Sorry to hear that Tim …. crossing everything for tomorrow

In reply to a post by Banger:

Unfortunately my only option at present is FTTC via landline and I am with TT.

Oh, right that explains why you're on analogue. I first thought you had BT, since that's how you addressed it in your original post. But what you mean is Openreach! It is Openreach who are responsible for the line faults.

Being on FTTC doesn't stop you from getting Digital Voice as I am on BT FTTC and my migration happened over 2 years ago from TalkTalk Analogue to BT FTTC.

I'm not sure if TalkTalk can help you migrate from Analogue to Digital Voice but it may be worth a shot trying to get them to migrate you. Now they might tell you that you must renew your contract to migrate you to DV. If that's the case then you can switch to a new ISP like BT and it will offer you to switch to Digital Voice. You'll receive a free alexa phone, which you can wirelessly connect to your router and that's how you can make phone calls or connect the phone to the telephone port.

The TalkTalk router does not have a telephone port and may require an adapter. But BT Smart Hub 2 does. So you have to join an ISP that has a router with a phone port so you can connect your old vintage phone to the router for phone calls to work.

This may naturally resolve your problems for good. If you still have drop outs even after that then the problem is somewhere else on the line. But I expect it to solve your problem.

If you're not having general broadband drop outs and they only occur with the phone then DV will completely solve these problems!

I believe you are offering poor advice to the OP.

He has a line fault affecting both voice service and broadband. It needs fixing.

And AFAIK, Talktalk don't offer digital voice on copper, only for full fibre.

https://www.talktalk.co.uk/digital-voice

And what if his faulty line never gets fixed, what next? My line under ADSL EO Line was never ever fixed. Openreach could never find a fault. They plugged in a device to my master socket to test my line and did not see any fault when my connection was dropping out. It was like dial-up you can't use the phone without it affecting the connection.

Every morning around 10-11am my SNR would drop to 1dB or less and connection speed will drop to less than 1Mbps before recovering back to 6dB and then connection went back up to 15Mbps.

Eventually, FTTC did come and solved the problem but not completely. All it solved for me was the general broadband drop-outs but the connection relating to the phone ringing, plugging or picking it up (triggering disconnection) was never solved. Like the OP I was also with TalkTalk and it was my first ISP that I chose for FTTC when I joined them in February 2020.

But after 2 years I joined BT FTTC+DV. I never even bothered to try and get it fixed, I just lived with it. But DV just happened to have solved my problem spontaneously. No general broadband disconnection ever since. Have had the best result recently 173 days connection up time before a firmware update was pushed for the Smart Hub 2. Broadband+Digital Voice for me fixed it that way and frankly no one would even know that I have the underlying fault!

Openreach may not even be able to identify where the fault lies. After January 2027 everyone will migrate to DV and I am sure many people will no longer suffer from these problems ever again even when the fault will exist. By then most people will get upgraded to FTTP and then we can forget about the copper line.

Also, his connection dropping midnight may not always necessarily be associated with his faulty line. I also suffered from periodic downtime with TalkTalk at random times where anywhere from 5-20 minutes my connection was off. Router was showing as connected but the service was down and no webpages would load. This is TalkTalk being a bad service, as I never experienced this problem since migrating to BT 2.6 years ago.

Also DLM can be triggered if you repeatedly pick-up the analogue phone causing broadband to disconnect. DLM will interpret this as a line fault and try to lower connection speed to make it stable again. This also happened with me and I had to wait 10 days for it to resolve on its own.

If Openreach are unable to fix his fault then Digital Voice is much more likely to resolve it naturally.

I'm pretty confident they will find his ring trip as it is a fault that is as old as the telephone itself and can be detected even on an old fashioned analogue meter.

Moving to DV on a line with poor insulation is just masking the fault, for a while. Moving to DV on a line that tests okay isn't. These are different faults.

Edited by FibreBubble (Tue 28-Jan-25 09:40:11)

Engineer was early for his PM slot. Insisted on changing master socket and disconnecting me extensions. Has been to the green box and exchange.

Reckons it is the cable from the post at the top of me drive to the first chamber under pavement is corroded completely. Intermittent dialtone.

Told me dig team might be later this week - believe that when I see it.

Sounds like he might know his stuff.

They often use in house dig teams, the process has been improved greatly.

Keep us posted please Tim

Would the soundness (pun) of a spare pair from the BT66 to the cabinet also have been checked?

Edited by 4M2 (Tue 28-Jan-25 13:29:30)

If someone wants to replace the cable I would let them