Telephone Line Fault.

[DTCwordfan]

The line was down this morning, a fault identified in it off the property, probably a result of the storms here - now allfixed.

How come the Broadband was working all through the time that the phone was off (other than when the BT Open Reach engineer did his stuff?

[annieigma]

Hi,
the reson is that broadband will work down one wire, whereas a phone needs the 50v pos and neg return to work, which is the working pair ( two wires) so one of your wires was burnt in the storm, in a joint somewhere, the other remained stable. I can assure everyone this true, I am an ex BT engineer, and i thought it was strange.

[Old_Geezer]

Cutting edge tech from different eras.

[DTCwordfan]

Aaaaah thank you.....that makes eminent sense.

[ChuckFickens]

Broadband does need both wires of the pair, it's only a higher frequency carrier on the same pair as the voice.

But....if it's only a small break in the cable or a bad connection it's far more likely to be carried across the break via induction than the voice part and the 50V would never make it across the problem in the cabling.

the broadband may work, but you'd end up with a really unreliable broadband though.