Crackly Phone.

After lots of rain today I now have a crackly phone again and lots of CRC errors. I suspect it's the underground junction that got repaired a few months ago with a similar fault.

What's the best way to proceed with this fault, report a voice fault? Don't want a nasty bill or should I wait until it stops raining and see if it clears up?

If the noise is still there without the modem connected then report it as a regular voice fault.

Rain? ? ?

here in sunny Scotland we're all in beach wear !

Rain in your joints.... how dreadfully inconvenient

personally i would report it as a voice fault
see what happens

Voice fault reported. Now to wait 3 working days.

How did you report it?
on the bt [email protected]

Yes disconnected everything, did a line test and report using mobile dongle.

Edit: Phone dead now, I bet I know which joint too.

Edited by Banger (Sun 07-Aug-11 08:27:27)

heard that before, truth is there's alot of cable between you and the exchange that can go bad.

Do yourself a favor when the engineer comes over and don't tell him how to do his job, just let him know that the last time it was the joint outside but let him run his tests all the same.

Edited by deleted (Sun 07-Aug-11 10:41:38)

Yea was going to do that anyway and even offer a cuppa and hob knobs.

Damn phone has started working again with light crackling. Should I continue with the fault or give em a ring to cancel it, have a feeling engineer will turn Thursday and no crackle after joint dried up.

Edited by Banger (Tue 09-Aug-11 06:09:54)

If crackling still present then let fault continue.

if this is water ingress then engineers can usually spot it, or will have a good idea from past history of which areas get flooded a lot.

Thanks Andrew. As it happens just checking the phone and it's dead again and BB is syncing really low so will wait til Thursday when engineer is due.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Thanks Andrew. As it happens just checking the phone and it's dead again and BB is syncing really low so will wait til Thursday when engineer is due.

That's one wire of the pair is not making contact.

Suggestion - water the junction box ouside well, a couple of hours before the engineer is due .

LOL Rob that would be naughty but I have been on the phone with a bag of crisps hehehe. Just as I checked the phone BB wont sync at all so back on the dongle.

You could say it wouldn't be naughty at all. It's called aiding thorough diagnostic testing. Whether you could trigger the problem is a other question, but you seem to have a hard fault now anyway.

BT never turned up today. :|

Ok chased this up and the Indian man told me BT Engineers are working on replacing a cable near the exchange and this should be done by Monday and it's an area wide fault.

Took a few calls to get this information with only one BT guy returning my call out of 3 calls. BT.com says the fault is in the Network the BT automated fault telephone system says the fault is between exchange and my property and engineer may need property access.

About time BT get their systems to say the same thing, will see if it's fixed Monday.

Sounds like that may be the issue . Good luck - fingers crossed!

I think Bodgit and Scarper fixed it on Wednesday then it failed again so a new cable is having to be installed, although I do know my SNR gained 2db (5 to 7) on Wednesday so something was attempted.

Further update they have been working on the cable over the weekend but as yet no fix. Person I spoke to today is going to keep me updated. They were hoping for a fix today but no promises. Been over a week now and well past the promised fix date of Thursday. Do they still compensate for this?

If the phone isn't working, so far as I know they still do free diversion to a mobile number of your choice, and a couple of quid or so per day credit to cover outgoing mobile calls.

Interesting will have to look into that. Have been assigned a care agent after calling for status update, but also discovered next doors phone on same exchange is working fine. Yes phone has been dead since a week Sunday.

New target date of Friday. Care agent says it's affecting different people in different areas. Can't find any engineering works PEW's on the Zen list.

I spy with my little eye two BT vans, a cable drum and Highway maintenance van on the exchange side of my cabinet. At last progress.

Latest news is that Engineers need to do some 'ducting work'. Any BT bods know what this means ? Cant get a straight answer as to wether the new cable is in or not and just needs connecting or they have had problems and are still waiting to insert new cable.

Dig up the road/path as the underground piping that the cables are run in has collapsed probably.

Thanks for that. So looks like the new cable drum I saw on Thursday hasn't been used.

No sign of Engineers today - so another date has slipped.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Ok chased this up and the Indian man told me BT Engineers are working on replacing a cable near the exchange and this should be done by Monday and it's an area wide fault.

Took a few calls to get this information with only one BT guy returning my call out of 3 calls. BT.com says the fault is in the Network the BT automated fault telephone system says the fault is between exchange and my property and engineer may need property access.

About time BT get their systems to say the same thing, will see if it's fixed Monday.

Are you in Salford by any chance?
Edit: from your profile - I would guess not.
We are going though something that is very similar - and the time-scales you have mentioned are spot on.

BT say its effecting over 200 lines in our area.

Edited by deleted (Wed 24-Aug-11 13:17:06)

If they have a duct collapse they cannot pull a new cable through and will need to excavate the duct which in itself is not a massive task.

BUT ... if it is on a road then they need local authority agreement and that can take up to 13 weeks to obtain. Not BT being slow but the council being obstructive. I know this from experience - BT needed to install a pole right next to the kerb - no footpath and this would have required cones and traffic control (manual) for an hour at an off peak time - but the LA were demanding 3 months notice.

Much of that time from LAs is probably in order to try and reduce the number of different utilities visiting the same place in a short time. There are ways they could possibly be more pragmatic about things but that can be difficult when you are working on a large scale and everyone wants to be an exception.

And if you thinks LAs are bad try getting a line installed that crosses church land. That can take forever to get permissions sorted out.

And finally, I worked for a local authority installing broadband access in schools. It was no easier for the authority to arrange way leaves with either itself or with church owned land that it is for anyone else. There were no back doors to speed up the process.

HI nidave, no am in the North East area it seems Openreach have similar timescales no matter where you are.

Hi MHC

According to BT bod on BT Community forums who has emailed me an update one duct has been cleared with another due to be cleared tomorrow with cabling Friday.

As far as I can tell two sections are being replaced hence two duct clearances. If they are both in the same place I saw them working then it is under a grass verge.

BT Openreach vans have been spotted today at the exchange so lets hope progress is being made.

Now seen holes in pavement and grass verge, presumably this is the ducting work near the exchange, cant see it complete with cabling for Friday.

Emailed BT CEO today and got an immediate call lets hope he can sort this mess out, phone still dead.

BT High level complaints are now dealing with this but haven't seen any engineers on site and they were supposed to be this weekend.

Also saw on the News last night that another village up the coast had a mile and a half of BT cable stolen and the whole village is off. Maybe that's where Openreach are as the village has been off for two weeks and it's a complicated repair. Pure speculation on my behalf though.

As of 10am today were back in services with a wopping SNR of 10db compared to 4.5db before and a full 8128 sync, woohoo, it's good to be connected. Thanks Ian Livingstone and his team.

Still going strong. What I dont get is that my attenuation before the new cable was 23db and SNR of 4.5db. Now its 25db and 10db respectively. Wonder if they put me on a cable on my own with no crosstalk because that's a heck of a jump in SNR?

What are your full router stats and your exchange?

A rise in NM is good if you are limited to an 8 Meg package when your line is capable of much more, about 17 Meg in your case. Indeed, I would expect it to be much higher, in the 20 dBs.

Full Stats

Modulation: G.992.1 Annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 8,128
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [KB/KB]: 0.00 / 0.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 19.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 11.5 / 25.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 23.0 / 10.0
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / TSTC
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 58 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 74
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 50

10 dB margin at 25 dB attenuation makes sense as you can get full 8128 speed over 33dB attenuation so there should be spare margin on a shorter line.

Now SNR down to 8.5db after 10 days uptime, atten the same wonder if it will go to 4.5db like before.