In reply to a post by wobblyheed:

Thanks all for the comments.

I have chased IDnet and to be frank, they just keep saying 'disconnect the router and see if the line is noisey'! I find it very frustrating that they either dont or wont grasp the router or routers are not the problem. I will migrate my line from then soon as the BE reseller does phone lines or I decide to migrate both BB & phone to BE themselves.

I hope this doesn't come across as though I'm getting at you, I'm not, but I repeat they can't even ask BT to look at your problem. Contrary to what you believe it is the router, or more correctly the broadband presence on the line, in that without it the phone works perfectly. They are only responsible for the phone working when no other equipment is connected to the line, and the only fault they can report to BT is that a line with nothing but a phone connected is faulty. Yours isn't.

As the others have said, it needs a well-trained broadband engineer, (some newer ones are less well-trained), and IDNet cannot report a broadband-related fault for you. They just aren't allowed to. Neither could BT themselves if your line was with them, nor any other phone provider. All of them would tell you that you have to report it to your broadband provider. IDNet should have told you that, and if they haven't then they should have.

Similarly, all providers are going to warn you that if Openreach find no fault they are likely to charge the provider, and the provider will have to charge you. They have to, in case there is a charge, but in most cases such as yours there should not be.

Re Be themselves, in this post you say for the first time it isn't BE (Retail), but a reseller of Be Wholesale. If you say who the reseller is you stand a chance of the boss spotting it here and getting on the case. At the moment none have cause to, as they don't know they have a customer with a problem that their support hasn't sorted. And in the same way as IDNet can't do anything, Be themselves can't either until your reseller gets onto them. Chasing IDNet is a waste of your time and energy. Not because of them, but because there is nothing at all they can do to help.

In reply to a post by Going_Digital:

Disconnecting the router is a pointless task.

When there is no router connected to the line there is no DSL signal, the DSLAM at the exchange does not continually broadcast a DSL signal, it waits for a handshake with the router before the two of them start transmitting to each other. Unplugging the router therefore does nothing more than confirm that the noise you hear is a result of having the DSL signal on the line rather than a general voice fault.

It is almost certainly a HR fault, and requires a broadband trained engineer not a regular voice line engineer to find it as a non broadband trained engineer will just put a test handset in the test socket on the NTE-5 and conclude that there is no fault. This means you will need a visit booked as a broadband fault via the ISP not via the BT domestic voice faults line.

HR faults are far more common on BT's lines than they would like you to believe, with their current line test technology them telling you there is no fault is like the water company telling you that water is coming out of your taps when quite obviously there is none.

Don't let the warnings scare you off, there is a clear fault that is not with your equipment as you have replaced all the equipment that you are responsible for. It is now up to BT to find the cause of the fault that can easily and clearly be demonstrated to the engineer by lifting the phone off hook.

Thank you (and everyone else) for your comments. What you suggest is what I'd have expected idnet to say rather than disconnect the router which to me doesnt get to the root of the problem.

I now need to convince my current ISP to book a broadband engineer. Should I tell them all the evidence points to an HR (high resistance?) fault or just say get a BB engineer out?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by wobblyheed:

Thanks all for the comments.

I have chased IDnet and to be frank, they just keep saying 'disconnect the router and see if the line is noisey'! I find it very frustrating that they either dont or wont grasp the router or routers are not the problem. I will migrate my line from then soon as the BE reseller does phone lines or I decide to migrate both BB & phone to BE themselves.

I hope this doesn't come across as though I'm getting at you, I'm not, but I repeat they can't even ask BT to look at your problem. Contrary to what you believe it is the router, or more correctly the broadband presence on the line, in that without it the phone works perfectly. They are only responsible for the phone working when no other equipment is connected to the line, and the only fault they can report to BT is that a line with nothing but a phone connected is faulty. Yours isn't.

As the others have said, it needs a well-trained broadband engineer, (some newer ones are less well-trained), and IDNet cannot report a broadband-related fault for you. They just aren't allowed to. Neither could BT themselves if your line was with them, nor any other phone provider. All of them would tell you that you have to report it to your broadband provider. IDNet should have told you that, and if they haven't then they should have.

Similarly, all providers are going to warn you that if Openreach find no fault they are likely to charge the provider, and the provider will have to charge you. They have to, in case there is a charge, but in most cases such as yours there should not be.

Re Be themselves, in this post you say for the first time it isn't BE (Retail), but a reseller of Be Wholesale. If you say who the reseller is you stand a chance of the boss spotting it here and getting on the case. At the moment none have cause to, as they don't know they have a customer with a problem that their support hasn't sorted. And in the same way as IDNet can't do anything, Be themselves can't either until your reseller gets onto them. Chasing IDNet is a waste of your time and energy. Not because of them, but because there is nothing at all they can do to help.

