Sudden Rash of Intermittent Disconnects Past Fortnight

I've had my Demon Broadband for years with a BT Voyager 2091 wireless router. Connection has been pretty much perfect to the Woking exchange with up times bordering on 3-4 weeks. No line drops etc. Best speed about 5000 or thereabouts.

In the past fortnight, however, the line has been dropping 5-6 times a day and reconnect speeds have dropped to something like 690-1000. I have to manually reconnect 4-5 times before I get a connection in the usual 5000 range.

At the same time, there's been a noticeable but very intermittent crackle on the phone line. Somtimes it's there, sometimes not. Sometimes when the router's connecting you can hear modem-like noises. Other times, the router can be at a stable 5000 for hours and the phone line will be crackling but the ADSL line will be fine. Bizarrely, sometimes when the router is struggling to connect, the phone line is silent. There doesn't seem to be any straightforward pattern except for the fact that the problems with ADSL seem to have coincided with random, intermittent noise on the line.

It's very odd. I've done a quiet line test with my phone plugged directly into the socket but only once or twice have I managed to catch the crackling. Most of the time it is silent as it should be.

It's an old style grey BT socket outside the house which feeds into the more conventional white socket inside (no test socket if I unscrew it).

Anyone have any ideas? I understand if I call a BT Engineer and they can't hear the crackling (since it's intermittent) I get charged £130. Both BT and Demon say the phone line and ADSL is fine from the remote testing they do.

Does "the more conventional white socket inside" (nte5?) have a test socket that you can use if you unscrew and remove the faceplate?

In reply to a post by 4M2:

Does "the more conventional white socket inside" (nte5?) have a test socket that you can use if you unscrew and remove the faceplate?

The OP said "old style grey BT socket outside the house which feeds into the more conventional white socket inside (no test socket if I unscrew it)."

I've got some intermittent crackling - BT coming out tomorrow. My voice provider is post office - I got them to confirm that if they found no fault with my equiptment but did not actually hear the problem. Will soon find out

Sure, but just wanted clarification about exactly which socket is being unscrewed

Sorry, yes it's the 'more conventional' looking white socket in the house that I unscrewed...no test socket in there, though.

Could just be a bad connection occurring in the white phone socket that is not so bad with only a phone lead plugged in but worst with the filter/splitter lead's connection.

Huw - would be interested to hear what happens.

Just to follow up on this one. Engineer came and found a fault on the line 400m away from the phone. Went down the road, tightened up some screws and bingo - now connecting at 8000!. Apparently, the junction box where the fault was is right next to a speed hump and the vibration can often cause the screws in the boxes near speed humps to loosen.

Luckily, before he came, the phone line had gone completely dead so the problem of trying to isolate an intermittent fault vanished.