Internet Service Provider (Copper Line - Telus specifically) question

[yawn]

Hi everyone, I don't even know how to research this because I don't fully understand what the tech explained to myself, and our family either. But this is the story: Our Wi-Fi has been constantly dropping every so often, and our speed only reaches 75Mbps (which I think is still somewhat fast, but very slow compared to a Fiber). Unfortunately, our area has not been upgraded yet and so the copper line is our ONLY choice. We spoke with Telus about it, and they sent an agent over. He said we could upgrade to 100 Mbps but we would need to run "another line" to the house and then have it "bonded".

 

I don't know what this means but he seemed to think it was virtually impossible, wouldn't fix any issues, and could potentially make them worse. Telus was going to give us this free of charge. He said he would swap the lines on the internet to see if that would help in the meantime, but it would take way too long to complete a job like that, so he's leaving it as incomplete and will come back next Friday.

 

Next Friday rolls around and we don't hear from him. Friday after that we finally get a call from him asking how things are and he's sorry he wanted to take last Friday off, then goes into how upgrading our speed to 100 Mbps is not worth it, and could cause tons of issues and stated, "At least 1 or 2 days a week, somebody in your house is maxing out your internet speed to the maximum and I confirmed with several other techs this, and they all agree it wouldn't help and could cause more issues, etc..." 

So for the Internet savy people, what does "adding another line" and "bonding" it mean, and what does he mean it could "make things worse." and "100 Mbps won't fix your issue."

 

Sorry for the long read, and I appreciate any help or suggestions in advance. We've been customers of theirs for 20+ years and just mind-blown at how the tech before this one offered a free upgrade to 100 Mbps and now the other one is like "it won't help. ALL the other techs agree with me." I'm beyond frustrated sorry.

[Goalie29]

I'm a former TELUS technician.

 

Bonding essentially means using two copper paths to combine to give you a stronger signal.  You probably have a black modem.  On the back where the phone line goes in, there are two ports.  You are currently only using one.  The modem itself combines the two signals to create one.  Having two at 50 Mbps for a combined 100 Mbps is better than having a single line struggling to give you 75 Mbps.

 

As for swapping lines, that's a common fix.  Copper lines corrode over time.  That corrosion causes noise and errors on your line.  If they can find a cleaner line, then you get a cleaner signal.  That's one of the reasons the goal is to eventually switch everyone to fibre optic.  Fibre is glass and doesn't corrode.  Plus it is WAY faster.

 

The other issue could be the Wi-Fi itself.  Do you have clear line of site to the modem?  Things like brick fireplaces, metal ductwork, kitchen appliances or even lath & plaster walls tend to disrupt the internet signal.  In some situations, moving the modem is the best approach, but you would still need a technician to do that as the jack the modem is using should have a POTS splitter on it making it a dedicated internet jack.

 

I'm confused a little about sending an agent over.  Was it not a tech?  Did they have no tools? 

 

Hope that helps.  If you have any more questions, feel free to fire them my way.

[Alflives]

The Alf’s have only a data plan. Basically unlimited fast data. No wires. Go to that. Do away with wire connections. 

[yawn]

2 minutes ago, Goalie29 said:

I'm a former TELUS technician.

 

Bonding essentially means using two copper paths to combine to give you a stronger signal.  You probably have a black modem.  On the back where the phone line goes in, there are two ports.  You are currently only using one.  The modem itself combines the two signals to create one.  Having two at 50 Mbps for a combined 100 Mbps is better than having a single line struggling to give you 75 Mbps.

 

As for swapping lines, that's a common fix.  Copper lines corrode over time.  That corrosion causes noise and errors on your line.  If they can find a cleaner line, then you get a cleaner signal.  That's one of the reasons the goal is to eventually switch everyone to fibre optic.  Fibre is glass and doesn't corrode.  Plus it is WAY faster.

 

The other issue could be the Wi-Fi itself.  Do you have clear line of site to the modem?  Things like brick fireplaces, metal ductwork, kitchen appliances or even lath & plaster walls tend to disrupt the internet signal.  In some situations, moving the modem is the best approach, but you would still need a technician to do that as the jack the modem is using should have a POTS splitter on it making it a dedicated internet jack.

 

I'm confused a little about sending an agent over.  Was it not a tech?  Did they have no tools? 

 

Hope that helps.  If you have any more questions, feel free to fire them my way.

 

Oh my hero! Sorry it wasn't an agent it was a tech. He drove the big Telus van and had all the tools. 

 

So your first point:

1. why did he say bonding the two wouldn't give us a stronger ANYTHING. He was ADAMANT it would ONLY make things worse.

