There are lots of front garden trees on my road with top branches whacking the BT overhead cables during storms. I often used to lose the broadband connection albeit briefly. Every few years BT would come to householders offering to trim the high branches. No problem with b/band connectivity since we changed to FTTP.
For those of you who mentioned that your broadband provider is using the telegraph poles to string up fibre cables, at least they won’t radiate RF. However, Power-Line Communication is transmitted via mains electricity cables usually on the same telegraph poles (about 1m higher) and the PLC adapters are known to cause RFI to amateurs.
Late reply, here, Rod but I’m on ZZooMM and recommend them. I get 500M symmetrical for £24.95 per month. I also switched the phone to VoIP (but not with ZZooMM as their offering was a bit pricey.
I could send you a referral code and we both get £100 if you sign up. Maybe they are a bit desparate !
Edit : actually only £50 each if the 500M is ordered
My road now has FTTP. I have had Virgin Cable since 2004 originally 128k/1mbps and now 20/130mbps. I could get 50/500mbps but as of yet I never need anything faster. It’s been very reliable over the years but is eye-wateringly expensive. Well it was until my road was fibred. Suddenly the price dropped by 44% if you contacted Virgin and moaned about leaving. So it is £1 more expensive than FTTP which is OK as it meant I didn’t need to change anything about!
I think I’ll switch to FTTP when my price match deal ends unless Virgin keep the price match running.
There are some pretty crazy cats’ cradles round this neck o’t’woods. My wife snapped this beaut (complete with entangled dead pigeon) in Nailsworth earlier in the week:
Heh. Those should never have been allowed onto the market. A decade and more back one (or more)of my then-local radio clubs had a talk about all the things you could do with those devices (mostly Not Good, but some Downright Sneaky) that the folks selling them insisted were impossible…
I didn’t have noise from DSL, but TX on 80m and below killed broadband, which took 2-3 mins to come back. Fibre broadband solved that problem. Maybe that’s your solution?
I deal with similar noise issues at my shack. I use a rotatable 1 meter diameter receiving loop, one made by W6LVP. Also a Timewave noise canceling unit. My results vary, but almost always I can reduce my noise level by a couple of S units, sometimes much more. One 160M I make 90% of contacts using that RX loop. I find it useful up to and including 20M.
Good luck and hang in there.
It’s kind of you to say so, but this isn’t what I originally meant. I was not saying that the 2025 deadline for the shutdown of the PSTN would not be met, though given the slow progress I am not too surprised that it has been deferred. What I was saying was that shutting down the analogue PSTN does not imply that ADSL and VDSL will go away. I doubt that they will be gone even by 2027.
What is being closed is the analogue telephone service occupying the bandwidth from DC to approx 3kHz on the copper circuits. Obviously that service cannot be provided over fibre, but that doesn’t imply that a replacement VOIP service cannot be provided over copper DSL lines. My understanding is that the plan for the ordinary domestic user is that they would move their telephone from the socket on the wall to a socket on the back of their router, and BT (or whoever) could then take away the analogue service at leisure, leaving the line as DSL only.
It could even lead to DSL being added to lines which previously did not have it, to give IP phone service to customers who do not have (and do not want) a computer connection.
Migration to fibre is clearly a good thing to do and is happening, but to the best of my knowledge there is no particular deadline for that to be completed.
I was also on Virgin, and also had more downstream bandwidth than I really needed. But I switched to fibre anyway and got five main benefits: (a) vastly more upstream bandwidth, (b) dramatically improved latency, (c) a static IPv4 address, (d) full IPv6 connectivity and (e) a technically competent ISP with decent customer service (Andrews & Arnold). It worked out a bit cheaper than Virgin, though I don’t doubt that Virgin would have dropped their price if I’d given them a chance. There were cheaper deals available than the one I chose, but point (e) was a deal maker for me.
Having got the new connectivity I then migrated my landline number to VOIP which automatically terminated my BT line without fuss. I even got OpenReach to remove the redundant overhead copper line to my house.
Hi Martyn,
That is exactly what happened here in Germany.
