Superfluous copper

[Sam StonesParticipant @samstones42903]

Totally OT but …

Would anyone who understands broadband and would like to help please get back to me.

Australia is going through the process of replacing the old copper with fibre optic cable.

In the process, they cut off the copper (house) circuits which therefore become `dead’ and therefore superfluous. Or is it?

Is it not possible to simply `back-feed’ the telephone signal from the (new) connection box back into the `dead’ copper of the house via a wall socket?

Is there a simple `straight-through’ cable which will do the job?

Thanking you in advance.

Regards to all,

Sam

Edited By Sam Stones on 04/09/2015 03:55:01

[Sam StonesParticipant @samstones42903]

[Bruce EdneyParticipant @bruceedney59949]

Hi Sam

If you mean is it possible to use your old cables in your house to have extn phones running off the Fibre Voip system then the answer is Yes.

We have fibre and a Voip phone and the patch panel has a special (or not so special) connection block that splits the output of the voip modem 8 ways. This can then be fed through the CAT5 data cabling using the blue wire pair. However I am not sure you could use the old jacks. Can't see why not though.

[Sam StonesParticipant @samstones42903]

Thanks Bruce,

I'm not up to date with some of your terminology, although the Internet will no doubt help out there.

I imagine that a simple cable suitably terminated with the appropriate CAT5 plugs could be purchased off the shelf.

I also imagine that this cable would plug into the NBN connection box at one end, and into the nearest wall socket. Thus the old (superfluous) phone circuits become active again.

So far, I've drawn blank faces from various retail outlets including Telstra.

Thanks again,

Sam

[mahgniaParticipant @mahgnia]

Sam,

The old Telstra telephone cable (2 pairs max usually) will only be rated to carry an analogue signal. If you need a digital signal to your devices (VOIP, Ethernet,Internet connected devices etc) you will need to run CAT5 or CAT6 cable throughout the house, with an ethernet hub/switch to ditsribute the signal to each hard connected device.

Does your NBN connection box output digital or analogue signals? If the output is for an analogue telephone, I suspect your idea should work.

Andrew.

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

unless you have need of a very large bandwidth I’d be surprised if you got fibre actually to your premises (tho things may be different in Oz) in UK the fibre terminates in wall boxes in each street where the optical signal converted into electrical signals and the last 100m or so uses the old twisted pair to terminate at some modem/router/wifi box in your house from which cat 5 or cat 6 cable runs to your equipment (or you use the wifi) you can handle telephone signals over Cat5/6 cable no problem in UK there are converter boxes to guarantee that standard sockets are available as telephony uses a somewhat different connector (again Oz may well be different) – you can using baluns use Cat5/6 cables to transfer analogue video (commonly used for various domestic/shop CCTV recorder access)

You cannot readily transmit the high speed digital connections over telephony cables however – though you probably could kludge something using the various main power line adapters that are fairly cheap though you will need to provide some local power supply
If you do put in Cat5/6 suggest you bring all outlets back to some switch cabinet for convenience

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Australia has been fitting FTTH (fibre to the home) since 2001.

We're still diddling about with pilot schemes in the UK.

At least we are leading the world in preserving our historic telephone network

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_premises_by_country

Neil

[Bob YouldonParticipant @bobyouldon45599]

Good morning,

As I sit here tapping away on my machine the connection into the property is via fibre optic cable and we've had a fibre optic system here probably for the last twenty years, originally installed by Nynex who became Cable and Wireless and is now operated by Virgin media. distribution for both telephone and computer equipment throughout the house is by protected wireless connection, no wires involved, although I do have a fibre optic terminal here in the lounge should we need it for a television signal. So yes, there are places here in the UK where the fibre optic system has been installed and into the property to provide a "wire less" system.

Regards,

Bob Youldon

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

with dense population it is easy to place FibreToTheCurb within 100m or less of majority – this distance allows for several hundred Mb/s over copper pair and also provides the power necessary for landline telephony (admitted many people now have mobile phones so can still communicate during power cuts – which soon are likely to be almost as common as during Heath’s 3 day week)
Fibre to the premises is widely used in apartment blocks etc – the UK also experimented with it but found the economics wasn’t right for majority of customers – anyway for a domestic customer getting 1Gb/s over last 100m or so is no help when the line contention for the links back from local exchange are still very high
ETA for new housing estates etc the economics is probably more favourable for FTTH

Edited By Frances IoM on 04/09/2015 10:23:35

[Sam StonesParticipant @samstones42903]

Gentlemen,

Thank you for your input it is very much appreciated. However, I need to add a couple of points of clarification.

