Phone line fault

Can't find a better place to post this and hopefully there are clever electrickery versed people in here who can help.

For the last 5 or 6 days my phone line has been intermittently crackling and internet service has been dropping out or running at very restricted speeds. Like 160 kb/s instead of the normal 4000 kb/s - barely better than an old pre-dsl modem.

Trouble is every time I phone up BT and they run a line check they say they can't see a fault but if I want to pay for an engineer visit they'll be more than happy. In fact the crackling tends to disappear after I initiate a phone call so by the time I've explained the problem to the muppet in Mumbai it's ok again.

I strenuously refute any allegations that I've gone outside and removed the cover from the connection box outside on the house wall and checked the connections inside it or indeed those that I've removed the cover from the primary socket inside and checked those connections. Doing that would maybe make me liable for any subsequent faults so it would be a silly thing to do. Howver if hypothetically I had done so I couldn't find any problem.

I have however tried fitting an old but reliable corded phone directly into the main socket without the computer connected, there is no equipment fitted to any other socket, I've tried several different DSL filters but the problem persists.

So why might a bad phone line get better once you initiate a call?

Strategy to get BT to fix it?

Reply to
Dave Baker
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In article , Dave Baker scribeth thus

High resistance joint somewhere some current thru it sometimes "fixes" the fault

Get yourself an ISP like Zen Internet, they are excellent at kicking BT or Open reach's arses. We had this sort of problem and it bounced betwixt BT and the ISP at the time via the muppets in the banana boat in the Pacific but Zen had it sorted within 2 days:)..

Reply to
tony sayer

Plug your phone into the back of the master socket i.e. remove the faceplate first and if it's still noisy, report it with confidence. Ringing current will frequently temporarily, clear any such intermittent fault

Andy C

Reply to
Andy Cap

Have you got the sort of main socket where removing the faceplate disconnects all the internal house wiring and exposes a socket for direct phone connection to the line?

If not, they're well worth getting. They are also available with an internal ADSL filter if your router/modem positioning allows this.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

In article , Dave Baker writes

If you have the means to record a call (an old fashioned voice modem will do) then I would recommend initiating a BT 'quiet line test' and recording the hopefully noisy result to get evidence of the fault:

Dial 17070 (prefixed by 1470 if you have caller ID permanently withheld), your number will be announced and you will get a choice of options, press 2 to get line test and the call will continue with silence from their end with occasional 'quiet line test' announcements. The other options are only available to BT techs.

Then call BT and get them out to repair the fault agreeing to the charge if no fault found (they wont come out otherwise) and play the recording to the tech if there is any dispute.

When I was in a similar position I started my recording before dialling and recorded a bit of a preamble with my name, address, phone number, date and time, then dialled and got the test with announcements.

Needless to say, do this from the test socket on your master (ie. faceplate removed).

It's also a lot easier to just report it as a voice fault without mentioning broadband problems, then any BT tech can be sent out to fix it.

uk.telecom is the usual spot for this stuff btw.

Reply to
fred

Wetting current.

It sounds as if there is a loose/badly made connection somewhere and an insulating oxide layer builds up on the wires when the phone is not in use.

When the line is not being used for a telephone call, no current flows. Apart from the capacitor in series with the bell/ringer, nothing is connected across the line so that it is effectively an open circuit. When you lift the receiver, you connect the phone across the line, allowing current to flow through the circuit, including the high resistance joint.

The current gradually breaks down the oxide layer, which you hear as crackling. When the oxide is cleared, the crackling stops.

When you hang up, current flow stops again and the oxide layer starts building up again, and so on ...

Dunno ...

I suppose you could insist that you've proved, to your own satisfaction, that the fault is in their equipment and demand that they send someone to witness it from your end ...

In these days of IDC (Insulation Displacement Connection) the connection relies on a metal to metal weld when wires are terminated - which probably hasn't happened in your case! However, in the days when all connections were soldered, I used to maintain equipment which was often sited alongside the BT frame in large buildings and the number of connections that were made just by twisting the wire round the tags was incredible.

Later, we used thousands on BT private circuits for data - no telephones and no wetting current! Complaints to BT about excessive errors were very difficult top prove - BT would say the fault was cleared when, in fact, it was obvious that nothing had been done.

Then, suddenly, the faults all disappeared for no apparent reason ....

We later found out, off the record, that someone had stumbled across a large frame at the local exchange on which not a single wire had ever been soldered ...!

Reply to
Terry Casey

Probably not much help, but I had similar problems when I moved in here, and it turned out that the cable was suffering from water ingress sonmewhere between here and the exchange. It took a long while, but eventually, one of their engineers heard the fault, and changed me to a new pair. It's been fine ever since. He also put in new overhead cabkle from here to the street cabinet.

Reply to
John Williamson

I had exactly the same problem as you, noisy phone line that kept dropping the ADSL. BT could see a fault on the line but their offered solution was to put up a pole to give the house an overhead wire. I declined this offer.

