Condition of the copper network

Moto Guzzi

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What are your opinion in general about the copper network till it enters your house ?

How does other countries copper cables way up ?
 

plenty

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England

I just arrived back from the UK, and was watching some BT guys working on the copper in central london, It looks identical to the crows nest you'll find at the end of your road... some silly little copper crimps and plastic containers used to insulate the cabling.

It was quite strange i was expecting to at least see something a little more first world but it's the same setup there. :D

Although i do believe there is a little bit more fibre under the ground there :)
 

mac_mac74

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just goes to show , we cant blame the copper for the **** bandwidth , its the arseholes that put it there
 

derekc

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I had and still have bad experience with our copper network. Frequent disconnects esp when it rains...sigh.
 

Surv0

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The amount of line problems, and high attenuation causing frequent disconnects is a clear indication of poor copper quality in the country. They need to relay them all again, with some non corrosive type of copper or with better insulation at least...
 

stoke

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I can hang from my teklom cable that runs over my pool. Actually damn strong.
 

cyberarmy

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I was told that the majority telkom copper was still those ones installed when telephone first came into SA, that's about 40-50year old?? Please correct me......
 

derekc

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The amount of money they getting from line rentals, they can prob lay copper around the world a couple of times. They always said it's required for maintenance. Maintenance my ass. Still get discons and noise.
 

Inertia

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Mine is k@k. My line potential is only abt 1.5megs, and i can never connect in the rain. Maybe next time they should use that 'insulation' stuff, i heard it protects against the elements
 

d0b33

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I can hang from my teklom cable that runs over my pool. Actually damn strong.

Yeah me to... havnt hung from it, but I've knocked quite a few times cleaning my pool and its pretty tough

But I'ts still a crap inferior quality line
havnt got adsl cause of it, cannot make calls (too much interference)
dialup wont even work anymore... just think how bad adsl will be

sticking with wireless for now
 

habat

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Mar 18, 2006
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Can I give you sum facts: Telkomsa put a lot of crap cable in. I dont no how long but it is for years and years. The cable is caried on a steel cable. The crap is the following: Datacable is standard 0,4 mm diameter telkom put up 0,25 mm . use your math or a calculator and find the resistance of the wire used. If Telkom ever improve this the cable has to be replaced. No way past this. Telkom has alredy increased the Voltage at the exchange to the max possible. IMHO it will be very expensive to improve on that. The only shortterm solution will be wireless.
 

BTTB

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Mine is k@k. My line potential is only abt 1.5megs, and i can never connect in the rain. Maybe next time they should use that 'insulation' stuff, i heard it protects against the elements

Check to see if there are no joins in the wire on your property.

There used to be a join on our fascia board at gutter height on the building.
This join is a simple little connector block with a click on cover.
They are poor quality connector blocks as they are not adequate for outdoor use. The metal in the block rusts after a few years and this is where you may be picking up problems?
Otherwise there is rainwater or surface water in the manholes.
In areas like the Cape Flats the Underground Water can come right to the surface in winter. I expect this is not good for Telkom Cables? :p

Check the incoming line from the pole to your house. You never know.
Hope this helps someone.
 

Surv0

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Telkom uses thinner cables purely to bring down the resistance, especially for long distance.

Mine is k@k. My line potential is only abt 1.5megs, and i can never connect in the rain. Maybe next time they should use that 'insulation' stuff, i heard it protects against the elements

Did you know that telkom uses paper joint insulators. When they splice lines together they just push a paper sleave over it. This is done to save money (true fact), the downfall is that under the ground alot of these joints get affected by groundwater, and you know wat happens to paper and water...
 

plenty

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Paper joins

this is false.

In general telkom uses small plastic crimps / sleaves, with copper barbs inside they slide the copper into the crimp and just push the top in, it makes a rather strong connection and perfect seal. These are then sealed inside a plastic watertight container. I'm pretty sure that if telkom used paper sleaves no-one would have any connectivity at all. ;)
 

Surv0

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They actually use a combination of plastic and paper, i did a course on telkoms network, given by telkom, and they stated it was paper, plastic in some instances, think it depends on where the joint is situated.
 

kaspaas

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The maintenance procedures of the last mile copper system is on par with the Telkom way of managing their national ADSL network.

The frequent, and increasingly often, ADSL hobbles indicates exactly what can be expected of the LLU copper - it will hobble more in future.
 
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