FTTC Profile Change Advice

[Vysey]

Hi everyone,

I had an OpenReach engineer visit today to fix a line fault which caused my internet speed to drop drastically over the past few days. One of the things he mentioned was that I was on an 80/20 line profile but my phone line is made out of aluminium/tin so suggested that I request that TalkTalk change my line profile to a 55/10 one.

He said this might actually help get a better sync speed than what I'm currently getting (40/8.4) because the cabinet wouldn't be pushing as much bandwidth down the line which is essentially too much for it to handle.

Does anyone have any advice on if this will actually help and/or if one of the TalkTalk team could do this if it would help?

My main concern is the upload speed as I have a YouTube channel and some of the 4k video files can get pretty large. If this change would mean instead of getting on average 7-8mbps upload speed I could hit 10mbps and possibly a little more on my download speed then it would be worth a shot.

I've attached an image of my current line statistics and sync speed.

Thanks in advance!

**Edit**

Forgot to mention that FTTP (Full Fibre) isn't available in my local exchange at the moment and OpenReach have cancelled the upgrade plans according to their roll out map :(.

[Sidious]

If they changed over to the spare pair, very likely the normal pair are damaged/cut. That would be the case regardless what conductor material was used. Copper wires aren't indestructible and can be damaged too!

I'm told there are still some aluminum (Alum) conductors from the 70's in use today on telephone lines so it IS possible for you to have Alum wiring, but it's a small possibility. BT should really have pulled their finger out when the problem(s) with Alum became apparent and replaced ALL of them.

My point in my previous posting was some mistake tin-coated copper for Alum.

I do hope you get the profile set optimally for your situation.

[Vysey]

Thanks for that very detailed reply! Much appreciated :D.

I'm not entirely sure what my phone line is made out of in that case. Although the engineer did say they moved me onto a "spare" line because the one I was connected to had degraded and broken so possibly would indicate that it is tin?

I just wish OpenReach hadn't cancelled plans to upgrade my local exchange to FTTP as other local exchanges have been upgraded. Uploading content on such a slow connection is painful 😥

[Sidious]

As an aside:-

While the GPO (which was responsible for UK telephony at the time) did indeed use aluminium wires during the 70's (as a cost-saving exercise - copper prices had reached astronomical heights), it's use came with all sorts of issues (breakages, corrosion, more chance of high resistance problems, to name but a few).

However some copper wires are in fact tinned (they have a small layer of tin coating the actual copper conductor), which some people mistake to be aluminium as the tin coating has a similar colour.

BT80 Conn. Box

As in the picture above, the orange and white wires connected to the screw-terminals A and B respectively (which form [albeit loosely] a twisted pair, believe it or not!) look similar to aluminium wires, but are actually tinned copper. I think that the use of aluminium wires ended some time before the orange-and-white pair were used.

Not all drop-wires have tinned copper conductors, I hasten to add; some are just bare copper.

[Vysey]

Hi Karl, thanks for the reply! That is a shame, it would have been ideal to try this approach mentioned by the engineer to see if pushing less bandwidth from the cabinet down the aluminium line to my home would have increased the overall speed instead of trying to "max" it out at 80/20 (which if my line supported I'd be happy with until full fibre arrives in my area, if it ever does!).

[Karl-TalkTalk]

Hi

If your external lines are aluminium, there is little that can be done to change or affect the speeds.  Aluminium lines were laid back in the 70s and 80's by BT to save money and are not as god a conductor as copper.  I've dealt with these issues a number of times before, and no improvement can be made until the lines are upgraded however Openreach will only do this when it is cost effective for them to do so.

With regard to the profile, this is an automated system that is controlled by Openreach and we are unable to change or set the profile, this can only be done on the openreach side.

Karl.