Whats wrong with my line? Baffled.

Recently moved into a new house, phone setup looked a bit complicated as there are two faceplates right next to one another downstairs, one dead one with a single port and test socket access , and one with two phone ports that split our one phone line. That one has no test socket. Coming out of this one and going upstairs is a wire to one of the bedrooms which I presume connects a faceplate up there, that oddly is also dead despite seeming to come out of the one live one downstairs.

The phone line was very noisy in both ports so I reported a line fault and was told by BT there was no problem on their automated test, I then called them and as soon as they heard what the line was like (like I was standing in the rain the lady said) they sent out an Openreach engineer.

He seemed a bit puzzled by it all and asked if we had a second line, all I could say was it looked like one had been fitted previously. Save for the faceplate he changed absolutely everything BT owned and spent most of the morning in the house, outside the house, and driving to the junction box at the end of the road, before declaring it fixed and inviting me to listen.

I picked up the line and it was as bad as ever. He seemed a bit more puzzled and renewed his pilgrimage back and forth before saying the problem was between the house and the box and he'd have to call another engineer to go through every joint and wire but he was done inside so I could go back to work; if it turned out there was a separate problem in the house when I got home I could call his mobile and he'd come back the next day before I left for work and fix it.

Line was fine when I got back so forgot about it and my o2 broadband went live a week later. The line initially synched at 5 megs as promised and offered great speeds. However was unstable from the off. Over the next week the connection became more unstable and would intermittently drop and pick up again with the router synching at anything between 6.5 megs and 400k. Sometimes restarting produced a better speed but often as not it would just stick there until it was ready to chuck me off again and restart itself. I did all the diagnostics and after changing the line decibel level o2 said to stick with it as the line was training but its no better another week on so has been referred to second tier.

I'm getting that slight sinking feeling as they dont seem to know whats wrong with it. Theyre sending me another router but I already tried connecting my old good netgear one. It synched at 400k same as the o2 one at the time, I didnt know to spoof the MAC address though so couldnt actually get it going.

Theyve also said theyre waiting for BT to suggest something, and that it could well be the second line in the house causing problems.

Does anyone have any ideas. Its a rented flat - if an engineer has to re-do the faceplates in the house will I have to pay? I'm not confident tha landlord would pay as we technically have a working phone line. Which is to be honest - now clear as a bell on voice calls.

Edited by sturdytoast (Fri 27-Jun-08 14:09:28)

OK it looks like its O2's router. Changed it to netgear and been steady for the last 3 hours.