Telephone Working

The telephone technician showed up at about 1.30 PM yesterday.  His name was Bruce and he had one a 6-year stint in the Australian army followed by a career at Telstra and now he was working as an independent contractor.  Bruce was also very, very good, both technically and socially, and we hit it off right away.

After I explained what I knew Bruce started by putting an instrument on my first telephone jack.  He then pointed out the erratic voltage profile of the line - to me it appeared to be a base line of 0 voltage with blips and spikes at random intervals.  He then adjusted the instrument and on the showed me the display graph which showed a wire break 58 meters away, which placed the problem at the telephone pole on the street.

Before we moved to the telephone pole I showed Bruce the card left by the previous Telstra technician with the box indicating 'no fault found' ticked off.  Bruce threw his head back and had the heartiest laugh that I've seen in months.

Pit at Base of Pole

Searching for Free Pair

At the pole I pointed out my loose phone wire blowing in the breeze and the shonky termination that did not give the connection much protection from the weather.  Bruce replied that all of that was at about the normal standard of Telstra's run down copper network.  He then opened the pit at the base of the pole and I was shocked at the water at the bottom of the pit and general state of grubbiness.  He replied that it was par for the course.  (gulp!)

Bruce then climbed to the top of the pole where only the cable from my house was connected and he immediately spotted the problem: one of the wires was broken - not a flaky loose connection but a definite clean break.  He then got to work giving me an alternate pair of wires from the bundle below and soon the system was ready for testing.  Before we left the pole Bruce strapped down my cable run down the top of the pole with plastic ties and re-routed the cable so that it entered the junction box at the top of the pole from below and not the side in order to protect the wires from the sun's UV radiation, which he reckoned had caused the break.

While he worked he chatted away answering my questions about both the current telephone technology and the Telstra organization.  I don't want to say too much in even this private blog, but in general I got a picture of a bloated organization with poor controls and where everyone lies to everyone else.  Some technicians will deliberately do a shonky job in order to get another callout in 3 months, and the company does not seem to have controls in place to monitor the work quality of individuals.

On the technical side, the 50V on the line is to carry the voice signal.  The ADSL (ie internet) signal passing through the same line using frequency modulation.  The "splitter" used to separate ADSL from voice at the wall plug passes the raw signal to the ADSL side but filters out the ADSL signal on the voice side, otherwise I would hear a whining sound on my telephone.   I asked Bruce if the USA had the same system and he thinks that it is the same because all of the diagnostic equipment that he imports from the USA works fine here.

Bruce at Work

Back at the house Bruce checked out the telephone service then hooked up his own modem to ensure that he was able to get "sync" on the ADSL connection.   I offered him a six-pack of beer in appreciation for his work but he declined, saying that he does not drink much beer.  He then wrote down his telephone number and told me to call him if I had any connection problems in the future.  Top man, and I was lucky to get him.

Junction Box at Pole

After Bruce left I telephoned Exetel to give them the good news.  I told them that they could close the job on the understanding that it would be reopened in the unlikely event that I had problems with the ADSL service.  I also put the boot into the first technician and asked Exetel  to advice Telstra that their man had either lied about checking my line or had shown unbelievable incompetence in not finding the problem at the pole, and he had wasted the time of Exetel, myself, and Telstra.

On our side, Stephen and I acquitted ourselves well.  From starting off with little knowledge of the issue we learned to probe for 50V on the line, eliminated the house as being the problem, and were looking at the pole with great suspicion.  We also learned the definition of a NBP and were able to inform Exetel that Telstra's obligation extended to my first telephone jack.  Wonderful as this work was, I must say that it is pretty sad when the customer has to do all of this research to protect himself, and then climb into the attic to probe the incoming telephone line.  

My next step is to find the wireless router which is somewhere in the garage and try to set it up.

On the renovation front, Paul telephoned yesterday and the roofing material will be delivered to the house on Monday, so hopefully the house will have been re roofed by the end of the coming week.