Line fault or not??

Hey all

Its been a while, well I havnt had a "fault" for a while!

It all started a few days ago when I picked the phone up and it was so crackly that I couldnt hear. I called Talktalk to log a fault, and behold cause it was fine then their systems did not log a fault (facepalm) - this has been affecting my Fibre Broadband as the connection has been keeping dropping.

I subsequently tried again a few days later, this time it was really crackly on the phone to Talktalk support, who in their own words said "Hey this isnt right" Multiple fault tests were done, and it was determined that there was a fault on the line between my house and the exchange and that no charge will be made or house access would be needed.

COol.

The following day (today) I have just had a Openreach "Engineer" knock at my door, saying "can I come in and run some tests to check the line blah blah blah" - Hold on Talktalk said you didnt need access as the fault was at the exchange??! "umm oh yeah, but sometimes I knock incase I can check from inside the premises too just to be sure" ok fine...

In he comes, point him to the master socket where he proceeds to take the whole thing (back and front part) off the wall - hold on your not testing first??! - And snips the incoming twisted pair "BT side". and sticks a crocodile clip on with his testing tool which produced the stats shown in the screenshots.

https://ibb.co/h30qZG
https://ibb.co/krppTb
https://ibb.co/ggkeTb

Now I'm thinking first, your just sticking your test tool straight on the pairs, thats not an indicitive test especially when I maintain the master socket is at fault, but anyways. Without waiting for any results or further tests he then proceeds to just straight fit a full brand new NTE 5C master socket and then says something along the lines of "oh it could be your ethernet devices or Xbox or something like that" ??!

Now of course he puts it all back together and its all perfectly fine, no hiss, no crackle and left..

The line has dropped twice since he has left. It is also raining out side. Coincidence? One time when the line dropped, my Attenuation was reading 6db!!! My current router stats are:

https://ibb.co/ndNXgw

Talktalk say the should be 37MB down and 2MB up for my line and package.

Am I being stupid here? do I have a fault? if so what could it be??


To add

Both talktalk and Vodafone say I should be getting a minimum of 34mb. Vodafones upload speed prediction seems to imply something is not right with my current line

https://ibb.co/hyedMw
https://ibb.co/fGZpTb

Edited by jcrocker (Thu 25-Jan-18 16:19:11)

found an old post from 2015 about a problem I had, back then the line sync'd at 40mbs so I guess there is a problem, shame the Openreach "Engineer" didnt think so.

On with the battle..

Well actually my contract ends soon, so I might just ditch talktalk, the thing is they are all as bad as eachother for fault resolution.

It all started a few days ago when I picked the phone up and it was so crackly that I couldnt hear. I called Talktalk to log a fault, and behold cause it was fine then their systems did not log a fault (facepalm) - this has been affecting my Fibre Broadband as the connection has been keeping dropping.

I subsequently tried again a few days later, this time it was really crackly on the phone to Talktalk support, who in their own words said "Hey this isnt right" Multiple fault tests were done, and it was determined that there was a fault on the line between my house and the exchange and that no charge will be made or house access would be needed.

I have just been through this i had a crackle on my line and my speeds were poor they dropped from 35 Mbps to 7 Mbps and my line speed was up and down like a yoyo.

The following day (today) I have just had a Openreach "Engineer" knock at my door, saying "can I come in and run some tests to check the line blah blah blah" - Hold on Talktalk said you didnt need access as the fault was at the exchange??! "umm oh yeah, but sometimes I knock incase I can check from inside the premises too just to be sure" ok fine...

Similar to me but the Openreach engineer called to see if i was in then said as i was it was better to test from the house and eliminate internal wiring etc.

In he comes, point him to the master socket where he proceeds to take the whole thing (back and front part) off the wall - hold on your not testing first??! - And snips the incoming twisted pair "BT side". and sticks a crocodile clip on with his testing tool which produced the stats shown in the screenshots

The Openreach guy that visited tested first and said the master socket was ancient before taking it to pieces and showing me it was corroded he replaced it and run a test for about 10 minutes before announcing it was fixed, he got me to run a speed test so i could see things had improved then he left.

Hi Chippy

Its amazing your story is so much like mine!! Makes me wonder if Openreach have a policy of just straight-swapping the master socket, running a couple of tests and driving off when it comes to noisy lines, ironic as Talktalk said there would be no charge or need to access my house as the fault was on the cable between the house and the exchange.

Can I ask, did you get charged for the callout?

Is it possible that ethernet devices on my network could be causing the crackly line - as this engineer also said it could be something plugged into my router!

