Faulty phone line

My phone line died this morning, no dial tone even at master socket and engaged to callers Despite this my broadband is working at full normal speed. How can this happen? BT have diagnosed an external fault.

Hi,

It's possible one of the leg of the cable has broken/snapped off in the PCP or on the DP.
The broadband can continue to work on one of the leg.

Edited by max360 (Fri 30-Nov-18 16:47:09)

Insulation fault A-B will cause engaged tone. Usually indoors.

In reply to a post by max360:

Hi,

It's possible one of the leg of the cable has broken/snapped off in the PCP or on the DP.
The broadband can continue to work on one of the leg.

... and how would this explain the engaged tone callers to the number are getting ?

It kinda depends what sort of broadband you have ?

What is killing your dialling tone is a loop fault.

If you have FTTC then it�s an exchange/E side/cab fault.

If it�s ADSL then it�s most likely an exchange fault before the DSLAM ties.

In reply to a post by max360:

Hi,

It's possible one of the leg of the cable has broken/snapped off in the PCP or on the DP.
The broadband can continue to work on one of the leg.

Not at full speed it can't. Not even half speed. It is severely degraded, and the fault can be anywhere including in the user premises before the modem.

Thanks Zarjaz. I do have FTTC so it is evidently a loop fault. Hope it isn't too much of a B to locate it for the engineers sake.

.... shouldn�t be too taxing.

Good luck.

...... depends which leg is dis too .

... if the pair is straight A to B then it needs to be the A leg dis allow the broadband to continue to (partially) work.

B leg dis, no dial tone, no broadband.

Thanks, good to know. Loop fault or short circuit can occur indoors as well? I would check by plugging in the telephone into the master socket test port.

Yes they can, and do, but the broadband wouldn�t be working as normal .

oldswan

If you use BT and you tested it yourself on line, the system will self report a fault which you can continue to track online. They will also divert calls to your mobile for you if you request this. ( This is where 'you get what you pay for' comes into play.)

If you are with other operators you will have to report it to them, unless their online systems have improved significantly. As Zarjaz says usually fairly easy to fix, usually caused by someone dislodging a wire at a connecting point. The test gives an indication to OR of how far from the exchange the issue is at..

It's fairly common for people to cause a loop fault by plugging the phone cable for a sky box into the ethernet port instead of the RJ11 port. It shouldn't affect the broadband, should it?

I�ve seen that a few times ..... but can�t remember if it affects the BB too.

Doesn�t happen so much now, Sky boxes are wireless to the router nowadays.

In reply to a post by max360:

Loop fault or short circuit can occur indoors as well?

Rule of thumb is that a loop fault is indoors or right at the customer end. This is because in order to cause engaged tone the insulation must be below 1Kohm resistance. In the network you would expect service problems before things got that bad as resistance to other lines would come in to play. Of course rules of thumb are not always accurate and for example paper insulated cables and spades through cables can cause big insulation fails quickly.

Edited by deleted (Fri 30-Nov-18 21:29:04)