You are one step ahead of us here then!

The equipment currently widely in use here pre dates the digital era, whilst most engineers will carry a a test unit capable of detecting a digital signal (they are the blue ones you see) most, myself included, used to hide the old yellow equipment come inspection time as they are a whole lot better to use. I used to use an amplifier that held up to the pair would detect the digital signal before I broke the pair down. Now try showing that to someone who has always waded in and cut a pair down to test it.

I must admit, the company bought me £1200 worth of digital tester for finding faults, but it was so poor to use I ended up using my old trusty £50 needle multimeter. f you know what to look for you can even get distance to fault off one of those things, and experience tells you what a DSL DSLAM looks like on an analogue scale. And again most engineers don't have the training backup to use the equipment so it just sits in the back of the van will the batteries leaking all over the place. Management are only interested in the quickest solution to the problem in hand. So hence my advice, for the UK at least, to keep your dialtone even if it's out going calls barred or something.

Ah them were the days.

Cheers

Cris.