What exchange-based faults might cause loss of internet?

Hi,

Just wondering if any of the forum's experts might know what exchange-based faults might cause loss of internet...

a) with incoming calls
b) when there is internet traffic?

We have a long line in a rural area that tests OK, and have been syncing at around 800-900 kb/s for a couple of years and getting 720kb/s download speeds. Over the past few months, service has been steadily degrading such that the router drops sync when we have incoming phone calls, and I now also suspect it trips out when there is internet traffic. [Our reason for this suspicion is that it has tripped out several times as we arrived outside our home - I think my Android phone has picked up the wifi]

An SFI engineer also said he had seen large HEC and CRC errors at the street cabinet about 3km from the exchange, this cabinet being at the end of a pressurised main (e-side ?) cable.

Of course, OpenReach are saying it's all down to our long cable and nothing can be done.

[We're already operating straight into the test socket, and have used 3 different types of router, and tried various quality filters including BT-branded ones, and different cables, so we know it's not our side of the termination.]

Any thoughts that might help us convince OpenReach to try a little harder would be most gratefully recieved.

The way forward is to keep getting your broadband ISP to keep raising faults.

"An SFI engineer also said he had seen large HEC and CRC errors at the street cabinet about 3km from the exchange,"

So why didn't they do something about that ?, swap out the E, or load it at the exchange and see if it errors there ?

Just wondering if any of the forum's experts might know what exchange-based faults might cause loss of internet...

a) with incoming calls

For that symptom, I would suspect a HR fault at a joint.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The way forward is to keep getting your broadband ISP to keep raising faults.

"An SFI engineer also said he had seen large HEC and CRC errors at the street cabinet about 3km from the exchange,"

So why didn't they do something about that ?, swap out the E, or load it at the exchange and see if it errors there ?

Yeah that's a good point. If you've called Openreach out on an SFI job, which I assume you would as it's not a voice fault, then the engineer would have run a pair quality test to eliminate any line plant problems? Any faults detected with this would then be rectified by the engineer (9 times out of 10 on the day, so you would hopefully notice an imediate improvement on a fault like this).

All that remains are "exchange faults" as you rightly say, which can include faulty DSLAM ports, which would require a "lift and shift". These are not so rare that it wouldn't be worth mentioning to the next engineer, if you opt for a revisit; afterall he might even appreciate knowing what was done or not done the first time.

Hope that helps

Thanks to you all for your comments. They're much appreciated and I feel a little more comfortable about getting SFI in again, especially as the fault seems to be pretty well permanent now. My own guess is that because the fault can be intermittent, the first SFI didn't detect anything wrong at the exchange.

I'll try to do some testing over the coming weekend with a view to getting SFI in next week. Meanwhile, I'm having to survive on 3's mobile broadband dongle plugged in to a Billion 3G router.