A recent engineer call-out to investigate an intermittent line fault on a line being used by a credit card terminal (PDQ). The client got in touch as they tried to report it to their merchant; they were asked to test the line directly from the master socket (NTE). As all the lines -see picture- were in such a mess they had little confidence carrying this out and concerned they might disconnect something by accident.
The services had originally been installed badly by BT Openreach- all slung loosely in the bottom of their comms rack-see pic. We traced and removed all the line NTEs and the incoming main distribution point (D.P.) from the rack and fitted them all to the back wall next to the rack as is correct practise. Now all their telephone lines can be accessed and tested safely and easily. A faulty telephone lead was diagnosed as the nature of the line fault . The muddle of telecom wiring made the fault finding exercise 3-4 times as long as it should. Fortunately for the client they got in contact with us. Had they booked this with Openreach they would have been billed severely at their inflated rates as the cause was not actually BT equipment; ironic since all the time this took was largely down to Openreach bad practice.
