Crossed lines

Broadband went down yesterday, came back at 1mbit/34kbit (normally 15mbit/1mbit), and is basically unusably slow - sometimes minutes to load a page.

Quick 17070 revealed it was speaking two numbers at the same time, and on incoming calls I get a dialtone ringing over the caller.

Have reported to BT yesterday, but they say next Tuesday to fix? Seems a bit ridiculous to have phone and broadband out of commission for so long, just because somebody connected a wire to the wrong port. Or is there more to it than that?

Post deleted by XRaySpeX

Wrong port, or could be damage due to weather and a myriad of other things.

Standard response is four days for telephone, unless you pay extra for faster response times. In an area recently flooded it may fix itself once the green cabinet is dried out.

BTW for consumers, they dont count Saturday and Sunday as working days.

Thanks, oh well. Kinda fortunate 3G is pretty good here now, rigged up the mobile broadband instead.


If it helps with diagnosing it, when I dial from landline to my mobile, I get a ringing sound, and at the same time it goes to the answer machine.

Meanwhile, on the mobile it gives my correct number ..... then tells me I have a missed call from another number Oddly, it's a dialling code for an area a bit south of me, which is going to be a different cabinet I think.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Wrong port, or could be damage due to weather and a myriad of other things.

Standard response is four days for telephone, unless you pay extra for faster response times. In an area recently flooded it may fix itself once the green cabinet is dried out.

BTW for consumers, they dont count Saturday and Sunday as working days.

They work on a Saturday. i had an engineer visit on a Saturday for a fault that i reported earlier in that week , i don't pay any extra either, so going by that Saturdays should count, it's probably a case of how busy they are at any given time,
or they have recently changed so now Saturdays are included /counted as a working day

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 29-Jun-12 17:52:23)

Engineers are being forced in on compulsory overtime (ie six day weeks) for the next 12 weeks so everyday will have a huge amount of cover, lead times will start to reduce and you may get a visit far sooner than what you are quoted (provided not appointed)

In reply to a post by arfster:

Have reported to BT yesterday, but they say next Tuesday to fix?

Sounds like a result to me! OFTEN they report "no fault found"!

First guess, an exchange or possibly cab fault.

Depends where you are in the country, if up north, they are snowed under, and you might have to wait. Down south, pretty much on top of the work stack.

They won't FNF this, its a A to A or B to B contact and will show up on the line tester.

Only Monday to Friday count in the response times. Saturdays are only worked when necessary and are not a standard working day.

sorry but you are wrong as for most if not all of us saturdays are a standard working day , how many depends on what roster you are on.

If terms of openreach engineers many work Saturday, but in terms of Openreach counting response times, Sat/Sun dont count

thats 100% right

Fixed just now, was an exchange thing apparently. Phone went down, back up few minutes later. Engineer phoned, said it was the simplest thing he'd done all day.

Thanks for all responses.


Maybe need to think about getting a business class line, or one of those routers with an auto 3g modem fallback.

In reply to a post by arfster:

Maybe need to think about getting a business class line, or one of those routers with an auto 3g modem fallback.

Good to hear it was fixed so quickly. I think your two thoughts about covering the same possibility for the future may be overkill. IIRC I've seen 3-4 reports of crossed lines in the years I've been here.

I don't want to say "I told you so", but .....
Doubtless a tip solder bar pair, with an off cut of wire making contact between your and another line. Absolute tickle, wish I'd picked up it up today !

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by arfster:

Maybe need to think about getting a business class line, or one of those routers with an auto 3g modem fallback.

Good to hear it was fixed so quickly. I think your two thoughts about covering the same possibility for the future may be overkill. IIRC I've seen 3-4 reports of crossed lines in the years I've been here.

Hrrrm, ok. I'm on adsl2+ atm, but fibre is coming soon-ish, so maybe I wait for that.

Am I right in assuming most faults for me would likely be past the cabinet? Distances involved are about 75m to the cabinet, but something in the region of 1000m beyond that to the exchange.

So, why do BT charge me 50% extra if I need work carrying out on Saturday!

Nice little extra - seems to have added about 2mbit, 16.5 to 18.5 Not bad for a 1km line.

Edited by arfster (Sat 30-Jun-12 19:38:54)

In reply to a post by MHC:

So, why do BT charge me 50% extra if I need work carrying out on Saturday!

Cos retail prices are different from wholesale prices in any industry.

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-Jun-12 21:21:33)

Try rebooting between 6am and 9am. At 1km you should be getting 20 Meg or more imo.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

At 1km you should be getting 20 Meg or more imo.

Depends... when I was on ADSL2+ at just over 1km from the exchange I only got around 10-12Mbps.

Hmm. I'm 2.1 - 2.4km (not exactly sure), and get 12.5 - 13.0 Meg.

Your figures are closer to what the graphs usually say... maybe I had an exceptionally noisy line. The (sync) speed certainly wandered around a lot

I can't remember the details though, all such unhappy thoughts disappeared when FTTC arrived

What has that got to do with it?

Anyway, I am referring to use of BT labour - from various divisions and various grades. I get charged a specific rate per man day - with a 50% uplift for Saturday working and other increases for overnight, Sundays or public/bank holidays.and that is when agreeing a contract for around 1500-2000 days.

For commercial purposes BT class Monday to Friday as normal working days and all others - Saturday, Sunday, public/bank holidays are not included.