2. The WIFI box is centralized in the house, and the previous tech also gave us an extender.

3. Signal strength is always "Very High" or full bars. It'll just drop and go to our data, Tv's will get interrupted, all our stuff disconnects, then it comes back. The previous tech before this one said the bonded internet would help because we always cap out our speed so I'm so confused that both techs are giving conflicting answers, and now you're telling me that bonded is just better. 

I'm not joking he legit said he's tried to do bonded in several houses before and it always makes things worse, and can take weeks to fix and the job would take hours. I've never had a tech come to the house saying "This job will take too long so I'm leaving it incomplete and I'll check back on it weekly." and then try to talk us out of a free upgrade. Is that normal?

[Gawdzukes]

33 minutes ago, Goalie29 said:

I'm a former TELUS technician.

 

Bonding essentially means using two copper paths to combine to give you a stronger signal.  You probably have a black modem.  On the back where the phone line goes in, there are two ports.  You are currently only using one.  The modem itself combines the two signals to create one.  Having two at 50 Mbps for a combined 100 Mbps is better than having a single line struggling to give you 75 Mbps.

 

As for swapping lines, that's a common fix.  Copper lines corrode over time.  That corrosion causes noise and errors on your line.  If they can find a cleaner line, then you get a cleaner signal.  That's one of the reasons the goal is to eventually switch everyone to fibre optic.  Fibre is glass and doesn't corrode.  Plus it is WAY faster.

 

The other issue could be the Wi-Fi itself.  Do you have clear line of site to the modem?  Things like brick fireplaces, metal ductwork, kitchen appliances or even lath & plaster walls tend to disrupt the internet signal.  In some situations, moving the modem is the best approach, but you would still need a technician to do that as the jack the modem is using should have a POTS splitter on it making it a dedicated internet jack.

 

I'm confused a little about sending an agent over.  Was it not a tech?  Did they have no tools? 

 

Hope that helps.  If you have any more questions, feel free to fire them my way.

 

I had similar issues when I lived in Calgary for awhile. I moved to another city so I could get center ice and watch the Canucks.   What do you mean by swapping lines though / finding a cleaner line. Like you mean running another line, or digging up an old one?

[Canuck You]

47 minutes ago, Alflives said:

The Alf’s have only a data plan. Basically unlimited fast data. No wires. Go to that. Do away with wire connections. 

Thank God! we don't want you tripping over a wire while you're drunk.

[Optimist Prime]

I am out of telecom since y2k but also have a wider tech background on top of wiring. Goalie seems to be current and a great source! 

All I popped on to add is the original wiring could be 40 or 50 years old and not optimized twisted pairs. In current 26 pair strands and cat5E cables each of the "white blue", "white orange" "white green", "white brown" and "white slate" twisted pairs are a unique number of twists per meter relative to each other to minimize electromagnetic fields from each pair interfering in other pairs, it is pretty genius stuff really, and then the cable sheathing has some protection built in and when the sheathing of a cable is properly bonded and grounded (which was my guess about the "bonding" comment from your tech) then emi is reduced and "crosstalk" or interference is reduced greatly. 

 

I think when they are saying doubling the line to 100 from your max of 75, if I understand correctly, it is more likely they mean your max traffic is already a burden on your 75 service and won't solve with a mere 25 more. However the random drop of total service sounds to me to be your main issue, bumping up against your max level service is secondary to the random drop of total service. 

 

I had similar total drops in service for seconds at a time when I had low end service as well and cabling is not the reason. It is equipment related and I never could resolve it until we moved away from those areas with low levels of service. It never happens with my 1.5 gb service, but happened all he time with my 75 and 100 mb service. 

 

In my mind it is as if the CO (central office of the wiring in your district)has a max capacity in for your service area and when the total load exceeds it, random subscribers are dumped momentarily. Shrug. I don't know and couldn't prove it, but that could be why the tech doesn't think doubling your line will help. New cabling would certainly clean up the signal if you have 50 year old cables between your house and the pole and won't help if the cable is 80 years old up on the poles going back to the CO.

 

Sorry I am not much help at all, and I certainly would defer to current linemen/installers who know current situations. One thing that may help in the future is the federal governments investment in high speed rural internet access. Several trouble zones have been identified coast to coast to coast and are being addressed via cooperation between govs and telecoms. You may have much better option in coming years.

[Goalie29]

11 hours ago, yawn said:

Oh my hero! Sorry it wasn't an agent it was a tech. He drove the big Telus van and had all the tools. 

 

So your first point:

1. why did he say bonding the two wouldn't give us a stronger ANYTHING. He was ADAMANT it would ONLY make things worse.

2. The WIFI box is centralized in the house, and the previous tech also gave us an extender.

3. Signal strength is always "Very High" or full bars. It'll just drop and go to our data, Tv's will get interrupted, all our stuff disconnects, then it comes back. The previous tech before this one said the bonded internet would help because we always cap out our speed so I'm so confused that both techs are giving conflicting answers, and now you're telling me that bonded is just better. 

