Ham Radio → Ham Radio and ATT "U-Verse" IPTV-Internet-Phone Problems

During the last 3 weeks, I have talked on the air with 3 different hams who are going through a new kind of nightmare with the ATT U-Verse broadband/HDTV/phone package that has arrived in their neighborhoods. In all three cases, the U-Verse package was of the FTTN variety which is fiber to the node and then twisted pair (copper) for the last 2500 feet throughout the neighborhood.

It appears that these FTTN installations are very susceptible to ingress from the HF spectrum between 1 - 10 mHz. According to the hams I spoke with, when they were operating on 160 meters through 40 meters, even with RF levels at or below 100 watts, they were completely disrupting their neighbor's U-Verse installations. STB's crashed, internet and phone connections were dropped, and video was frozen, tiled, or simply went to a black screen.

When the affected subscribers contacted ATT, no resolution was offered. It turns out that filtering is not really an option since ATT is sending RF between 1 mHz and 9 mHz right down the copper twisted pair. If you attempt to filter out RF from the HF spectrum, you will also filter out the IPTV - internet - phone signals that are supposed to be there. Some U-Verse subscribers are experiencing ingress from SW broadcasters from the 5 mHz - 8 mHz bands when propagation is really rocking.

At this time, all three hams are trying to be good neighbors, one is even attempting to re-orient his wire antennas to reduce coupling, but really, this is NOT their problem. That doesn't mean they aren't getting a little heat from their neighbors though.

Has anyone else heard about what is going on with this stuff? It has been over 25 years since I got a knock on the door with a TVI/RFI complaint. Generally, if they were civil, I would listen, smile and nod at the appropriate times, then thank them and offer a QSL card to confirm their 5-9 reception report. After demonstrating that I interfered with none of my own television-phone-stereo equipment, even with a kilowatt of RF, I would escort them to the door and suggest that they call or write to their TV manufacturer or the phone company to resolve their problem. If they were nice, I'd even offer to help them write the letter, or assist with the phone call. But that was it.

This just looks like another rats nest ready to fall on our heads. Anyone else hear anything about this issue?

Rob W1AEX

oooooooops...

Somebody dropped the ball big time on this one.

I thought twisted pair was supposed to be shielded by the twist?

U-Verse is ADSL2 over two bonded pairs which by frequency begins at 26KHz and caps out at 2 meg.

As for mitigation AT&T is going to have to get an transmission engineer involved to isolate why the RF is getting into the loop as thats why we pay them (engineers)the big bucks.

Wayne

Yes, ADSL2+ utilizes 1.138 - 2.2123125 MHz over twisted pair. However, different flavors are being pushed in different markets. Currently, these other goodies are being deployed in various places:

VDSL utilizing 1.1 - 12 MHz over twisted pair
VDSL2 utilizing 1.1 - 17.66 MHz over twisted pair
VDSL2+ utilizing 1.1 - 30 MHz over twisted pair

None of these appear to have much ability to reject ingress from RF or random electrical noise. Their current solution appears to be to deploy new STB's that will buffer several minutes of programming to allow time for retransmission of packets to correct errors in the video downstream. They are also diddling with using shielded CAT5 instead of twisted pair, but as far as individual subscribers living next to a ham radio operator, they currently don't seem to have much to offer at this time.

edit: spelling

I do not think the main ariel or the burried line is twisted. I know for a fact that the old Telco drops are not.
Twisted and perhaps these uverse userse are using the old drops with the qaud wiring.

So maybee a new drop from the splice to the home and updating the qaud or cat 3 to atleast cat5e would resolve the interference.

All modern drops are cat3 rated and twisted as such. Old old old single pair drops are not but they're supposed to be replaced when they're come across anyway.

Well i can count 5 people that have reciently had Att to there home and they still have the old drops.

U-verse employs "VDSL" which runs up to 30MHz on ye ole copper pair for a few hundred feet to a VRAD. Or it tries to. Often, the old pair is longer than they think (underground) or is more than decrepit.

U-Verse was a cheap scheme to compete with Verizon's Fiber to the home (FIOS). I think U-verse will implode due to the sillyness of trying to make a profit with a very problematic technology and 30 year old wires.

