Thetownend.com

Howdy.
I've received a fibre broadband router from talk talk. The grey internet cable is too short to reach from my master socket to the router. The grey cable supplied has 2 wires within it to the pins(red and green) whilst my current white cable I use for my current broadband router has 4 wires(green, Brown,white yellow) I phoned talk talk to ask the difference between the two and they couldn't tell me. They just said my current cable would be ok.

My question is do I need to buy a new longer cable to do the job or will the 4 wire cable I currently have work for fibre? Also what is the difference between the two? Thanks in advance techy dudes.

As long as it's got the right RJ45 or RJ11 connectors on it, it doesn't matter how many pairs the cable has.

okay ta. What's the difference between the two? The router itself has only two pins so only two of the four will connect anyway. I guess this is okay?

Difference between what? The connectors or the cables? RJ45 and RJ11 are just different sized connectors.

The extra pairs in the cables are there for more than one line. The router is only designed to take one line, hence only two pins being connected. The other pair in the cable won't be 'live' anyway because they're probably not even connected up within your master socket.

the difference between a four wire cable and a two wire one, the wires themself not the connectors.
I've checked what you say above and only two connect so I'll try it. My fibre doesn't go live until the 19th so won't know how good it is until then. Cheers Sam

Yeah, you only need a single pair to carry the vDSL (fibre signal). I had to do something similar with mine (extend it), so I kroned in a new cable into a vDSL faceplate - there are only 2 wires..

The only issues would be
  - 1. the quality of the old cable is crappy (i.e not properly shielded, etc) meaning sub optimal speeds/dropouts
  - 2. the old modem uses some stupid nonstandard pinout, meaning the wires are connected up wrong, meaning old cable plain won't work.

Doubt either is likely. Suck it and see.

Cheers.
I put a new faceplate on my master socket recently to do away with the filters and the router is working just like the old one with speeds the same. I may buy a two wire cable for when my fibre goes live and compare it with the current four wire one.

No point. Two or four wires will work the same.

Okay.
Thanks for that batch.

If you're having fibre fitted for the first time, an engineer will come and change the faceplate over anyway.

That's not my understading of it. I think they said it's self set up and the engineer just does his thing at the box in the street. Hope you're right though as they can check my set up etc then.

Different company, I know...but, when I had fibre installed through BT, they said they always send an engineer out if it's the first time fibre has been installed in that property.

No home visit engineer for sky install.

Well I had a visit. Fibre went live yesterday and I thought it was working great as my speeds had increased massively. Had a knock on the door and the fella said they'd picked up a fault between my house and the junction box when setting it up. He came in, ran some tests and located the fault 50 metres away.
Changed my master socket and faceplate and then investigated the fault and fixed it. Superb service as I didn't even know anything was wrong. My bill has gone up by a fiver a month and have had all that for the price of it. Well pleased

Great news, its good innit!

Superb.
Had minor issues before which prompted the upgrade really(dropping speeds etc)
Glad I did as the bt guy reckons the issue was probably years old. Talk talk told me every time I called them the issue was between the master socket and my router. He said that was bollocks and all the providers do this and do not know.

I'd advise anyone thinking about getting fibre to do so as you'll get a service like mine when they set it up for fuck all.

Having mine installed on Tuesday - I have been told that they will not need to come in, but BT Outreach have been in to all my friends - may stay in just in case  :(

Luckily nobody here is very far from the green box so we will have very high download speeds.

Not sure why Superfast have spent millions laying 30 miles of cable under the sea from Cornwall to connect a couple of thousand people but hey ho  :D