Noisy phone line, unstable net access. Advice?

Gedalia_w

Gedalia_w

Gedalia_w

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Joined
7 May 2003
Posts
668
Location
London
To cut a very long story short, I moved into my new flat 4 months ago and got set up with Homechoice and used my Linksys WRT54g wireless router.

Started having great difficulty connecting to the net with the Homechoice ethernet modem not being able to hold a connection and my phone line was very crackly. Of course had 2 bt engineer come round and the line worked perfectly each time they came and they of course said they couldnt trace a fault and blamed it on Homechoice.

Ended up getting dissconnected from Homechoice as they couldnt provide me a service and then it took me 3 weeks to get setup with Bulldog 1meg.

Everything was fine for a couple weeks using their usb modem connected through an extension with the only problem being that when the phone rang the net would dissconnect.

Bought a second hand Netgear DG834G of ebay and connected to master socket to replace the usb modem and everything seemed fine. Wasnt getting dissconnected and my phone line wasnt very crackly.

Now since Sunday when the rain started again my phone line has been very crackly on and off and the dg834g is finding it very hard to hold a connection for long and when it does the quality is rubbish and very often im finding now that when the netgear losses the connection it doesnt try and reestablish the connection until I reboot it or pick up and hang up my phone!

Wtf is going on and what can I do? If I call bt it will be sod's law again that everything will work fine when they come and they will charge me again for the pleasure.

Im thinking of throwing in the towel and telling bt to **** off and go to dreaded ntl :(

and for technical details my line attenuation is around 45db and noise margin is going anywhere from a very rare 20 to an average of 12-0!

oh and trust me, this is the short version!
 
Wait for the voice side to be crackly, and report it as a fault with BT (though if you're on a Bulldog LLU service, it'll be through them).
 
Thats what ive done on previous occasions but by the time those last 2 engineers came round the line was fine. Sod's law.

I lose dial tone when its really bad too. Monday morning I didnt have dial tone. Also when I call bt up and they run their remote line tests, they cant find anything wrong with the line even when they can hear it as crackly or when I dont even have a dial tone they tell me I should be as they dont see anything wrong and they blame it on my phone's ffs!

Im not on Bulldog LLU as they dont offer it in my exchange yet. Im on their 1meg for £9.75 while I wait for them to get into my exchange.
 
My mate had a similar problem. Turned out that the wire immdediatley outside his house had holes and such in it and was in an awful state. So whenever it started raining, his net would go down. He get BT (eventually) to fix it.
 
Thats what I thought but the line was only installed when I moved in 4 months ago, so its brand new wiring and the last BT guy had a look at the wires outside and couldnt find anything wrong. :(
 
This is what im going to do when my bulldog gets connected(llu).

Since my noise margin is crappy and my wiring is a bit dodgy, i should be getting the full 8mbit but because of this wiring its killing my speed(i got great attenuation). Here is what i advise you to do as i will be doing it too:

1. Call up bulldog, then tell them your internet connection is very unstable and you get constant disconnects.
2. Tell them you hear crackling on the phone line sometimes
3. Tell them that you think it may be down to your internal wiring for your phone line.
4. They will send around a BT engineer for free to take a look at it...hopefully he can re-wire your phoneline, fit a nice filtered nte5 faceplate
 
Thanks for the advice, I'll give bulldog a call this evening.

Any ideas as to why my netgear wont try and redial a connection once it loses it? It did when the new round of problems started.
 
gam3r said:
1. Call up bulldog, then tell them your internet connection is very unstable and you get constant disconnects.
2. Tell them you hear crackling on the phone line sometimes
3. Tell them that you think it may be down to your internal wiring for your phone line.
4. They will send around a BT engineer for free to take a look at it...hopefully he can re-wire your phoneline, fit a nice filtered nte5 faceplate
Click to expand...

All fine and well, but if the issue isn't internal, none of that's going to help...
 
gam3r said:
This is what im going to do when my bulldog gets connected(llu).

Since my noise margin is crappy and my wiring is a bit dodgy, i should be getting the full 8mbit but because of this wiring its killing my speed(i got great attenuation). Here is what i advise you to do as i will be doing it too:

1. Call up bulldog, then tell them your internet connection is very unstable and you get constant disconnects.
2. Tell them you hear crackling on the phone line sometimes
3. Tell them that you think it may be down to your internal wiring for your phone line.
4. They will send around a BT engineer for free to take a look at it...hopefully he can re-wire your phoneline, fit a nice filtered nte5 faceplate
Click to expand...

Does any of that work?

Im thinking of trying this if it helps my speed when my LLU gets put up by end of march hopefully.

cheers
 
Ive just phoned bulldog and told them that and the women gave me a 6 number digits but I have no idea what its for :o I wish those people on the helpdesk would speak louder!

P.S. nice classical music while on hold tho :cool:
 
what would the ticket number do? do you think I need to go onto there site and add it or is it likely the person who is surposed to ring in the next 24-48hours would ask for it?
 
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Forgot about this thread, whoops.

