Judean People's Front! Splitters!

Slutmonkey57b

Ok I have just moved into a new house - house is only about 3 years old so shouldn't have rotten copper BUT when I finally connected I'm getting speeds of 19-25k (33.6max). Disaster! And the line fails for DSL. Quelle Dommage! (sp?)

There is however a small white box glued over the phone point where the ****ing IDIOTS who lived here before I suspect installed a line splitter so they could have 3 phones in the house. As if anyone with a brain uses a landline for making calls nowadays. Didn't they know I'd be moving in? Gits. So, this little box has a normal socket for the phone line poking out the top, and the secondary wire leading out the bottom. Question is, how do I get rid of this POS without calling out an engineer or taking a sledgehammer to the socket (my preferred option)?

eircomtribunal

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Question is, how do I get rid of this POS without calling out an engineer or taking a sledgehammer to the socket (my preferred option)?

No worry. Doherty said this as an answer to a question in the Oireachtas Committee hearing on 2 Nov 2004 about line splitters:
"Eircom said on the record today that it was 8% or 9% up on pair gains in the country. Those are the sort of levels. We have an agreement with Eircom, as DSL deployment comes into place, that it has to remove the pair gains."

I am sure Doherty did not want to mislead the Committee.
Ask Comreg to make Eircom remove the line splitter or explain what they meant with their Committee statement.

P.

tribble

With "Pairgain" AKA "DACS" the white box is usually outside on the pole.

Where I live we have underground phone cables (and overground ESB, whatgives?) so God knows where they put the box in that case (thankfully I took a few days off to supervise the installation of new copper on my house, so there are now pairgains here).

The box you have sounds like ISDN (does it have 2 sockets and 2 big RJ45 sockets?).
This also causes the DSL line test to fail (but the copper is usually fine, you just have to downgrade to POTS, which is free for the next couple of months).

tribble

Slutmonkey57b

No - definantly not an ISDN line.

Where there is the normal wall socket for a normal single phone plug, a box has been glued over it - with another normal phone socket plug at the top - at the bottom is another wire that runs upstairs to service a third phone line. Opening up the box, both lines appear to be wired into the wall socket. So, do you reckon I can just unscrew the lot and crobar the box off?

tribble

OK, you said "small white box".
The ISDN ones is big.

They may have just installed a distribution block - basically a box you can feed a phone line into and feed a few phones off with their own cable.
This shouldn't cause the line to fail the DSL test unless there is lots of stuff plugged into the sockets coming off the block (or it is badly wired).

Remove it and get Eircom to retest (it happens every month or so anyway, but you may be able to ask them to do it sooner).

tribble

Ok, Ok - I have yet another suggestion (I'm drunk BTW).

As Muck pointed out some time ago - Eircom are doing free ISDN upgrades AND downgrades ATM.

ISDN requires a pretty good line, certainly one without a Pairgain splitter - so they have to remove one if it is there in order to install.
If you "upgrade" to ISDN and then downgrade soon after you should be left with a pretty clean line. It is not beyond the bound of possiblity that the remaining line is not good enough for DSL as it's requirements are higher but that would be unlikely.

SkepticOne

If all the phones ring at once then it is not a pair gain device or "splitter" and you should be able to remove the box and wire up a single phone with the appropriate socket.

However, this doesn't mean that you don't have a pair gain. It just means that that box is not it. The pair gain, if you have one, would most likely be outside on a pole. Or you could just have a dodgy line.

Slutmonkey57b

Ok - I whipped open my tool kit, avoided the kids who wanted to "help" and quietly unscrewed the "extra" line from the box and am now connecting at 40k.

Now I have a new problem.
I've been using a 1meg line in work and I forgot how to use the internet on a modem. Modems BLOW! God! How did I ever do this before?

spongebob

Muck has also said much about crappy internal wiring in peoples houses and how Eircom cannot be blamed for that .

M

Blaster99

But wouldn't it be semi-useful if Eircom could indicate that was a problem or even offer to fix it for a fee?

Slutmonkey57b

Ok - Thought I had the problem solved there but no, back to 26k this morning. Surely the wiring in a brand new house can't be that bad?

Slutmonkey57b

Ok - I subscribed to the "fix my line for free" bit with an ISDN install. As usual, the eircom tech guys buck the trend in the company by being honest and helpful. The message is the internal wiring is indeed crap (curse you whatever tramp developer built this house) and also chances of getting DSL out here are zilch. However he did mention that they're starting wireless broadband to the home soon. Anyone hear any more about this technomological development?

bminish

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

However he did mention that they're starting wireless broadband to the home soon. Anyone hear any more about this technomological development?

Yes it's 512k down 64k up, costs 605 Euro to get installed and is, I belive 40 Euro a month with a cap the same as thier basic ADSL offering .

.Brendan

Mr_Man

There is limited availability for this product as I believe that they are only operating it from 19 sites. If you ring them to ask about it you will initially be told that it doesn't exist, if your persevere then you may be put in touch with someone who knows about the service.

They will ask for your phone number and based on this they are able, apparently, to tell if you will be able to access the service. Having tried and failed to get this service, my area is not served by this, I can only wish you luck.

M.

Slutmonkey57b

Engineer this morning was pointing at 3 rock as the likely site for it but couldn't get through to the guy who knows the inside story on deployment so could only guess based on what they were telling him as normal.

€605 to install, eh? IBB charges what, €99? Sounds about right then.

oscarBravo

Mr_Man wrote:

They will ask for your phone number and based on this they are able, apparently, to tell if you will be able to access the service.

Presumably all they will be able to tell you is whether you are anywhere near one of the transmitter sites. I very much doubt whether they have LOS information associated with phone numbers - and it's very much a LOS product.