So we have a country-wide IP telephony system but with “normal” landline phones attached. With this move, you lose the 50v supply on the phone line, so phones used have to have their own power and in a power outage you lose the phone system, so emergency calls have to go via a cellphone. Then the emergency operator does not get the address on his/her screen and has to ask for it (the IP phones when working over the DSL router still indicate a number that is linked to the home address). The analogue service is removed simultaneously as VOIP over DSL is implemented here. When that happened the DSL speed went up and you received 3 phone numbers instead of one, for you to use if you wish or have the primary number ring however many phones you have connected (either via cable or DECT) to the router (the router acting as a mini-ipbx).
I haven’t done an exhaustive search but I could find no telecoms company statement supporting continued use of the copper-wire network after the (now delayed) PSTN switch off date, for any services. The few I found seemed pretty conclusive it was the physical copper-wire network that will be retired, ceasing all analogue and digital services over it. If you have a link to something that contradicts that, please let us know
Examples:
The plan to phase out BT and Openreach’s old copper-based analogue line services (PSTN phones and WLR), originally set for completion by December 2025, has been postponed to January 31, 2027
We’re retiring our copper network …
When you say ‘everyone…’ Yes. We mean everyone. Business and home. And it’s not just your phone services you need to think about. It’s everything else that currently uses the old phone network – all your non-voice services connected to PSTN or ISDN lines.
I don’t doubt that BT might need to maintain some isolated parts of the copper-wire network working for geographical, technical or social reasons for a while after the formal switch-off date [sad for any shack-based amateurs in those areas] but for the majority of us that source of RFI should go away by then.
copper & VDSL will not go fully with PSTN shutdown.
At the moment your copper terminates at a PSTN exchange building, passing through a VDSL street cabinet. The VDSL cabinet connection is like a line tap. The copper segment between the VDSL cab and exchange only has PSTN voice or other dial up service like an alarm on it.
At migration the copper will terminate at the VDSL cab, VOIP being carried over VDSL and into the BT IP core from the cab. The copper from street Cab to the exchange will be redundant.
Then in the UK all the circuit switched infrastructure will be closed down, System X & System Y will go QRT. All the C7 circuit switched network should be gone except for some international connectivity. C7 needs to go as there are vulnerabilities, partly why landlines get so many spam calls.
The push to fibre will run in parallel, but not exactly the same thing. Even my rural QTH with only 4 houses within half a mile I can get fibre, openreach dug it up the road 2 months back and put a spur to my gate. Not signed up yet as very good 80/20 meg VDSL on underground copper at moment.
We’re rolling out Ultrafast Full Fibre broadband to 25 million homes and businesses by December 2026
so the 2027 date may be correct for eliminating copper.
They talk about routing calls over the internet but is that really what is going to happen? Aren’t they routing calls over their private IP network rather than the public internet?
Okay, you seem to confirm what I just read on the BT community blog, …
The end of 2025 is the end of PSTN , telephony equipment in the exchange, not the end of copper, if you are on FTTC , then the ‘telephone’ service, should you require one would be an ‘IP’ service over your FTTC broadband, all Openreach based service will be affected, with BT its called Digital Voice , and there is an ongoing programme to migrate customers onto DV, with all these IP services your phone would plug into the router , not the master socket , but the copper pair from the ‘cabinet’ into your home remains, your router effectively still plugged into the master socket, This will be the case until such time FTTP becomes available, that , depending on location could be years away.
So, I can see that FTTC customers will still need their premises-to-street-cabinet copper wire until BT provide, offer or even insist on FTTP to them. So, presumably even in my vlllage where BT and B4RN provide FTTP the overhead cables up my side of the street could still be singing to the tune of DSL until all FTTC customers are migrated over, which could be much later than the switch-off date.
That is what happened here in Birmingham last year. Not particularly convenient as for historical reasons my router is upstairs so an extention was needed for the phone which was downstairs! Our underground cable, however, was installed 30-odd years ago when Birmingham installed a city-wide cable network before flogging it to Telewest before Virgin acquired it.
