I'm trying to help my mum sort out poor quality voice calls (intermittent static) and ADSL broadband (slow with frequent disconnects).

The house is a rats nest of daisy chained telephone wires that have spread their tendrils throughout the wall cavities over the years. Aha, I think, she needs a master splitter here. Her usual electrician was doing some (electricity) wiring in her kitchen and said yeah, no problem, he could put a master splitter in. Following the master splitter install, the problems get worse. I check and re-check her router and wifi range extender. No joy. I replace her router and wifi range extender. No joy. Phone the electrician to come back and double check he did everything right. He says, yeah, sure, no worries, its all fine. Problem must be somewhere else. Phone her ISP (Vodafone - who were very helpful) who arrange a Chorus tech to come check things.

 

Unfortunately I don't live there and so didn't speak to Mr Chorus, so I only got this second-hand, but essentially Mr Chorus says the electrician made an [expletive] mess of things. Again, this is all second hand, but Mr Chorus says the electrician needs to install an external box on the house and leaves a note saying "2 ports are 2 wires only. No twist joints" (not sure whether this is a description of the problem with the existing wiring or a description of what the new wiring should be like).

The electrician, having been informed of Mr Chorus' views, now wants to run a very long new cable. Mum lives on a back section, the telephone wires come to a pole in her driveway, then underground about 40-odd meters to the house. Electrician wants a new cable between the pole and the house. The new cable will then presumably go into the existing (new) master splitter. There is no way Mum is allowing her driveway to be dug up, so this will likely go in a conduit along a handy fence.

I appreciate that this probably isn't nearly enough information to diagnose the actual problem, much less allow recommendations of a solution, but I'm hoping to get a bit more info to try and work out whether the electrician's solution is actually the right one. Does the reference to the "2 ports 2 wires" thing mean anything to anyone? 

I'm keen to avoid throwing good money after bad. The electrician has offered to try and sort out the problem at less than his market rate, but if he really doesn't know what he's doing, I might just get someone else to sort it out and take the hit.

Finally, as an aside, Mum lives in Miramar (Wellington). Apparently UFB is coming to her address at some stage in the early Wellington roll out (originally, that was later this year but Chorus' website seems to have slipped the dates). If we end up running a new cable conduit, should I be putting a fibre cable in that too? What are the obligations to run fibre to the premises for a house 40-50 meters off the road?