What the deuce? Phone line dead, but DSL synced?

Oh Ed not again. · 11 Sep 2011 at 13:09

Long story cut short, I've been having phone line problems at home for a couple of days now. Major crackles, dropping DSL sync rates, and then the other day my phone line died completely. Zip.

Cue fault being raised with Plusnet, cue escalation after 24 hours, and finally, after raising another fault it's been passed to the right team.

Anyway, stumbled downstairs this morning to make a cuppa and noticed the little "i" was lit up on the router but no DSL sync (two interlinked hexagons for the Netgear inclined) light. Thought that was odd, so fired up the lappy and checked the router status page. Connected and synced (albeit some 4mb lower than I usually get), but no IP. Rebooted the rooter for a laugh, checked the phone - dead still.

So anyway, made my cuppa and mooched back upstairs and turned my Internet radio on - huzzah! It works. WTF?

Anyway, it's slower than it was before and no phone line still but was wondering how this is possible. Unless it's a voice fault specific to equipment at the exchange, but why would I have lost things completely for 2-3 days? Very odd.

Slightly O/T, but noticed my exchange is now fibre enabled and I'm good for 27mb~ which I'm really tempted with. In practice, are fibre connections more or less reliable than traditional copper? Given my connection has gone down 4 times in the last 8 months - 2 of those times due to light fingered magpies stealing the copper between the exchange any my village!

Cheers

d_brennen · 11 Sep 2011 at 13:18

Can't help there but it's a little depressing that your broken broadband is better than mine is normally

awinchurch · 11 Sep 2011 at 13:26

Could be a data fill issue at the switch. Have you tried calling your phone to see if it rings?

There are occasions where the data fill can break and your telephone line works but the tone is so low it cant be heard unless you have a super loud loudspeaker setting.

Not 100% sure what causes it but it could possibly be an incorrect voltage on the line causing your fault.

benftl · 11 Sep 2011 at 15:55

My mum had this before where the dial tone was completely gone but she had internet access. I guess where telephony and dslam equipment are connected in parallel to your physical line it's entirely possible for the telephony part to be faulty while still syncing on the internet side. A phone call to BT and a day later she had her dial tone back.

Phemo · 11 Sep 2011 at 17:33

I had a somewhat similar issue with my ADSL once. When I had ADSL I used to sync at around 20mbit roughly then one day I found it was only syncing at around 2mbit speeds and my phone service was dead. I logged a fault with BT for the voice service, didn't even mention the ADSL troubles and an engineer came out. He found that the problem was with my pair in the cab. Apparently the wires should've been threaded through a grommet but had been resting on bare metal and over time the sheathing had worn away and it was shorting out on the cab.

In short, log a fault with BT for the voice service, don't mention ADSL. You'll probably find that when that's fixed your ADSL will be back to normal also.

K.C. Leblanc · 11 Sep 2011 at 21:40

I had this, the BT engineer said it was a wiring mistake (which he admitted was probably his own fault from when he'd done some work up a pole in street).

Oh Ed not again. · 11 Sep 2011 at 21:49

Phemo said:
I had a somewhat similar issue with my ADSL once. When I had ADSL I used to sync at around 20mbit roughly then one day I found it was only syncing at around 2mbit speeds and my phone service was dead. I logged a fault with BT for the voice service, didn't even mention the ADSL troubles and an engineer came out. He found that the problem was with my pair in the cab. Apparently the wires should've been threaded through a grommet but had been resting on bare metal and over time the sheathing had worn away and it was shorting out on the cab.

In short, log a fault with BT for the voice service, don't mention ADSL. You'll probably find that when that's fixed your ADSL will be back to normal also.

Neat, I've raised a fault with Plusnet as BT can't find my line. Have to let them deal with it. Last time took a while, but not so bothered now as I have Internet of some description. i.e Steam works.

awinchurch said:
Could be a data fill issue at the switch. Have you tried calling your phone to see if it rings?

There are occasions where the data fill can break and your telephone line works but the tone is so low it cant be heard unless you have a super loud loudspeaker setting.

Not 100% sure what causes it but it could possibly be an incorrect voltage on the line causing your fault.

The phone is a weird one. It rings, but not on the ringer in the house. Then after 5-6 rings it "answers" to massive amounts of crackling and static, which if you talk to seems to reply as if it's a person. Could be a crossed line somewhere perhaps? Very odd, and quite spooky.

Oh Ed not again. · 13 Sep 2011 at 23:07

Gets even weirder. My phone line has started working again, albeit with a major crackle meaning I sort of have Internet again. Syncing at 1.5mb now, randomly.

BT engineer due over tomorrow, although I've had the usual caveats from Plusnet. "If the engineer finds the fault to be in the property then you will be charged £105+vat blah blah". That's the 3rd time they've iterated this to me, why would I jeopardise my line and my house rental by tampering with something I rely on daily? Ffft.

Oh Ed not again. · 14 Sep 2011 at 16:33

Engineer came this morning, and removed the crackle from my phone line. Handy. However:

I'm guessing this is down to my profile being throttle back due to massive amounts of disconnects over the last week or so?

Irritating the line gets fixed (supposedly) now have this to contend with. Noise is up to 19db and attenuation is hovering around 50db.

Oh Ed not again. · 20 Sep 2011 at 17:49

Good and bad in this saga. 2nd BT engineer just left, rewired my master socket and put a filtering faceplate on the front. Syncing at 10mb! Hurrah! First speed test resulted in a 9.7mb return. The engineer said the values on my line were excellent, and I'm only 2.6km from the exchange. Happy days.

Then he left.

10 minutes later, I had 3 successive drop outs. Boo-urns. Still syncing at 10mb, ran another speed test - 2mb returned. WTF.

Got bored, started tweaking the SnR % on the DGTeam firmware and managed to get a 12mb sync speed and an 11mb return. Again, happy days.

Now it's started giving me 2mb again, despite syncing at 12mb. I despair.

Going to give it 24 hours to stabilise and go from there. FML, FM broadband L.