To be honest he was incredibly vague about what it could have been, saying it could be almost anything probably ranging from my router, the price of milk or brexit.. lol

As a side note, this morning I checked the router stats and I now get 34mb down and 1.04mb up, so something is improving....

How long do I need to wait for any line retraining? I ask as my contract is up for renewal soon and am thinking of moving to Vodafone which according to their website say I can get much better download/upload speeds at a better price.

Its amazing your story is so much like mine!! Makes me wonder if Openreach have a policy of just straight-swapping the master socket, running a couple of tests and driving off when it comes to noisy lines, ironic as Talktalk said there would be no charge or need to access my house as the fault was on the cable between the house and the exchange.

I got the impression he called by chance and as i was there took the opportunity to rule out anything my side of the master socket in my house and after testing he knew thwe fault was their side and discovered the corrosion in the master socket he did run tests before removing the socket.

The noise on the line stopped the day i had the line tests done by TT the line was clear the day the Openreach engineer visited.

Can I ask, did you get charged for the callout?

There was no mention of a charge as my master socket was ancient and they could only replace it with the new type, he did say that if the new master socket ends up the same as the old one there may be a charge next time (if there is a next time)

Is it possible that ethernet devices on my network could be causing the crackly line - as this engineer also said it could be something plugged into my router!

I am connected by ethernet on the PC which i use the most and have never experienced that you could try unplugging and testing.

To be honest he was incredibly vague about what it could have been, saying it could be almost anything probably ranging from my router, the price of milk or brexit.. lol

He sounds about as much use as a chocolate fireguard!

As a side note, this morning I checked the router stats and I now get 34mb down and 1.04mb up, so something is improving....

I assume you mean link rate not speed test result - My link rate changed almost daily and we never rebooted the router we now know why.

How long do I need to wait for any line retraining? I ask as my contract is up for renewal soon and am thinking of moving to Vodafone which according to their website say I can get much better download/upload speeds at a better price.

If you have a problem with your line i do not see how changing provider is not going to help and i would take anything an ISP's sales staff promises you with a pinch of salt.

.

Edited by deleted (Fri 26-Jan-18 16:26:12)

One of my friends just said

"Changing ISP and logging a fault in their 14 day period (if it still exists) may motivate them into fixing the problem especially if you threaten to cancel"

Just picked up the phone this morning as the internet had dropped, there was so much line noise on there I could not hear the dial tone, and this was on a line that an Openreach engineer said "Was no fault with" last week.

To cap it all, Talktalk are not prepared to progress the fault as I need to be at home for them to run remote tests!!!! This is after I told them previous tests indicated the fault was with the line between my house and the exchange!

Have issued contract cancelling threats to Talktalk now and have asked for a member of their OCE Team to call me today.

Edited by jcrocker (Tue 30-Jan-18 09:55:46)

I would suppose the line passed a remote test that TT did ... so they most likely raised a CDTnA task.

As you can see the pair quality test has passed .... did the engineer not do anything useful like actually listen to the line itself ????? [sigh]

Though TT will doubtless threaten £130 charge, ring up and report the line as noisy, as long as the noise is present at the NTE, with no extensions or owt else connected they *should* be getting someone out to fix it FOC.

The most obvious cause would be an HR fault on the D side.

Agreed - make sure you are getting noise with only a corded phone connected to the test socket on the master. Faulty routers, power supplies or micro filters can generate noise on the line, which is why it is best to remove those from the equation. Then the fault can be reported as a voice fault only, which should make it simpler for BTOR to diagnose. Does sound most strange for the engineer to immediately disconnect the master and test the broadband. If you can confirm the voice fault, it is highly likely that getting that fixed will in turn fix the broadband, obviously. Of course, if the noise issue is intermittent, it is somewhat harder to trace.

Replacing masters is standard practice with BTOR, so that part of your story is no great surprise. Your master socket may or not have been faulty - need to have compared stats with old and new really, but I guess it is faster for them to simply replace to give them a known working baseline. When I had BT Business Broadband a few years ago, after a power cut one day, the router refused to sync. After testing with another router, I knew something was wrong at the exchange side. Regardless, in came a BTOR engineer and promptly replaced the NTE5 master (he said it was the first thing they tend to do!) only to find it still wouldn't sync. He had to get BT to remotely reset something at the exchange to get it working. Bearing in mind this took 5 working days for an engineer to come out, when it could easily have been fixed within 24 hours without waiting for an engineer, we promptly switched the line over to TalkTalk Business (no problems since).