Get or try a 2Wire 2700HGV router, aka BT Business Hub, available on ebay for £10 - £20. They were designed for long lines and have a superb algorithm for dealing with noise. I installed one of these and went from 20+ dropouts a day to none. You might like to pose your question to uk.telecom.broadband, where several posters have a great deal of knowledge of this wireless-router-modem.

It has been suggested - and it would doubtless be against BT's T&C, so I can't recommend it - that fitting a 15k resistor across the A and B wires might help. This will result in a 3 mA 'wetting current' that is below the level (4mA) where a fault would be reported, which may stop oxidation of dodgy contacts somewhere on your phone line.

TF

Reply to
Terry Fields

Did they tell you that if it emerges that the fault is inside the house , your side of any BT kit , then they are at liberty to charge you 120 GBP for the call out.

Locally we've had very intermittant drop out, since a nearby railway bridge was raised a foot, and a rush job reconnecting the BT lines.

Reply to
N_Cook

DO NOT report it as a broadband fault - this is a voice telephony fault and you should report it as such. As a cable jointer on BT for 17 years before a back injury saw me medically retired, I can confirm what others have said, ie, it's a high resistance joint somewhere. The test equipment that both test desk and field engineers use will test the line as being OK because of the wetting current someone else explained.

The only way to find these faults is for the engineer to use the old "tone and amp" method. Basically, a signal generator is connected at the MDF and a tone injected onto the line. Up to the point of the 'HR dis' the tone can be shorted out but, beyond the HR dis, it can't. So, tone on at the MDF, break down the pair at the cab to eliminate the cabling between it and the exchange (the E side). If OK, my next step would be to go to the subs premises where I would expect to NOT be able to short out the tone. Then, it's a matter of working back towards the cab, halving the distance all the time until you find the fault.

These faults can be difficult to find and time-consuming but stick to your guns.

Reply to
Pete Zahut

Most bad lines are bad corroded connections that get an oxide layer between the contacts.

Calling bangs a voltage across them, arcs over the corrosion, and generally clears it up

Most likely place is a part flooded underground junction.

Keep complaining.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

The linesmen who come here to fix faults normally use a Time Domain Reflectometer rather than a manual binary search. Mind you we have ali cable so if they if they did do a manual binary search they'd create even more faults... It's bad enough when they fiddle in the right junction box just once!

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

This might do more harm than good.

In the late 1960's the firm I worked for had a research project to monitor the vibration of LP steam turbine blades. This involved telemetry equipment connected to many small strain gauges spot welded to the surface of some of the the blades. The monitoring equipment was installed as the turbine was being built in a new power station and the inevitable delays in completing the power station resulted in the gauges being left inside the turbine for many months including the winter before commissioning could be started. People were concerned that the delicate gauges would suffer from corrosion due to condensation and the decision was made to maintain a low current through the circuits to keep them warm. Unfortunately they supplied a DC current and 50% of the joints in the wiring went open circuit due to electrolytic attack.

Phone lines have a DC voltage applied to them (except when ringing) so a long term DC 'wetting current' might lead to electrolytic damage to any dodgy contacts.

Reply to
Mike Clarke

Oh, it does.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

You have a voice fault, report it as such. If you mention the broadband they'll just use it as an excuse to bounce you from pillar to post.

Residential faults always come heavy with the "we will charge you for no fault found". I suspect they get an awful lot of faults that are past the NTE (master socket), thus *not* BT's responsiblty and people refusing to pay.

If you are confident that your wiring is not a fault(*) then insist they send someone out.

I report faults these days via the web, avoids the sub-continental teletubbie. You may gate a call you back to verify details but that call comes from the UK and from some one who has at least a basic understanding of line faults.

(*) Which it appears you are having tried a known good phone direct into the hidden socket on the NTE etc.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Another way to approach is is to phone your ISP and complain about the poor broadband. A decent ISP will then get openreach to fix it. Chances are fixing the broadband will also fix the voice fault in this circumstance. (even if your ISP is also BT - the above is worth a try)

Reply to
John Rumm

It's a long time since I had to finish on BT so I don't know about modern equipment but the TDRs of my day (affectionately called the "mole") were not capable of detecting HR faults, hence the "tone and amp" method. It takes time but it never fails :-)

Reply to
Pete Zahut

Your ISP will likely test the connection speed and if satisfactory at that point in time are unlikely to do any more. They get charged by BT for checking for faults when none is found.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

And as soon as the technician decides that it is not your fault, get them to note that fact in their log book.

Reply to
Andy Webber

"Dave Baker" wrote

As many others have said this sounds like a dodgy joint or water ingress in cabling external to your house wiring. We had something similar a couple of years back, but it reached a point in our case where we had no dial tone and couldn't dial out. If we needed to use the land line, it was a case of dialling in first to force a ring condition. Once this had been done, sufficient contact was available to make an outgoing call. Weird, until you understand the explanation others here have given.

Phil

Reply to
TheScullster

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