I'm not joking he legit said he's tried to do bonded in several houses before and it always makes things worse, and can take weeks to fix and the job would take hours. I've never had a tech come to the house saying "This job will take too long so I'm leaving it incomplete and I'll check back on it weekly." and then try to talk us out of a free upgrade. Is that normal?

 

Sorry to not reply again last night.  It had been a long day. 

 

So it sounds like the signal itself is the issue and not the Wi-Fi.  I was just trying to rule things out.  I'm not sure what they mean by capping out your speed, unless they are talking about capping out your bandwidth.  But that's tough to do.  Streaming services use about 6 Mbps (although 4K would be way more).  So you would need to be trying to run Netflix on a dozen TVs before you used up your bandwidth. 

 

At least one of your TVs is wired, not wireless.  Does it have the same issues?

 

It's been a few years since I was a tech, so the organization may work a little different than when I did it, but copper is copper so the technology should still be the same. 

 

The only thing that would take too long is referring the job to cable repair.  If the lines in your area need clean up, they would refer the job to cable repair, they would do their thing, then refer the job back to the tech to complete.  That can take time as there are far fewer cable repair techs than there are installation & repair techs.  And the idea that they will check on it weekly is a little baffling.  If he does nothing, what does he think will change?  My only theory is that maybe the second tech was maybe a contractor and doesn't get paid much for bonded upgrades?  I can't think of any other reason they would say that.  Sometimes being a tech is a little trial and error, but I would at least try changing something to see if that fixed it.  Doing nothing doesn't solve anything. 

 

Are your phone lines coming to the premises aerial or underground?

 

11 hours ago, Gawdzukes said:

I had similar issues when I lived in Calgary for awhile. I moved to another city so I could get center ice and watch the Canucks.   What do you mean by swapping lines though / finding a cleaner line. Like you mean running another line, or digging up an old one?

 

On the way to your home the wires travel in big bundles.  There might be dozens, even hundreds of wires that pass by your home and go to your neighbour's home, and their neighbour's home an so on.  Even the line going from the street to the house often has two or four pairs of wires within the cable.  At every junction point there is a possibility of corrosion.  So sometimes it just a matter of swapping to another pair of wires within the bundle to get a better signal.  Most of Calgary has underground wires (no geography there to get in the way) so it's less problematic, but it can still happen.

[Goalie29]

11 hours ago, Optimist Prime said:

In my mind it is as if the CO (central office of the wiring in your district)has a max capacity in for your service area and when the total load exceeds it, random subscribers are dumped momentarily. Shrug. I don't know and couldn't prove it, but that could be why the tech doesn't think doubling your line will help. New cabling would certainly clean up the signal if you have 50 year old cables between your house and the pole and won't help if the cable is 80 years old up on the poles going back to the CO.

 

One thought I had was possibly just a crappy DSL port.  I've had times where just a port change solved the issue.  But that only works if the lines between are clean in the first place.  If this job were assigned to me, I would try things in that basic order, from the premises back.  Check the drop.  Swap pairs from the SAC box to the RA terminal.  Go bonded.  Swap ports.  But I had a meter and could test at every junction to track down the underlying issue.

 

One of the underlying problems that happens is that the company doesn't want to throw a lot of money at old copper cable if it's going to get upgraded to fibre soon.  Which is totally understandable.  It would be like putting new tires on a car you are about to send to the wrecking yard.

[Goalie29]

11 hours ago, Optimist Prime said:

then the cable sheathing has some protection built in and when the sheathing of a cable is properly bonded and grounded (which was my guess about the "bonding" comment from your tech) then emi is reduced and "crosstalk" or interference is reduced greatly. 

 

Just looking back again at this comment...  I've seen a few cases where the customer had upgraded their BC Hydro service.  The ground from the POTS line wasn't really connected to anything because the customer had a brand new hydro meter and electrical panel.  Easy fix, but sometimes the simple things get overlooked.

[Goalie29]

@yawn - What town are you in?

Edited January 31 by Goalie29

[yawn]

On 1/31/2024 at 8:11 AM, Goalie29 said:

@yawn - What town are you in?

Hey sorry for the long delay. I'm in Brookwood so we don't have the fiber lines yet. The Telus tech always tells us soon soon soon soon soon.  But they've been saying "soon" now for years. 

 

From what I've heard from the techs it's that the municipal government + Telus are at a disagreement over who should pay the bill to upgrade the infrastructure and since the municipal government is trying to get Telus to pay, they're just saving us for the absolute last. 

 

Regardless yeah, the tech closed our job.  He said the issue was resolved. Didn't upgrade us to the faster speed or do any changes. Honestly when he came to our house he even said that the last 2 jobs there was nothing he could do. I think we just got unlucky and had a lazy tech. Seemed completely disinterested and didn't want to do anything.