Sky Fibre Dropping

Hello all,

Background
1. Last 3 to 4 months or so I have had a crazy number of drops, which is getting worse. I have had over 10 openreach engineers visit. My impression to date is that 1 in every 5 cares, and is great, the 4 in 5 are very poor.

2. There was apparently an issue with the DSLAM which openreach "fixed" and DLM reset performed (it had dropped down to 46Mbps download due to the number of drops). Drops persist after this fix.

Home Setup
3. Setup is standard - fairly new (1 year old drop cable) connected to NTE5C pre-filtered faceplate.
4. Router is connected to the broadband side of the NTE5C via RJ11 cable.

5. A single extension is connected to the NTE5C for the phone downstairs. This is filtered, the DSL extension is not in use ie no sync on the extension, just voice.

6. The drops continue with the extension disconnected.

7. I am not on SKYs SOGEA.

Steps attempted:
8.
a) New RJ11 cable
b) New NTE5C fitted by openreach
c) New router
d) Tried without the extension connected

Openreach visits

9. Openreach have visited over 10 times.

10. When Sky raise an engineer now, openreach are not showing. There was a note left that they had tested the line in June, hence they did not attend the two visits last week.

11. It feels openreach are not meeting their obligation to investigate.

Possible issues communicated by openreach
12. VDSL Cabinet 72 (cricklewood phone exchange, London) has power surges detected during testing. I am unsure what this means?

13. The DSLAM is faulty - this was apparently fixed and hence a DLM reset performed

14. REIN - openreach issued an openreach person who claimed to be a REIN expert. He played with the jelly crimped pairs below the telegraph phone in the manhole, and then stated "there is no REIN." He did not have any sort of device that would detect interference as far as I could see. He told me "watching Netflix will make a line drop." His parting words were literally "less streaming may keep us away." Absolute nonsense... Hard to tell whether the engineer had any understanding of REIN or not. Openreach are claiming it cannot be REIN due to this visit.

Stats

15. Stats are fine, it just drops without warning, ie broadband light goes off on the router. It then resyncs fine at the full speed, before dropping again.

16. Whenever I check the SNR is 7.6,

17. I cannot see anything in the stats to indicate it would drop. It seems like below whenever I look:

System Up Time: 53:36:28
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collision Pkts Tx b/s Rx b/s Up Time
WAN MER 2244282 3570508 0 0 0 05:16:22
LAN Down 0 0 0 0 0 00:00:00
WLAN (2.4 GHz) Up 5006292 2961702 0 2 1 53:35:06
WLAN (5 GHz) Up 55347852 29768546 0 2 2 53:35:02
Broadband Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 79999 kbps 19999 kbps
Line Attenuation D1(4.4 dB) , D2(9.5 dB) , D3(15.2 dB) U0(1.4 dB) , U1(7.0 dB) , U2(11.5 dB)
Noise Margin 7.6 dB 15.4 dB

Example of drops today per syslog

18. Drops are excessive at times, today was quite bad:

Drops today per the log (21 drops between 3PM and 7PM):
Jul 7 15:06:14 syslog: [159936.590000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 15:14:07 syslog: [160409.476000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 15:15:04 syslog: [160440.736000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 15:17:10 syslog: [160592.289000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 15:18:07 syslog: [160622.773000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 15:26:01 syslog: [161123.018000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 16:08:28 syslog: [163670.857000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 16:12:56 syslog: [163938.755000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 16:18:10 syslog: [164252.485000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 16:19:07 syslog: [164282.928000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 17:54:42 syslog: [170044.161000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 17:55:44 syslog: [170081.455000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 17:56:02 syslog: [170124.411000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 18:42:48 syslog: [172929.478000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 18:43:32 syslog: [172974.393000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 18:45:14 syslog: [173076.240000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 18:56:40 syslog: [173762.077000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 18:57:26 syslog: [173783.390000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 18:58:18 syslog: [173860.119000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 18:59:09 syslog: [173910.925000] Line 0: xDSL link down
Jul 7 19:00:07 syslog: [173942.390000] Line 0: xDSL link down

Prior to this issue, the line was stable for weeks, even months, without any dropping.

I reckon the reason openreach have stopped attending is because they know there is a DSLAM fault and are waiting fir that to be fixed imminently

Great that would make a lot of sense. Spoke to neighbours they’re having drops also. Will just give it a few weeks and cross my fingers and toes.

Should be resolved by end of next week if not sooner, hopefully

So it continues and I have had quite a lot of work done by now, tuned my car radio to AM612 (looking for REIN) and a timber yard about on the other side of the road is pumping out so much noise when you drive by their entrance.

Noise here: https://youtube.com/shorts/1tayBs-tnDw?feature=share

Any ideas what it could be? Travels a fair distance but becomes a lot quieter a few metres away.

Challenge is this is 25m max distance to the phone exchange and there was nothing there when the lines were laid. Chances are the lines go to the exchange directly through the ground this place sits on, in a straight line to the exchange. Oh it’s also directly over the road from the fibre cabinet, and my house

Presumably yard wasn’t in operation when you drove past in that vid, so it’s something that is running after hours or continuously. You could have a word with the management, explain the situation, affecting several neighbours (they won’t have any idea it could be their kit causing the noise).

If they are willing to help, could trace by having someone attend and switching off the main breaker, after hours. If that alleviates the noise, then you know you have a possible culprit and can begin to work out, energising one sub circuit at a time what it could be.