring fixed.

As I said - this is one of the hidden costs of the Abbott & Turnbull "cheaper, faster, more affordable" MTM - and most people aren't even aware that it is an issue.

Absolutely agree. It all boils down to what was posted above about techs getting a job rate, so long as it passes the techs wont spend the 30 seconds it takes with a screwdriver, or Krone tool if the house is younger, to disconnect lines heading inwards form the demarcation point. The buggers even fit the modems on peoples kitchen benches, next to the sink, if that is where what they reckon is the first socket happens to be. Better for them to be off tot he next job.


A mate was working for a tier two contractor until recently (When they moved him from a technical into a finance role, and then the (Perth) finance man he was now working for decided he did not want to have his offsider in Melbourne where the techs were)


Talking to him over the last year, the margins for what they were doing (The street work on the cooper for FTTC) were so thin that any revisit for any reason to a job site left that one underwater. Literally if they missed one photo for the as-built pack (Without which they wont get paid) and had to go back from the next job two streets away, the time cost meant it was a loss maker, potentially on both jobs.