Oh, boy. Its been a while, but out comes the soap box:
I don't know guys..... A binder group is still within the same cable jacket. I don't see how a simple plastic tape strip to bind 25 pairs for identification purposes is going to have any electrical effect on the pairs themselves. Twisted pair cable is designed with varying twist lays so that there's little likelihood of crosstalk or other interference between the pairs. The two circuits could still be right next to each other as the binders are side-by-side within the cable sheath. Everything spirals in a twisted-pair cable of any size, so it's inevitable that the pairs, no matter which ones, are going to come in contact with each other at some point.
Think about this: The cable feeding my building is using pairs 51-75 and my circuit is on pair 51. My neighbor orders a circuit too, sharing the same cable count. The telco isn't going to do an LST so that we are on different binders. His circuit will simply end up on pair 63; the next available pair in the count. I really, really doubt that any thought process goes into assigning circuits to the proper binders.
On the other hand, what if there's not a choice? Plenty of times, a 25 pair cable runs down the road feeding multiple customers. If that theory was accurate, then only one customer could have a Hi-Cap circuit for that entire distribution segment.
What about when a 3,600 pair cable leaves the CO and branches out two miles down the road? In a manhole, this cable splits in two different directions:
To the left is branch cable A, an 1800 pair cable is spliced in as pairs 1-1200 (the remaining 600 pairs in this branch cable are just spare for future use).
To the right is branch cable B, a 1200 pair cable is spliced in as pairs 1201-1500 because only 300 pairs are needed for now. In that cable, the remaining 900 pairs are also left as spares for future use.
Later on, the 1,200 pair count is full in cable A and they need to get 200 more pairs. Bill schleps down into the manhole and cuts the next available pairs through. The first branch cable now becomes 1-1200 and 1501-1700.
How many times have you seen something like this written on a building entrance terminal?
CA 236, 401-600, BP 1-200
CA 117, 201-225, BP 201-225
CA 209, 1801-1900, BP 226-325
CA 9, 2201-2275, BP 326-400
That's right, hook or crook, multiple feeder cables are merged together at some point into the single cable feeding the building. All of these different cable counts end up neatly terminated as binding posts (BP) or pairs 1-400. There is absolutely NO rhyme or reason as to how the binders are assigned with any telco. It's all about throwing the pairs where they are needed and usually a case of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.
Next time you are driving down the road, look up at the telephone cable splices. You'll frequently see how a cable jumps over to tie two cables together. That's because of the pairs in one cable were running low and the other one had spares, so the original cable got a "refill".
Moral of the story: Binders really don't mean a hill of beans in the cable world. All of those pairs resided together within the same cable jacket for miles before they went in different directions. They touched many, many times over the two-mile route.
I'm all in favor of keeping circuits separated as much as possible, but I truly believe that the "separate binder" thing is more of a psychological issue. We tend to associate pairs 1 and 25 as being 8" apart since that's how they end up on a 66 block. They appear to be miles apart, but they really aren't. They are still tightly bound together for hundreds of feet or even miles before they end up terminated.
Is it possible for Hi-Cap circuits or even DSL to interfere with each other in the same cable? Probably... Is this binder-specific? That is impossible. It is just a coincidence that something like this happened.
