FTTC - Bridge Tap removal saga

UploadJohn — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 14:09:29 GMT

We've had FTTC since 2016, it started off with Plusnet. We're on a short rural line that's roughly 550mtrs from a quiet Huawei cabinet.

The estimates for our line are as below -

Ever since 2016 we've had a very poor upload, I have spent years trying to investigate it, Plusnet sent an engineer who ran a pair quality test and said "Nothing wrong, we don't guarantee an upload speed" then left, a few years pass by..

Just before Covid hit we were with BT (as we are now) who also sent an Engineer out via Openreach, they also ran a pair test but couldn't find a fault, together with the Mod team we discussed a second engineer but Covid was starting to get out of hand and we decided to leave it until the situation calmed down.

Fast forward to July 2022 during the heat and the internet starts dropping multiple times a day, so once again with the help of the mod team I had an Engineer out who couldn't find any fault.. but had noticed the line recently 'improve' maybe as a result of the heat melting something dodgy back into place?

I mentioned the slow upload speed and politely requested they access the HLog on the Exfo tester unit where they found a nasty Bridge Tap, the engineer couldn't work out where this was so suggested he leave for the day and we replace the Smart Hub 2 with a new unit in case that was faulty.

Upon receiving a replacement unit I had the Mod team run another GEA test which came back as a Bridge Tap result, I then removed the phone from the master socket to rule this out and it still came back as a Bridge tap.

As a result of all this a new Engineer visit was raised, a Qube Engineer came out who confirmed that there is no internal wiring within the premises to cause a Bridge Tap, the line enters the house straight from the DP where it comes through the Brick work into the latest Filtered faceplate mastersocket where it feeds the SH2 & a solo landline phone.

The engineer reported back to Openreach that the fault is within their network but ever since I've been stuck in a cancelled engineer loop as I'm assuming all the tests bounce back as fine possibly?

I've even had an unlocked HG612 monitoring the line for an hour the other day to show the Bridge Tap.

The Stats from the SH2 which I'm currently using show

All this seems to result in a very high ping when uploading, I could do with this solving so I've got the Full bandwidth of the upload in order to access the Farm CCTV when I'm away from the Farm.

I hope the above all makes sense, I'm just trying to get my head around how to get Openreach to accept there is a fault that they need to fix?

Re: FTTC - Bridge Tap removal saga

UploadJohn — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 13:45:59 GMT

Massive massive thanks to @JohnC2 and @NeilO and their team for the help with this one, I couldn't have done it without you. You've been fantastic all the way through.

After many visits from Openreach the issue has now been resolved, all along the Bridge Tap/Bridged Tap was being caused by a Lightning Protection Joint in the roadway outside the cabinet.

This was tee pieced into quite a few lines and causing issues for other users and not just myself, infact.. three neighbours all now have full upload speeds.

Hopefully this post may help others in the future with Bridge Tap issues!

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FTTC - Bridge Tap removal saga

Re: FTTC - Bridge Tap removal saga