Total failure of our landline for voice calls (no dialling tone, no click when a receiver is lifted, incoming calls get ringing tone but no phone rings here). Interestingly broadband (ADSL, not VDSL so no voice/internet split at a green box) still works though at a much reduced sync speed.
I tried to report the fault last night to 0800 800 151 from my mobile and the Indian call centre said that their servers were down so they were unable to access account details, log faults or run line tests). Same story this morning - "phone back in 4-6 hours".
Do BT Faults have a big system-wide problem at the moment? Or is it misinformation by the Indian support team?
I was able to log the fault online - I've got an actual fault reference number - so I don't know why BT Faults dept couldn't do they same. Why do BT think it is acceptable for their customer-facing departments to be staffed by people who are not native English speakers? Trying to have any conversation with them is very difficult.
I've heard this from others, but your initial issue sounds to me like a simple broken wire somewhere. Make absolutely sure the fault is not your side of the master socket or you will get a big bill from BT. Unplug everything but a known good simple phone. Brian
Thanks for the advice. I've already done that: known-good corded (not cordless) phone in test socket of master socket, no other house wiring in circuit.
I've now managed to book an engineer. The support guy said there were known to be problems in the area, so it may be that engineers are working in a cabinet somewhere and have disturbed adjacent pairs to the ones they are working on.
Interestingly the internet slowed down drastically this morning (I first noticed the problem last night) with ping times of about 1500-2000 milliseconds (ouch!) and Speedtest either would not even run or else gave speeds of about 0.05 Mbps up and down - roughly dial-up speed.
Then a few hours later, things have improved. The router still syncs at the same speed and the attenuation and noise margin are very similar, but ping times now are a lot more respectable at 50-80 milliseconds. Speedtest now reports about 0.5 Mbps.
This is still very bad by most people's standards, but it's not far short of what we've been getting since we moved here - we used to get about 1.5 down / 0.5 up, so there's room for improvement but at least the internet is usable again. We are hoping that the BT engineer can fix things at least to the previous state by Friday morning when my wife has a video conference. That has run fine over the 1.5/0.5 connection, so it will be touch and go for the 0.7/0.5 connection that we have at present.
The fact that things have changed over the course of a few hours makes me think that there are bad joints that are being moved around. There's not been any rain or wind for a few days so it's unlikely to be wet joints or intermittent connections that are blowing in the wind.
As for the Indian support teams that I spoke to last night and this morning, well I have the strongest contempt and derision for their "efforts". When I phoned this afternoon and got a British person, they were on the case very quickly and an engineer was booked. They couldn't understand why India was not able to access the customer database and line-testing system, though they didn't go as far as to say that it was all a pack of lies that I'd been told ;-)
sync 448 884 kbps power 12.4 14.4 atten 31.5 63.5 dB margin 7.0 6.1 dB
Very severe attenuation, though from memory the figures before the voice outage, when I was getting sync of 448 U and 1800 D, were pretty similar. Line length will be long: it's about 5.5 km to the exchange as the crow flies, and probably a lot longer if the wires follow the roads - the shortest road route is about 7.5 km. So the fact that ADSL works at all is a PFM (pure f-ing miracle).
Ookla Speedtest app (on Windows or Android) gives about 0.7 Mbps D and 0.3 Mbps U, with a ping time of about 50. Earlier in the day, I was getting ping times of about 2000 (2 seconds) so it's hardly surprising that data transfer was dire and web browsing was almost unusable.
Interesting you should mention crackle, because my wife has noticed that if she phones me as she is driving home, there is often a percussive, irregular clattering noise like someone typing on a manual typewriter - and she can hear it but I can't at my end. Redialling almost always cures it. However no-one else who has called has ever heard it.
When the engineer comes and if I manage to see him - ie he wants to check things from inside the house as well as working up the pole or down the manhole - I'll talk about line noise. I'll ask him about broadband speed and whether as he's fixing the voice outage he can see anything that will wring a few extra kbps out of the connection.
To go slightly OT, just had Openreach around after a lengthy struggle to convince Plusnet that I did, actually, have a problem which they could not see from their end.
Openreach were quick to say the data rate from the drop cable was fine (this is the thing I originally suspected, from past experience) but that my "boxes" were totally f***ed. They couldn't say whether it was the Openreach modem (although they thought it was out of the Ark) or the separate Plusnet router.
Interestingly, my symptoms were highly variable throughput plus dropouts sometimes for a few minutes, much more like "analogue" than digital hardware problems. And correlated with wet weather. Nevertherless, the new dual band box which arrived today seems to have sorted it.
The lesson I would pass on is to be sure to have details of the type of "box" that you have when you eventually manage to talk to the support line.
One of the highlights of my conversation with them was to have them insist that their line test showed no problems at all a few minutes after I had powered down my modem without telling them. Their "line status" report is not in real time, there is actually something of a lag.
Happens with monotonous regularity round here. They break one working service for every three faults they try to fix on our ageing rural copper. Some are so corroded with ingress of water and dead spiders I find it miraculous that anything works at all. They dug up all my daffodils pretty much for the hell of it to install new a duct only last week. Water table means some junction boxes flood from time to time.
That's bad. Spiral of doom stuff. Watching your error seconds increase in realtime is somewhat depressing if you can access the diagnostics. ISTR BT doesn't allow you to do this as an end user.
Worth enquiring if there are any local microwave initiatives in your neck of the woods. Requires strict line of site but gives 20M speed and doesn't cost much more than ADSL2. ADSL2+ was a distinct improvement for those around here stuck on the sub 2Mbps lines. If you have 3G or 4G available then I'd recommend a Hauwei Mifi with an external yagi antenna which is what I use as a backup when things go haywire. Data charges sting a bit but it is around 4x faster than ADSL on my landline.
Most likely dodgy old brittle oxidised wires getting moved and bent.
Hiss might the phone and/or noise from the xDSL service. Really need a phone with a "secrecy" or "mute" button to turn off the local micrphone or the sidetone noise drowns low levels of line noise out.
Shouldn't really be any 50 Hz hum either, that indicates an imbalance between the wires and ground, probably a damaged cable and damp.
As for faults I use 0800 800 150 and follow the prompts. Not had an indian call center for the last 15 odd calls, two faults with several calls required for each one plus other fualts that just required a single call.
Last two faults have been a right PITA. I have Total Care, should be fixed by the end of the next day from the report. Before the last two fault a single call, engineer booked, engineer turns up about 0900 next day fixes fault, great.
Last two faults the Total Care seems to break the communication between BT Retail and Openreach. ie Openreach don't get notification of the fault or engineer booking but the BT Retail systems say it's all done and booked... Apparently the advisor has to raise the fault and forward it to a manager to forward to Openreach. And even then that might not work. Bottom line is if you don't get an email/text from Openreach shortly after BT Retail say the fault report and booking is complete it's not, Openreach will have no record, despite what a BT Retail advisor will tell you. Once the fault report has managed to get to Openreach they jump as they always have.
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