We haven’t yet had the `indoor’ connection box fitted, although an NBN utility box has now been fastened to the outside of the house.

Additionally, I have been able to examine briefly a friend’s indoor installation and the `kit of parts’ as supplied by Telstra/NBN. This includes a modem and a low-voltage plug-in transformer (power for the modem?).

Behind the cover of his (indoor) connection box, a loose coil of fibre optic cable is clearly visible and illuminated. This confirms to me that the fibre optic cable is brought indoors (FTTH), and not terminated in the street.

In our home, I intend to have the connection box fitted close to a mains power socket and a telephone outlet socket. This will be within a couple of metres from our desktop PC, which can thus be connected by cable to the connection box.

Currently, I have filters (?) fitted to all three telephone outlet sockets.

The visible wires in one wall socket are yellow, green, red, and black in that order.

Although the filters make contact with all four, the green and red wires are the `pair’ which connect to the telephones.

It would be nice to re-activate the superfluous copper in the way I’ve believed possible, but the simple solution would be to buy a cordless kit with three handsets.

Any more thoughts?

Thanks again,

Sam

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

In you old copper system the contract probably specified that you were allowed to connect several phones up to a certain total load measured as a "REN" number. Each phone has a REN number typically 2 and you add them up to find the total. If you go above your permitted total they might not work so well.

It was always only 2 wires that came into the house (but typically there were some spares in the cable) and got connected to all your phones. The new interface (perhaps part of the modem) will still have one of more connectors that have just 2 important wires and a few spares so you should be able to connect multiple phones just like you do now. The only thing is the drive power (total RENs allowed) may not be so high. You should check with your supplier what the interface can do. They might have provided more than one output to get the total up to what you had.

In the UK we are not yet allowed to deploy universally a non copper solution because the phone must always be available for emergency calls even with power cuts. A battery can be put in every interface but makes it rather big (as is done in parts of USA and Germany) and is too expensive at the moment.

[Sam StonesParticipant @samstones42903]

Thanks for that Bazyle.

It makes a lot of sense. I can't say what the total REN is here in Melbourne but seeing REN = 1 on the phone we have, I doubt if we've every reached the limit.

Good to know though.

Thanks again,

Sam

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by Frances IoM on 04/09/2015 10:19:34:
with dense population it is easy to place FibreToTheCurb within 100m or less of majority – this distance allows for several hundred Mb/s over copper pair and also provides the power necessary for landline telephony (admitted many people now have mobile phones so can still communicate during power cuts – which soon are likely to be almost as common as during Heath's 3 day week)
Fibre to the premises is widely used in apartment blocks etc – the UK also experimented with it but found the economics wasn't right for majority of customers – anyway for a domestic customer getting 1Gb/s over last 100m or so is no help when the line contention for the links back from local exchange are still very high
ETA for new housing estates etc the economics is probably more favourable for FTTH

Edited By Frances IoM on 04/09/2015 10:23:35

It's funny. Years ago, BT wanted to create a high speed fibre-based "digital highway" to bring us into the new digital age. That evangelist of the free market, Margaret Thatcher, decided that such technology would undermine the BBC (video on line etc), so she put the kibosh on it.

Particularly ironic, given her successors' irrational hatred of the BBC (and windmills, badgers, LEAs etc). And it sort of sticks in the craw that the UK tax payer has for months been paying for a nation wide advertising campaign exhorting us to get "super fast broadband", as if the likes of BT, Virgin, Talktalk etc can't be expected to fund that themselves.

You have to wonder what the UK would look like now if we'd had decent connectivity for the last 25 years instead of putting up with dial-up for so long. We used to get bombarded by Virgin Cable offering to install fibre to the house but when you rang up they'd say they actually had no plans to do so.

The vast majority of the UK only has fibre to the exchange or a street box, with copper down the street and into the house. No matter who you sign up with, it seems to be BT "Openreach" who actually install the house infrastructure. Not quite an open market yet, then.

Murray

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

A point of clarification

The national broadband network currently being rolled out across Australia is not Fibre to the home it is fibre to the node meaning a sub box in the street or in the basement of multi story buildings. That is when in a few years not months it might be N% finished. Ask a politician they know all about N.

I live 3km from the city of Melbourne and there no scheduled start time yet. You have to live within a marginal electoral boundary to be scheduled, I know same old same old!

Regards
John

PS: short runs of old 4 core telephone wire can carry a computer signal if they are in good condition.
Cat 5 is good for about 100 metres. I did it once it worked fine over about 20 metres. Anyway it is worth a try.
Before you do anything you should check the local regulations for any compliance requirements.

