Phone line earth wire

jonnygee

Hi,
I am changing old phonewire in my parents house and replacing it with cat 5.

Inside the back door of the house where the eircom wire enters it connects to an old brown junction box (marked P&T 60A).
The incoming cable connects to two top screw connections, these connect to two bottom screw connections but are bridged across by what seems to be carbon sticks to an earth wire which goes out of the bottom of the door and connects to a small ground rod.
A cable from this junction box connects to the master socket.

Broadband speed in the house has been very erratic.
I connected the cables from the master socket directly to the incoming eircom wires bypassing this box and broadband speeds are around 5mbps faster (15mb vs. 10) than when socket is connected through this junction box. I took junction box apart and cleaned everything but it didn't help. It seems as if some signal is leaking to earth.

Is this earth wire from the box some sort of surge or lightning protection, I assume it must be.
Big Question is, is it safe to bypass it?

offmeheadpal

yea, usually its just the pair of cables going straight into the socket

Xantia

I presume that there is another house next door?
It is probably the remains of what was called 'shared service/separate metering' whereby there was only one pair of copper wires fed from the local exchange to two houses. (What the Americans used to call a 'party line')
Each of the two houses used a local earth for the return leg.
These have mostly been replaced now with a direct single pair to each house/premises.

If when this was working as a shared service and the line was poor the 'fix' was to get a bucket of water and pour it over the earth spike!

Remove the Pair of wires and feed them to a new socket or a junction box. Clean the wires back to shiny copper. Test them directly as they enter the house with a phone. If you have dial tone then all is ok, proceed with connecting it up to your DSL router and so on.

jonnygee

This is a detached bungalow from early sixties, phone lines probably went in early or mid seventies. The bucket of water bit is relevant though as every time there is heavy rain broadband speed takes a real nosedive.

Xantia

Yes probably the remnants of shared service, fix the pair up to a new socket when you can and check again.

jonnygee

Thanks Xantia, I might get a look at it over the weekend.