No problem. My 'beef' with idnet is that they could not grasp what my issue was. They supply BB as well as telephony so I would have expected them to say 'it's your broadband that needs investigating.'

I referred to my current ISP provider in a previous post but just to re iterate

My telephone provider is IDnet (BT line)
My ISP is Xilo re selling BE broadband 24 Meg (not 16 as I previously stated)

Edited by deleted (Sat 03-Dec-11 10:38:08)

Thanks for taking it as intended.

Yes, IDNet should have said that.

Re xilo, you probably know, but may not, that uno and xilo are effectively the same. So to save time I suggest you PM your xilo username and phone number to uno, as those are what he will ask for when he next sees this thread. I hope that helps. Also, if you haven't already, you should raise a support ticket with them.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 03-Dec-11 10:54:04)

In reply to a post by wobblyheed:

I now need to convince my current ISP to book a broadband engineer. Should I tell them all the evidence points to an HR (high resistance?) fault or just say get a BB engineer out?

It doesn't matter what you say to them as they are just a reseller. They will have to ask the wholesale ISP - Daisy? - to report the fault to BE who will report the fault to Openreach.

It's not a case of trying to convince us, we're happy to book them as and when requested but as Bob says, we have to warn you of potential charges.

This is no different than any ISP, we have to do this as if the engineer finds no fault, we get charged and this is passed on to you. We can dispute this, which is explained prior to booking the SFI and also in the confirmation email.

You just need to let us know (or give me an existing ticket ID) and i'll send you a message on it.

Matt

Call centre staff are largely just that, i.e. not technical experts on broadband. They will be following structured question/wizard templates invariably.

You might be interested in my story:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/aaisp/t/4009184-aai...

I left IDNet for AAISP in April- something I'd never imagined having to do. My new provider got BT moving. Unfortunately, the problem began all over again in September but AAISP got behind BT. An SFI engineer spent 4-5 hours between my property the cabinet and the exchange. I have not been charged a penny by AA or BT.

Good luck

Right, as an update to this.

I got onto idnet and was met with the usual stuff about charges and what a BT line engineer would do or rather what they wouldnt do. IDnet said the line engineer would just disconnect the router and see if there was any noise on the line. If there wasnt, BT would say the router was the issue (despite it being changed) and charge.

Now, as previously mentioned, the router is symptomatic of the line not the cause so Im not going down that route.

Instead I got onto Xilo \ Uno who are now reselling BE There service. So go on the trial for BE's broadband. Well that went ok for the first 30 days then the broadband was suddenly cut off. Had to contact them on the monday and suggested they \ BE had done something as it was funny the trial BB was cut after 30 days.

Of course they said it was a coincidence and that a 'fault' had been found in the exchange but they would not re imburse me for the lost weekend of broadband!

Anyway, the connection got progressively worse so I said enough is enough, get an special broadband engineer out.

He comes along and does his tests. He says he cannot find any fault but, he said the outside BT grey box had pinched the cable so freed this. he also replaced two wired from the external BT grey box to the back of the NTE 5. He also fitted a new BT filtered face plate.

All of a sudden, my line speed is 7.1meg!! It had gone up from 4 meg despite him finding no fault and making changes. I asked him would I be charged. He said he didnt see why I should be.

Next day I got a mail from Xilo \ Uno saying BT were charging for the visit. I told them no way was I paying and gave them all the facts and line stats pre and post visit to show a 'fault' had been corrected. Still waiting for BT's response.

But, it gets worse. On friday we had our first frost. Call it co incidence or not but the line speed dropped from 7meg to 5.1meg. Its monday now and the speed hasnt got over 5.7meg.

I've also just made a landline call and the speed has dropped to 3.3meg!! What is going on!?

I cant afford to be billed another 200 quid by rip off BT to investigate the phone line and have them tell me there's no fault. There is clearly still a fault if my speed has dropped from 7meg to 3! my router also shows the noise margin has shot up to 18.1db AFTER making that earlier call.

Im at my wits ends. I'd have a new line put in and pay all the cease charges but know if the new line is routed through the same cabinet to exchange, it is unlikely to make a difference.

Why is it BT just rip you off? What can I do now!?

Edited by deleted (Mon 16-Jan-12 15:52:17)

How you get the underlying problem sorted I can't think right now, but in the short term you should find that just power-cycling the router should get (some or all of) the speed back until the next phone call.