Phone line is dead, but broadband is fine?

We came in on Wednesday afternoon to find that our landline had a normal dial tone but when we tried to make a call it just came back with a continuous tone? The broadband was unaffected however? We tried phoning our home number from a mobile and it told us the phone was engaged. This was all from a cordless phone, our usual phone that had work fine as usual in the morning. I tried a corded phone and it just did the same. Later that night it changed to no dial tone at all! The next day I tried the test socket cordless & corded, dead, no dial tone.
I contacted EE the first afternoon and they said there was a fault and they would look into it 24-48 working hours it could take, and they diverted landline calls to my mobile which is good.

I phoned them back on Friday afternoon for an update, no change my end, and EE told me that BT/Openreach had reported to them that morning that the fault had been solved!? I said sorry but it still isn't working my end, so now I'm expecting a call sometime today hopefully with date for an engineer call.

My big question is does the fact that the broadband is fine, yet there is no phone service mean the problem is on the line rather than the master socket?
I recently (about 5 weeks ago) fitted a new openreach NTE5a master socket and an openreach mk3 filtered faceplate, everything was absolutely fine till Wednesday. (I haven't told EE this and of course I don't want to incur the £60 charge EE mention, if the fault is internal as opposed to external)
In our town, on the same exchange I know of at least 3 other people whose landlines were out on Wednesday afternoon, they are all BT customers but their issue was fixed by 9pm on Wednesday night? We thought it may well have been weather related with all that thunder & lightening around, although up here on the north west coast the storms didn't hit Barrow till 9pm or later on Wednesday evening.

Apologies for a lengthy post but I wanted to get it all down in detail.

Thanks for any comments.

Dave in Cumbria.

Are you broadband speeds at their normal speeds?

Most common fault in this scenario is one wire from the pair supplying you is broken and thus ADSL will work since their is a radio path, but for the phone you need both sides of the cable.

There is a chance a wire in what you did has come loose, or the master has partially failed and since you fitted it best to test with test socket, otherwise if an engineer finally arrives and suspects it was a customer fitted master (you are not meant to) they could raise a bill for the visit.

The fact that some BT customers got theirs fixed is not because Openreach work faster for BT, but maybe the BT support staff fill in fault forms better.

Until you prove the fault exists at the test socket and behind the master socket (which usually needs an engineer to visit) then no way of knowing if its the line or sockets.

Hi Andrew, yes the broadband speed is basically normal, there was a resync this morning, slightly down, 8.95 from 9.13. I have tested in the test socket with a corded phone, nothing. I could try re-punching the wires in the master socket or try the old master socket again?

You could try and seen as you fitted it all then not trying could prove expensive if they dispatch an engineer and identify fault in property and spot a self-installed master.

In reply to a post by GorillaWheels:

yes the broadband speed is basically normal

Are the Attenuations normal, with Down ~= 2 x Up?

Hi

It's an exchange issue. If you were hearing a dial tone at the start of the problem then it indicates all wires were connected from you back to the exchange, also confirmed by ADSL operating normally, so not a physical wire break between you and the telephone exchange.

Sometimes you can lose one wire of the two which stops the telephone dead (needs a proper circuit) but ADSL can sort of limp along on one wire but if it does speeds are considerably slower, but that doesn't appear to be the case here.

We've had this happen to us 3 times in 5 years, the phone goes dead, but ADSL (we are now VDSL) continued working just fine with no disruption, and each time the online checker with BT automatically identified a fault at the exchange. No one ever needed to visit to fix the fault, it was some problem at the exchange on the voice part.

Regards

Phil

Well Andrew I have put the old nte back on, no change. I have though made my situation more difficult with the master socket. As my newer master had idc punch down connectors I had to snip those bits of the wire down and then through failures in scoring the wire sheath properly and cutting through, when I eventually got the exposed wire into the screw terminals there was barely enough wire length to position the plate to screw it in place!!!! If an engineer does come out and maybe wanted to fit a new master socket I seriously think there is not enough wire to do idc punch down connections. Luckily the broadband is still working after my man handling of the socket front, I thought I was going to pull out a connection putting it in place or snapping a wire!! The broadband is slower with the old master back on with a dangly filter at 8.29 from 8.95 but at least it is working thank christ.