As usual with AT&T/SBC, they are long on marketing and short on delivery and customer support.

What?

the old cable that goes to the Nid box from the splice box that could be quad or very old cat3 wire that is not twisted pair like the new telco drops/underground cable.

Hmmm...AT&T UVerse does not overlap coverage areas with FiOS. Cable does quite nicely using their '30 year old wires".

As any Ham should know, the FCC considers anything that is not supposed to be a radio receiver that acts like one to be malfunctioning. This includes things like DSL modems, phones, and set top boxes. The transmitter operator is off the hook for interference to such devices once they can verify that the transmitter is operating correctly and within FCC spurious radiation limits.

While it can strain neighborhood relations, the best (and really, only) solution is precisely what was outlined above: Be nice, assist in directing the complainant to proper resources (read: AT&T) and cooperate in any testing required to reach a solution.

Cooperation between hams and neighbors is key. My high power operations down at those freqs predates DSL.

But I sure got my quota of complaints eating up peoples cable TV. 9 times out of 10 back them, if I replaced any push on F-connectors with crimp (before compression), tightened the connections, it all went away. A couple of times the cable company had to find the bad connection on their lines.

Point is like RD says, those old cable lines are for the most part still working fine.

Recently I had a trouble with some 30 plus year old lines interfering with me on HB OTA TV. They came out and found old connectors, replaced them. Fixed the problem.

If you start a war you will have a war. If you cooperate you will have a solution! And it sounds like ATT has work to do.

But not U-Verse and I can a assure you of that.

Wayne

It actually requires more than a single pair and carries well over a few hundred feet.Uverse doesn't involve the underground, as it goes from the DSLAM to the subscriber not the CO. That is unless you mean underground as buried, in which case not is your terminology incorrect, your knowledge of the outside plant is as well.

I will have to check on that but I do believe that atleast 3 users I know off the top of my head still have the old drops.
And i guess that could account for the very high FEC errors in there 2wire logs in a short period of time.

It just seams that in this area they are slacking off on alot of things.

Really, their U-Verse 2wire modems are showing errors?

Did you have a clue as to what this thread was about before you began posting, or are you on yet another mindless anti-AT&T rant?

Please do me a favor, if you wish to post within this or any forum, please try to keep your posts on the subject of the forum and the original post while leaving your pre-assumed bias at the door.

Wayne

AT&T better hope that CB radio doesn't come back into fashion. Imagine what millions of illegally modified transmitters on 27MHz using illegal power levels [and linear amps, and RF speech compressors to boot] that occasionally approach those of legal amateur stations would do to a service that uses spectrum up to 30MHz. There's be more splatter than 10 low-budget horror movies .

Seriously, this infrastructure needs attention as much as our roads and bridges, possibly more so. Fixing the 'dirty' power lines and the bad phone and cable lines would help more people get reliable broadband service, which in turn would help the economy [less complaining to tech support, therefore more productivity]. Deploying these services over phone lines known to be vulnerable to high levels of external RF interference is practically as irresponsible as deploying BPL technology that make 'dirty' power lines that much dirtier.

We built the stuff so well all those years ago that people figured it would last forever.
And now that the deferred maintenance is coming due.....

Methinks they never figured it would last forever, they knew better, what they hoped for was it would not fall apart before they retired or where promoted to a position to where they could pass the buck off to their siblings.

Wayne

I ran into one of the hams dealing with this problem once again on 160 meters, and he was happy to report that after several visits, an ATT technician was able to clean up the U-Verse install at his neighbor's residence.

My understanding is that they installed CAT5 from the pole to the house, and then throughout all the component parts of the U-Verse installation. At that point, however, the interference issue still remained.

After thinking about it, the technician realized that another point of ingress for RF was the old CAT3 wiring for the phone system, which still runs throughout the house and is connected to the system at the residential point of entry. He added filtering to decouple the RF from the old CAT3 phone system and this seems to have resolved the TV-Internet-Phone interference problem for this customer.

Hopefully, ATT is building a good knowledge base for its tech department to access as these issues come up. Perhaps as a minimum, they should use CAT5 throughout every install they do. Ah well, one happy story is a good start!

Rob W1AEX

Edit: spelling