EE broadband slow and landline crackly

Hi there

We are on a long line and fairly often have problems with the connection to the exchange. Recently there has been a sudden change, calls on the landline are crackly and quiet. Quiet line test you can hear feint crackling pretty much constantly. Broadband speed has dropped, and regularly "hangs", so you are waiting for ages for a page to load, then you refresh it and it loads fine. The attenuation has increased from 59 to 60dB and the noise margin is up to 9.5dB from 6dB. Phone call to EE, they do a line test and it passes the line test all ok and then they refuse to go any further. They wont investigate the broadband unless it drops below 1mbps, but its not the throughput that is a problem its the constant hanging/freezing when there is no throughput at all.

Any advice on persuading them to investigate further? Is it correct that I cannot speak to BT myself and can only go through EE?

Who do you pay line rental to? EE as well?

If you have an NTE5 master socket, where the bottom half of the faceplate comes off if you remove two screws, gently take it off. Gently because there could be wires attached to the back. You'll see a socket behind it, that it plugged into. That is the test socket.

You need to plug a phone, preferably a corded one, into that test socket, (no dangly filter - just the phone plug), and try the Quiet Line Test again. You can get a corded phone for about £5 in many places, even some supermarkets.

If it is quiet, then the problem is your end and should be solvable with help from here.

If it is still noisy, forget about the broadband problem. Bang on about the noise on the phone line, to the line rental people. Don't mention the broadband even as an incidental issue as that lets them off the hook. They have to fix that noise. They don't have to fix this level of broadband problem. Not without you going hairless over the next few weeks anyway.

Fix the phone noise and the broadband goes back to normal in 99.9% of cases.

Line rental goes to EE aswell.

I will plug a corded phone into the test socket as you described, if no noise then that gives me more hope of solving the problem without having to speak with EE but I fear the noise is on the line as it has happened before. The sudden appearance of the problem suggests to me that the wiring was disturbed/repaired and caused the problem (also happened before)

But if the noise is still there, you've eliminated your broadband kit and any DECT phone as well. Though as a final check, its best to unplug DECT phones, your router, and Sky boxes in case their power supplies are putting out RF noise.