I have a really high noise floor at my QTH on 80, 40, 20 meters. Gets better on the higher frequencies though where 17, 15,12, 10 and 6m is virtually silent. Ferrites on everything…nope. I tried killing my main breaker but that didn’t help. Carrying my 705 around with a Yagi on 133mhz and pointing at everything away from my house. Nope. No clue as to what it was/is. Logged my noise floor during different times of the day but it was about the same so I didn’t think it was solar panels as they wouldn’t be doing anything at night. Bought a phase shifter. Couldn’t phase it would no matter what type of noise antenna I tried. Finally, I purchased a W6LVP magnetic loop antenna. I put it 2 diameters above the ground with a cheap RCA antenna rotator. I get S0 noise on 20M on down. Still have S5 on 40 but that’s better than the S9+20 and setting my RF Gain down to 79% gets me S0 on the display and I can hear really well. On 80 I have to run the RF Gain at 72% but it’s all really good now. My radio only has a single antenna port, so I purchased the mag loop with his Transmit/Receive Switch. It works with RF sensing for lower powered radios but also has two PTT ports so if you’re out of ports you can daisy chain them through this box. Works perfectly so I listen on the mag loop and transmit on my main antenna. I do also use a couple of other tools to quiet things down even more. I use the free RM Noise client and I have a BHI Compact Inline noise eliminating module. With all of these I’m VERY happy with my home station now.
I hope you come up with a solution that works at your QTH. Every situation is different and mine is unique to my issues. But I hope they give you some ideas to pursue so you don’t have to give up on this awesome hobby. 73 - Joe - KK7PZE
Hi Joe,
If I understand correctly, you never found the source of the noise but with your new set-up you have found a way around the problem - WELL DONE. This could be very good advice for others who are unable to find their interfering noise sources.
One thought, I wonder how far away is the next house that is on the same phase of the mains supply system as you and if they could be injecting the noise into the mains system by using cheap room to room internet over power line adapters. The mains cabling will act as a very large antenna to such interference.
We each live on an acre so not super close and the houses are all very new with Ethernet cable in each room to a structured wiring panel. It’s still possible though that it was something like that. I also wonder about radio noise. If my 705 is on VHF or UHF and I turn off the squelch I can hear warbly/digital sounding talking or music. This even with the mains turned off. Still does it with my new UHF/VHF antenna and not just my DX Commander
Hmm, do you possibly have a broadcast radio or TV station near you? Possibly operating close to the Internal down convert frequency used for the VHF bands in the IC705 (somewhere around 65-85 MHz I believe - which is why the 705 can’t support the 4-metre band over here in Europe). If such a signal is getting straight into the internals of the radio, it wouldn’t matter what band you were switched to.
If you have another radio which suffers the same interference, that would rule this possibility out.
73 Ed. Update: I see from your qrz page that you also have a TruSDX and you are experiencing the same high noise levels, so it’s unlikely to be a VHF FM/TV broadcast station breaking through.
I still find it a tell-tale that you hear voice/music in the interference however.
I don’t have the trusdx anymore so can’t compare as I only have the 705. But yes, we live in a valley with 3 mountain ranges around us that you can see the broadcast towers on 3 of them. They aren’t close per se at between 5 and 25 miles away but they are line of sight. It’s all good though as the mag loop works amazingly well for receive. I didn’t know that about the 705 so if I get the chance to have another HF radio here I’ll test that out. Thank you!
Hi Joe,
I did a couple of searches on the Internet to see if anyone else has reported breakthrough into the IC705 and found nothing.
Your situation with three commercial FM or TV towers blasting their signals down into your valley could be a unique situation. If you have a local ham with a different radio - ideally a non-SDR (or if an SDR, only an HF SDR radio) who is willing to come by and do a side-by-side comparison, it would be interesting and (if what I am suggesting is the reason) - you should see from the S-meter straight away if the problem exists or not.
Using what is effectively a very high-Q filter in the magnetic loop may be stopping the signal nicely for you. Another option could be a quarter wave coax stub (as used to block unwanted ham 2m AM signals getting into old analogue VHF TV sets - only you would cut it for the FM/TV broadcast stations frequency).
By the way, how did you add the Rx only loop to the IC-705? Did you use an external antenna relay to be able to use the loop on receive and the normal station antenna on transmit?
