NID
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The Centurylink technician twisted the wires on our side going into their side and the coating on the red wire is degraded as it enters their side does anyone know if I could be held accountable to pay for the visit today? 
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Off topic indeed!
But I'm failing to see what the issue is here? The connection failed?
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DSL is out.
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Our CenturyLink voice and DSL went out for a week. Support was, aside from being 8,000 miles away and reading from a script, unsupportive.
A month after service was restored, DSL went out again for a week, but voice worked. CL support was again pointless.
I dropped CL for Starlink and cancelled the voice service I'd had for 34 years.
Then CL comes crawling into my inbox asking why I cancelled service. I told them, and never heard from them again.
The point being, it may not be your Telephone Network Interface that's broken. CL has little interest in last-mile retail telephone service anymore. They're into international sub-sea fiber and their phone customers can go pound sand.
Starlink is 10-20 times faster, is actually supported to some degree and they are actually sorry when their service goes down.
I'm looking forward to CL's (neé Lumen)'s bankruptcy.
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@Mission-Ghost Thank you Mission-Ghost!
You are the first person that didn’t point out how off topic and wrong my post was.
Not to mention you nailed it so well I feel like you know exactly what I am dealing with.
CL has been a joke in every way. Been with them for 24 years. And yet when you try to communicate with them it’s impossible.
I am not sure if Starlink is in our area but will give a look.
One thing I like about CL is $35 a month and I get 16GB which is plenty for my family. And for almost the entire 24 years it has been up and running.
I checked everything and the only issue I can see is that area that has a degraded coating. I was getting low DSL quality for a long time and figured it finally gave out. They are supposed to be out here on August 19 but I was wondering if I could do it myself. Probably not a good idea.
I had to look up international sub-sea fiber so much I don’t know it is alarming. That sounds wild.
Thanks again for writing. Sorry your DSL went down but glad you are happy with Starlink.
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@daynick, sure, your post was a little off the beaten path, but I think still relevant.
Our CL DSL was incredibly stable and reliable, and slow, for years, until it wasn't. What really lost my business wasn't the DSL, it was CL's customer dis-service center. They were awful.
DSL for me wasn't that hard to work on. I don't think the twist makes much, if any, difference. I'm sure others would know better, but I used UTP for inside wiring and it worked fine between the TNI and the modem.
Here's something you can do to test whether it's your inside wiring or CL's outside wiring. Move your DSL modem from wherever it is to the TNI. Unplug your house side from the TNI RJ-11 jack and plug the modem in there. Turn it on and test whether your DSL works. If it works, it's your inside wiring to wherever you were plugging it in. If it doesn't work, it's CL's outside wiring.
Inside wire noise can kill DSL. It's essential you have DSL filters on all your telephone devices to the wall jack or a whole-house splitter that sends the DSL only to your modem and the voice only to the house jacks. If you just added a telephone device in the house without a filter that could be the problem. Another test is to unplug every phone device in the house from the wall jack and then test the DSL again where it usually plugs in and at the TNI.
If the problem is inside wiring, CL will charge you for it. If it's their outside wiring, they probably won't.
(I've found their techs, once you can get their Elbonian call center to dispatch them to you, to be helpful and enjoyable to work with. And I've found their techs almost to a person hate their job and employer and can't wait to retire.)
An added test is to plug a standard phone into the same RJ-11 test jack on the TNI. If you get a dial tone, the voice circuit is working. If you don't, of course, it's dead and it's not you, it's them.
My experience is the voice can work and the DSL not work at the same time. But when the voice was down, both were down.
Starlink has a variety of service offerings with more limited data than we use. We use about 1TB/month and use the regular $120/mo service. We get 200-450mbps. It's working well for gaming, streaming and Ooma telephone. They have an $80/mo residential 'lite' plan as well. Starlink also has some regional lower-priced plans in areas where their service is under-utilized.
Starlink is relatively costly, but CL was charging me $70/mo for DSL+wired phone and when I wanted to drop DSL, they wanted to charge me $90/mo. So, $120/mo isn't really that bad considering the diminished value of a dollar.
I back up Starlink with T-Mobile home internet, which works well enough but it's latency is 2x Starlink's and their NAT stuff is crazier than Starlink's. But it's $20/mo as a backup service with 135GB/mo so it's fine and works well in bypass mode with my pfSense router using failover policy routing.
Good luck. I'd be interested to hear what service found on the 19th.
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Just from the photo there's nothing obviously wrong. The insulation being stripped back a bit further than necessary isn't going to stop it working. But, yes, if you have voice service and that's still working that proves that particular connection is still good at least.
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@Mission-Ghost Thank you very much for this information you are much more informed on these issues I will read your message a few times and digest and try your tip. I really really appreciate it thank you. Have a great evening.
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@stephenw10 Thank you for writing and sharing this I appreciate it.