Everything was working fairly ok for the last couple of weeks. I still got the problem that if anyone was on the phone long my adsl and wireless would drop but now im thinking that it might have something to do with the cordless phones im using? Going to try chaning the wireless channel.

Anyway, heavy rain started again yesterday and guess what, my line went really crackly and I popped home for lunch today and I didnt even have a dial tone!

Will be calling bulldog tonight :(
 
if it is getting worse when it rains, its most likely an external network fault, is your house fed from an overhead DP (pole) or UG, (grey/brown capping on wall) ? if it is overhead fed, is the wire a 1 pair grey or black wire, as these are 15+yrs old and the sheathing goes very brittle eventually and cracks, letting water in and causing "crackling" on the line...
 
I had the same problem with a BT line years ago when I was on 56k dialup. I played a lot of Quake2 on-line so it would drive me nuts. I had god knows how many engineers out - they changed everything between my house and the junction box, they fiddled with stuff at the exchange.....I can't accuse them of not trying! They could never fix it tho. I even wrote a huge letter to BT (including screen grabs from Q2's netgraph showing the noise as clear as day...) and they refunded me a ton of money - this was back when pay-as-you-play meant 400-500 quid phone bills every quarter ;) In the end cable arrived and I moved over.

I know this thread is of no help.....I just wanted to say "I know how you feel" and hope you get it sorted :)
 
im having a problem getting bulldog to come and replace my old master socket. They say they cant send out a bt engineer and i say they have to as bulldog are my phone company so bt will not let me go through them. they wont budge!
 
ljt said:
if it is getting worse when it rains, its most likely an external network fault, is your house fed from an overhead DP (pole) or UG, (grey/brown capping on wall) ? if it is overhead fed, is the wire a 1 pair grey or black wire, as these are 15+yrs old and the sheathing goes very brittle eventually and cracks, letting water in and causing "crackling" on the line...
Click to expand...

Hi, its an overhead pole and its a new black wire wrapped around the house to come in through a wall. This line was only installed 4 months ago, but before that the line was hanging dead in the air cut and unused as they had ntl.

I went through the automated system fault on Wednesday after being without a dial tone all day and system regognised a fault which I then got an automated response later saying it was fixed and I had my crackly dial tone back.

Now to top everything off I got my quartly BT bill today and they are charing me £55 plus vat (£64) for a call out charge when the last guy came and coundlt find anything wrong!

I cant believe this ****. There is clearly a fault as I keep losing dial tone during heavy rain and my line is almost always crackely. I'm scared to call out another bt engineer just for them to find nothing wrong again and charge me another £64 for the pleasure. :(

What do you guys suggest?
 
is there a joint at the top of your house where the wire comes from the pole, or is it a straight run? There definately is a fault by the sounds of it, does it do the same with a different phone?, also take the smaller frontplate off and try the test socket behind that, is it still noisy? If so it'll need an engineers visit.

If i lived in the area i'd try and get that job myself (i'm an engineer if you hadn't guessed lol)

If the line has only been in 4 months, it shouldnt have degraded at all so it still sounds like an external fault, providing it is still noisy using the test socket and/or a different phone
 
Last edited:
Curio said:
I had the same problem with a BT line years ago when I was on 56k dialup. I played a lot of Quake2 on-line so it would drive me nuts. I had god knows how many engineers out - they changed everything between my house and the junction box, they fiddled with stuff at the exchange.....I can't accuse them of not trying! They could never fix it tho. I even wrote a huge letter to BT (including screen grabs from Q2's netgraph showing the noise as clear as day...) and they refunded me a ton of money - this was back when pay-as-you-play meant 400-500 quid phone bills every quarter ;) In the end cable arrived and I moved over.

I know this thread is of no help.....I just wanted to say "I know how you feel" and hope you get it sorted :)
Click to expand...


Why would BT do that when they dont have to provice a line for net access just a good one for calls?

You must have been lucky mate, first ive ever heard of BT refunding anyone due to noise on a net line and using quake 2 graphs as proof of noise
 
FINAL UPDATE!

Right, looks like its finally been sorted!

Update since last post: BT charged me £55 plus vat for an engineer visit as the dumb ass engineer didnt do any real testing and blamed it on my equipment.

After much arguing with BT when I got my bill, they finally agreed to credit me back the charge, but not before it had already come out of my account (direct debit).

Final straw when my line became completly unusable and they agreed to get an engineer to examine the outside network between my house and the exchange.

They didnt call me back about it and when I chased them a week later they said that a fault had been found and they were going to fix it by 10th of April. Nice of them to tell me.

Today everything seems to be pretty much ok. Pooring with rain but my line is no longer crackely and ive had a solid net connection all day and was on the phone for 30min with only a very tiny amount of crackle on the line, tiny compared to usual and this didnt cause me to loose net connection.

So finally a result!

Now, the point of my posting. Now that they finally found the fault and this whole nightmare was there fault all along, whats the best way of going about getting some kind of compensation from them? I had to change net providers as they initially blamed them and I had no internet for 3 weeks during a change to someone else. Pretty much unusable phone line over the last 3-4 months whenever there has been rain and intermitent net during rain.

Should I call them or write to them, or perhaps an email? Any advice welcome!
 
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