Yes XRaySpex the attenuations are/were normal.

Hi Phil

Yes there was the dial tone initially, but since Wednesday night there is just nothing. Interesting to hear that it possibly can be done without a visit, we'll see. I'd like to know what is was they tried on Thursday/Friday to tell EE that the fault was resolved?

Cheers
Dave

Engineers come prepared with things called jelly crimps to extend wires a little e.g. old masters that were sunk in a wall, but new one is surface mount and not enough slack.

Sounds like safe to say it is external to you and with usual attenuation points towards an exchange kit/wiring failure, since if the pair had a break the attenuations would have changed, usually double their standard value

Thanks Andrew,

Yes my upstream attenuation is 21.6 dB and downstream is 40 dB which is usual.

Dave

Sounds like the voice part has been switched of at the exchange. That happened to me 3 years pogo. They then had to investigate why so it took a week to come back, BB worked fine throughout.

Thanks Nessy,

I think yes the consensus from on here is an exchange problem, I just wish they'd hurry up and sort it out. Still no phone since Wednesday afternoon. I just messaged a friend of mine who is an Openreach engineer and she checked and said my line is testing faulty still but she has no way to know when it's going to be issued out to someone....just a waiting game. I think I'm in day 3 of a possible 4 working days to fix it. After my initial reporting of the problem late Wednesday afternoon EE told me on Thursday they'd had a report presumably from Openreach the fault was fixed and I said don't think so! my phone is still dead. So a fault was logged again.

One thing that slightly mystifies me is the EE Track Faults webpage.
https://membercentre.orange.co.uk/MCPres/tracking/fa...
My page shows nothing but, "You don't have any open faults on your line."
I thought if you reported a phone line fault it should show here?
I asked about this with the tech support people in India and I don't think they understood what I meant.
The BT customers I know who had line issues on Wednesday afternoon had their line faults sorted on Wednesday night?
Maybe their line faults were different to mine??????????

So we'll see and I'll report back.


Dave

Well I was told by EE this afternoon that Openreach had informed them they had fixed the fault. That is the second time since this problem has arisen that OR have said it is sorted, yet surprise surprise still have no dial tone! which I told them on the feedback call and when I rang EE back very soon after that conversation to ask EE to check the line whilst I was on with them, spoke to a very helpful English guy Ryan, that was a first, maybe he is working in Indian???? and yes he confirmed from his tests there is still a fault on the line, so back to OR sort out.
There was an OR engineer working on our street earlier, I went over to ask him and to my great disappointment he wasn't working on my fault!

So the wait continues...

Dave

In reply to a post by GorillaWheels:

One thing that slightly mystifies me is the EE Track Faults webpage.
My page shows nothing but, "You don't have any open faults on your line."
I thought if you reported a phone line fault it should show here?

EE has never been known to use this tracking. Thereby hiding any concrete evidence that a fault has been reported & investigated .

Thanks XRaySpeX, the guy did say something about when they join with BT this fault page may get used. I just think why did they ever create the page if it is never used, it may as well not be there.

What a surprise :/

Finally fixed this morning, we have a working landline.
I have to leave it 24hrs or so for the divert to cancel and call EE back tomorrow to sort out the 13 days no service compensation.

Edited by deleted (Tue 14-Jul-15 11:20:37)

The divert was still in place today 48hrs after the request to take it off. So I rang EE and he said it would probably happen today sometime but even so gave me a way to cancel it from my landline, dial #21#. It worked!! Why didn't they tell me that on Tuesday? Anyway I asked about compensation for no service for 13 days and they are giving me a month free for the inconvenience, which I thought was pretty good. I'm just glad it's working again.