In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

If there is noise on the line then that should be reported, preferably whilst it's doing it and make sure the person you're speaking to acknowledges they can hear it. That noise is a bad connection of some sort and will affect you're broadband, but should be reported as a phone (voice) fault.

I have done so and they (Talktalk) have indicated that it is a line fault.

The last time we reported one of these (in June last year) it took 3 months to sort out.

where?

Probably at Martlesham Heath labs

In reply to a post by yarwell:

if you restart the modem after unplugging the cordless phone from both mains and phone socket does it have any influence ?

No it does not and I have also disconnected all other devices from the wi-fi router and switched off wi-fi.

The engineer's report states that 1.8Mbps is as fast as we can expect so the issue appears to be with the length and/or quality of the connection back to the cabinet.

returning to your original question, one approach might be to get a new line put in - throw another dice and see if it comes up better. Depends how much it's worth to you really.

I had a customer whose broadband dropped from a reliable 5M to a rubbish 1M, they happened to have two lines and we persuaded the Openreach tech to change the pairs over - worked a treat.

I've just had a quick chat with my neighbour and it seems that the solution to his problem last year (which took him from no broadband and a very poor crackly telephone line to 12Mbps+ and a perfectly fine phone service) was some part that was fitted to the cabinet and which had to be ordered especially.

He's going through his notes to see whether there is anything more specific in there regarding exactly what kind of part.

so not a field trial then on real lines?

They may not be in the outside world but Martelsham has the capability to simulate real traffic on large numbers of lines within large cables and monitor the effects. This has always been there for voice and is almost certainly there for VDSL testing as the final modulation techniques for VDSL2 were defined, tested and proven by BT at Martlesham.

In reply to a post by The_Don_Wales:

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

If there is noise on the line then that should be reported, preferably whilst it's doing it and make sure the person you're speaking to acknowledges they can hear it. That noise is a bad connection of some sort and will affect you're broadband, but should be reported as a phone (voice) fault.

I have done so and they (Talktalk) have indicated that it is a line fault.

The last time we reported one of these (in June last year) it took 3 months to sort out.

Three months to resolve a voice fault? Surely that's in breach of your contract?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

The crc error bursts I originally had have stopped now on a ECI modem, so making the modem match the dslam vendor I think is important as that could on marginal lines affect DLM behaviour. I got the modem from ebay as I understand it I think openreach have a shortage of ECI modems currently.

Does that mean you now have an unlocked ECI modem & are able to reliably collect/see the connection stats?

If so, I'd be really interested in the detail of how you have managed it as we seem to have more or less drawn a blank (stats-wise anyway).