Important: Make sure the wire is completely disconnected from the phone system network. or risk damaging your network card or motherboard with the voltages generated by the phone system.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Don't know what people do with all tis bandwidth if they get it. It seems to be slow advert servers that hold up most of my browsing. I don't see any difference on this site when I connect at 3 Mbps and 160 Mbps.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

> In the UK we are not yet allowed to deploy universally a non copper solution because the phone must always be available for emergency calls even with power cuts.

A bit pointless when everyone relies on DECT phones…

Neil

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

I feel very jealous reading all this, here in NE Scotland can only get a phone signal down long, poorly maintained copper wire. The last time it broke the chap said he was surprised we could get a phone signal. Have satellite for the net. My big grouse is still have to pay BT the full wack on rental. As soon as I find some way to get a reliable mobile signal then Goodbye BT.

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Peter Cochrane was associated with a group I worked in in mid 70’s – he never let a good fact get in the way of an argument! – in the early 90’s very few outside of some industries had the need or could afford the equipment to utilise even a fraction of fibre speeds – the web was still virtually an academic’s plaything – home PC’s cost horrendous prices (my own home PC of the the early 80’s cannibalised with a couple of its mates to make a working version is now in Science Museum but cost well over a ?1000 in those days and certainly could not handle the video for TV or even video conferencing – universal fibre could only be made possible by very high cross subsidy by BT until consumer equipment had reached today’s prices – maybe that is the basis of Thatcher’s decision

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

I know nothing of Cochrane beyond this article that came up on Google. But I recall my own disappointment at the time. Funny how little this is known and this is one of the few hits that come up.

I was using PCs back in the 80s too. My first was a Compaq portable MkI that must have cost as much as a house when new and connected up to the embryonic internet via a Hayes 4800 baud modem acquired from an auction. I still have it.

Thatcher didn't undermine the BT initiative due to a lack of potential, quite the opposite. Free market dogma has caused a lot of damage over the years. Funny how the free market always seems to need regulators and government control yet it still goes seriously wrong.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

4800 baud – that was super fast compared to the old 300/600 or 150 baud used by telex.

The slow start was the Post Office who still controlled telephones and were frightened of losing their cosy monopoly by allowing anyone to use anything other than their modems, citing the safety issues of third party hardware putting mains onto the lines.

FTTH equipment is still rather expensive but the increasing deployment in USA is what is bringing the price down to affordable levels. Meanwhile VDSL will allow twisted pair users to get up to the speed cable was at 5 years ago.

Gordon, though you may resent the price BT charges you it probably costs them 10 or 20 times what it costs inside the M25 to actually maintain the line to a remote corner of their empire.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Gordon W on 06/09/2015 19:15:09:

here in NE Scotland … My big grouse is

… a capercaillie?

Neil

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

Interesting reading some of the above. Here in Cambridge NZ I am on fibre to the home and get 28Mbps. This is a small rural town and I am near the edge, actually on a rural delivery round for mail. When we moved in four months back the fibre was in the road but the tail into the house was not there, so I had to wait about two months and then they came and used a thrusting machine to put a duct under my lawn. The phone is also on the fibre. I wondered about connecting into the existing copper, but instead went and got a set of three Dect phones. The fibre termination, the Ethernet box and the phone base station are all run from a small UPS, so my end of the phone will work if the power goes down. Dunno if the other end will though! One reason I went for the Dect setup is that the phones can call each other internally, so that if the council ever comes through with the building consent for my new shed, I will be able to be called in for dinner from there.

I would readily concede that we probably don't actually need that speed in order to watch cat videos on youtube.

John

[HowiParticipant @howi]

Here in the UK you can not have just fibre to a house if you want a phone signal as well.

The phone system here although genetically digital, converts to analogue in the last stage and then gets sent over the copper cables to the home. 

To get any broadband or fibre you have to rent a phone line as well.

The broadband signal is connected to the phone line via filters and recovered via filters at the home end. All fibre to the street does is reduce the amount of copper wire on the last leg to the home, the copper wire still goes back to the exchange where the telephone equipment is.

The telephone system here still uses 50 volts on the line with 75 volt ringing signal.

Can not see this situation changing anytime in the near future.

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

Neil- big grouse-I'll have a treble please. Yes, I know it costs to repair the rural lines but not much more. How long does it take to drive 20 miles inside the M25? The people who deliver the letters will be using the same argument to stop daily deliveries.

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