The last cable guy I had here had no clue as what my stuff was. ![Face Palm :palm:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xfacepalm.gif.pagespeed.ic.EBDwh1hCfo.png)
Years ago one of my sons had an auto sparky over who was trying to show off with his "knowledge" and started talking about an oscilloscope, expecting to befuddle my son.
However the shoe ended up on the other foot when my son not only knew what he was talking about, but that we had one in the house. Seems the sparky was taken aback - significantly.
.... and I missed it.
Like the people sent out by my "Internet Service Provider" back when I had ADSL.
The contractor came out, checked, using an ordinary ADSL modem that it wasn't connecting.
Said "he had to go back & talk to the ISP, who would get back to me".
"Crickets" for about a week, then rang the ISP & nagged them-------they promised to send a bloke out to follow things up.
The same bloke turned up, rubbed his beard, & said he would go get the "Da Dum!!"
TDR out of his car.
Looking very scientific, he hung it across the line, mumbled something about having to "pass it to Telstra".
I could not for the life of me see why, if the thing was in the car, he didn't use it the first time!
He really treated the TDR as if it was "the wonder of the age"-------I didn't have the heart to tell him the old PMG Dept used them, in the form of the old PET (Pulse Echo Tester) back in the 1960s!
Further down the rabbit hole, eventually after much more time, Telstra became involved, a tech came out, said the lead in from the pit was faulty & needed replacement, but that "had to be done by a team of contractors".
We had to go away for a few weeks, so were concerned about that, but when Telstra rang us to confirm a date for a visit from the contractors, they said they wouldn't need us to be home.
Coming home, didn't seem to be any sign of disturbance of the ground, so we assumed that the cable had just been replaced, retaining the old conduit.
This was 2012.
All seemed well, but a while down the track, the ADSL failed & the phone became noisy, so I bypassed the ISP & rang Telstra.
The "tech" came out, fiddled in the pit, "let slip" that the leadin hadn't been changed, reterminated a few dodgy connections.
The phone noise dropped to a relatively low level, the ADSL came back, with reduced performance, the tech went away satified.
We weren't but we decided to "live with it"
Over the next few years, we had 2-3 phone fails eacn year, & I became pretty convinced we had an intermittent fault in the leadin cable.
The techs varied in competence around a pretty poor base line.
Ultimately, in 2019, we had become eligible for connection to NBN "Fibre to the curb", so I thought I would have to get the lead in problem sorted "once & for all".
Amazingly, this time they sent someone who knew what he was doing.
He agreed that it was a faulty lead in cable, so he pulled a new cable through the conduit, taking about 30 minutes max.
No more lead in problem!
The bloke in 2012 could have done the same thing, if he had an ounce of competence, as could the others.
What gripes me, is that I could have done it myself, but I'm not allowed to!