In reply to a post by mikebear:

<snip>
Some times the disconnection is triggered by an incoming phone call,less frequently by an out going call.
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I am surprised that no one has commented on the above. That is the "smoking gun". Somewhere within the length of your pair there is a joint that has gone HR (high resistance) or semi-conducting.

What is the result of performing a quiet line test from a classic wired telephone, that is the only device connected to the pair, via the test socket behind the front faceplate of the NTE5/A?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

so you have a line around 5km long in actual fact

The fact is more like 3.8 km.

As a very rough guide device the downstream attenuation by 12 to get line line distance in km

My apologies for the delay in replying to you all but you would not have wanted a blow by blow account of my dealings with BT.

After a week or so of slow speeds with the occasional 2+Mbps after a daytime power off/on I eventually lost telephone connection completely.
Having reported the fault I was given 2 dates when the fault would be fixed,which came and went and eventually,after 8 days, got a dialing tone but still had occasional bursts of noise and poor connection speeds.

A further complaint via 151 eventually resulted in an engineers visit by an excellent chap who took the time (3hours) to check everything and was able to show me his diagnostic machine showing green ticks in all boxes.
The last 400m of cable from the exchange is aluminium and there was fault was in a joint in the box on the post outside my house.I think he described it as a "blue"joint,I guess due the corrosion in a copper/aluminium connection.
This probably fits in with the HR/semi-conducting idea given by burakkucat above.

For the past 9 days I've had a steady 2.4Mbps.

Going back to the question of distance to the exchange: I've measured the distance by road (the overhead line runs alongside for much of the way) and with a guess as to the route of the last few hundred meters I would say the distance is about 4.5km.

Now that the line is OK I may start to look for an ISP giving 24/7 support as most of my problems have happened after 6pm on a Friday....at least I cam shelve my search for a "fixed 2 Mbps" line,for now.
Thank you all for your support.

NOTE: An ISP that has 24/7 support is very different to a service where you can submit the fault report to Openreach 24/7

The ability to do this is/was called Enhanced/Total Care (brain is a bit mushy today so not 100% sure) and is a cost option

Re. Total Care or Enhanced Care.

Thank you for the reply Mr.S. I found this link :- http://www.armstrongbell.co.uk/downloads/Fixed-Line-...
via Ask Jeeves.
The prices look not unreasonable if you need extra muscle to get a fault fixed.
I suppose I just want someone to talk to other than BT 151.

I had not heard of Armstrong Bell until today.Their site http://www.armstrongbell.co.uk/
could be of interest to some members.

BT151 should only be called if you have Line rental with BT Retail - so you can avoid calling them by buying the voice line rental from one of many providers if that is what you want

Broadband issues of course always going through the broadband provider

In reply to a post by mikebear:

<snip>
The last 400m of cable from the exchange is aluminium and there was fault was in a joint in the box on the post outside my house. I think he described it as a "blue"joint, I guess due the corrosion in a copper/aluminium connection.
<snip>

My apologies for not acknowledging your post over a week ago. I do not know how I missed it.

I am pleased to read that you had an appropriate grade Openreach technician tasked to your fault and, thus, it has now been successfully resolved. Your assumption is 'spot on' with regards to that defective joint.

There is no need to apologise for a few days delay in replying;doubtless you have other things to do besides forum watching.

So far my speed has held at about 2.4 Mbps despite all the rain we've had.In the past it would have collapsed to 1 Mbps or worse.

I still get the occasional short duration loss of connection for incoming calls.Would this get worse if I go to ADSL2+? I suspect any increase in speeds may not be worth the risk.

May next project is to find an alternative to Thunderbird which now seems to "do it's own thing".

To avoid getting my knuckles rapped I will start a new thread.

In reply to a post by mikebear:

I still get the occasional short duration loss of connection for incoming calls.

That is disconcerting. When you say 'loss of connection' do you mean loss of sync between the modem/router and the DSLAM?

Would this get worse if I go to ADSL2+?

There should not be any disruption to the broadband service when the baseband POTS is being used, regardless of the ADSL mode currently in use.

For your line, usage of ADSL2+ would be quite pointless. I would recommend trying ADSL2 mode and see how that compares to using the original G.Dmt mode. Then use whichever one that gives you reliable performance.