Phone Problems (Landline)

[Thomarse]

Hi,

I dont know if this would be the right place to ask but.. worth a try..

Recently our home landline has been playing up and I wonder if anyone has any clues what coudl be the problem, I wonder if it is the line or something else.

Basically what happens is the phone will ring, but when we answer it sounds like a crackly line but no one is there and then when we hang up we cant get a dial tine agian, sometiome for hours and no one can phoen in, the phone goes straight to BT answer 1571.

The other day the phone rang and we didnt get to it so I dialled 1471 and it gave me an 0800 number. I rang the number back to see who it was as this had happened alot recently and it was just someones house, and they had no idea who I was... very strange! Can lines get crossed?!

We have 1 standard phone line coming into the house, into which we have plugged:

our house phones (3 cordless) wireless internet router (sky) sky tv box a shopping monitor hand held computer (my wife scans her shoping each week and it uploads what we buy and we get vouchers etc...

I wonder if one of these is cousing the problem, however when teh line has been dead, I have unplugged all of these and it still doesnt come back!

Any ideas?

Thanks

Tom

[Bob Mannix]

You should have a master socket (assuming a BT landline). Remove the two screws and pull the lower half of the front off. This will reveal a phone socket. Use this with one good phone to test the line. If the problem has gone away then the fault lies in the wiring inside your house (which is taken from the removable section). If it persists, it is a problem for BT (who will ask if you have done this)

If it is your house wiring, possible causes are water ingress into the wiring and damaged cables where you have drilled into a wall and just nicked the cable (I did this myself once)

[Thomarse]

Thanks for the reply.

I only have the master socket, into which I plug my phone etc so I have no internal wiring (except for my sky box)

I guess the first thing to do is call BT and get them to check the line, can they do this over the phone or do they need to send an engineer out? I guess if the line problem is intermitant then they may not pick it up.

[Piers Finlayson]

But what Bob is saying is that you need to remove the bottom half of the panel and connect into the socket that you reveal. It is possible that you _do_ have internal wiring, you just don't know about it. In any case, again as Bob says, BT will ask you to do this so you might as well do it now.

They can test the line over the phone, but it won't necessarily help if the problem isn't straightforward (and it seems like your might not be). Dial

151 IIRC and there's an option to test your line.

When at university myself and a friend in a nearby room both had our own BT lines. Whenever he called me, after we ended the call, I'd lose my dial-tone and calls into me wouldn't work. Whenever I rang BT to report the problem they did an automated test which cleared out the problem. In the end I managed to get an engineer out and he discovered that my line and my friend's line had been miswired in some way.

Piers

[OG]

Do you continue to have broadband when the line is 'dead'?

[Jonathan Pearson]

We had a crackly line when it was windy / raining - after many hours of the BT chap checking out the system (he checked all the way from the exchange to the house to find the problem), he found that the drop wire coming into the house had been rubbing against the house over the years, and when it rained we got the crackley line, when i looked at the wire I was amased that the broadband worked, as all the wires had no sheathing left and all the wires were touching each other and covered in rust.

you are best to call BT who will do a line check

Jon

[mogga]

You can do an initial test online

>Basically what happens is the phone will ring, but when we answer it

[Bob Mannix]

I actually had the same problem with old internal wiring we didn't use - there was some along an outside wall and I cut it and forgot the other end was still connected. No problem until some time later when rain seeped in the cut end and gave very similar symptoms.

Have you cut any old cables or drilled any walls recently? Also, as someone else suggests, check the quality of the incoming BT cable at rub or chafe points.

BT can do remote testing but the results (which give a distance from a known point, presumbly using dome form of TDR) are quit often too inaccurate (ir they say the problem is in your premises when it is on the pole feeding the house - persevere!

[Dave Liquorice]

And will ask if you have checked with two phones not just one. Report the fault, which can be done online and is probably preferable than the indian call center that answers residentail fault reports. The online system doesn't have a box for you to tick to say you have done the above tests but you'll get a call asking if you have. Might be a Catch 22 there if your phone isn't working at all...

[Gordon Henderson]

Unplug everything, leaving just the master socket. Disconnect all exensions. If it's a new one, and it's been wired correctly, take the faceplate off which should force an unplug of everything and you'll see a test socket inside. Connect a bog-standard analogue phone up to this socket.

Dial 17070. Digital dot ought to speak your number back. Try option 2. (quiet line) and simply listen for crackles. DD will speak "Quiet line test" every 30 seconds or so. You can then try a ring-back test.

If it's quiet, then start to put your home wiring back bit at a time, and keep testing.

If it's still noisy and you have nothing on the line apart from the master socket, then call BT on 151. Call them from your line if at all posible. If they can hear the crackles too, then they should investigate and fix it for free. If they can't, they might charge you a call-out fee... (Have your bill handy as they might ask for the account code)

It's absolutely essential to disconnect all your home wiring, broadband, etc. and have just the bare master socket before getting BT to check the line, as that's the first thing they'll ask you to do. If they find that the problem is in your wiring then they'll charge you.

If your provider isn't BT then good luck..

Gordon

[EricP]

Possibly water/corrosion in the box at the end of their cable to your house. I have Virginmedia not BT and their box on the outside wall might as well have no cover on it for all the use the cover is.

An engineer showed me how to simply clean the connections to remove corrosion and it cures the problem for a while.

[NOSPAMnet]

And make sure you use an analogue ( not digital) phone