Please upgrade me to ADSL over wet string

Unsurprisingly, we had a request, which I am sure was tongue in cheek, to upgrade a customer line to wet string as it seems faster than his quite long ADSL line.

Don't say we don't have a sense of humour at A&A, and no, I did not write this myself :-

Thanks for your interest in our latest technology, ADSL over wet string (fibre broadband)!

Sadly ADSL over wet string is not a product we can commercially offer at this moment in time - partly because it's not a product Openreach sell (or list as selling) to their wholesalers, and partly because, well, it's something we did for giggles as I'm sure you know :)

Looking at the loop loss on your circuit, it's currently running at about 48dB. In our tests with wet string, we attained 56dB on a line length of just 2 meters, which is about the range where the DSL signals starts to fade out.

My very scientific estimate of loop loss using wet string gives about -∞dB loop loss on your estimated line length of 3197 meters, which suggests that providing a wet string service to you is impossible given the losses, you would just not get sync.

Our tests took several attempts to raise sync on a wet string circuit, these timed between 5 and 60 minutes depending on local weather conditions ie. whether the air conditioning was turned on in the office.

I must warn you additionally, that the upkeep of these wet string connections is very hard; in our tests, we had to continually re-wet the string approximately every 30 minutes to avoid a complete loss of sync, and this process was always disruptive to the signals.

Perhaps if there's an exchange within 2 meters of your demarcation point, and if it's ever commercially offered as a product by the wholesale providers we buy from, it might work, but at this stage, wet string is sadly not a viable product for all involved. I suspect it may be expensive too - as there will need to be an engineer trained in keeping the string damp should the British weather deviate from it's usual damp and rainy grimness present unless it's made a self-service option, but that sounds annoying to be honest.

It's official, ADSL works over wet string

Broadband services are a wonderful innovation of our time, using multiple frequency bands (hence the name) to carry signals over wires (usually copper, sometimes aluminium). One of the key aspects of the technology is its ability to adapt to the length and characteristics of the line on which it is deployed.

We have seen faults on broadband circuits that manifest as the system adapting to much lower speeds, this is a key factor as a service can work, but unusually slowly, over very bad lines.

It has always been said that ADSL will work over a bit of wet string.

Well one of our techies (www.aa.net.uk) took it upon himself to try it today at the office, and well done.

He got some proper string, and made it wet...

It turns out he needed salty water to get anywhere.

A 2m length...

And the result - it works!!! Not even that slow (3½Mb/s down) though slow uplink. Don't dare touch the string though...

So, there you go, ADSL over 2m of literal "wet string". Well done all for testing this. It shows the importance of handling faults that seem to just be "low speed".

As a bonus, fit tin cans to both ends and you get voice as well as broadband on the same wet string!