Can anyone help diagnose this BT line / phone problem?

[sdelasal]

I've had intermittant problems with my phone now for 6 months and am getting fed up with
Toucan and BT for not being able to fix it. They are unable to react quick enough when
I have a problem - 3-4 days later the problem will have gone away again.

The line is fine for 99% of the time. Occassionally, I get a lot of crackling on the line.
Sometimes it's so bad that converstaion is impossible. Occasionally, the line has no
dialling tone. This is with everying disconnected and the phone straight into the BT
side of the master socket. I've tried both phones and the problem remains, which tells
me unless both phones have intermittant problems at the same time then it's a line problem.


Today for example I phone Toucan with the mobile and they do a line test & tell me the line is okay - even though I have no dial tone. So they start talking about a call next wednesday - with me probably being liable for an 80 quid fee!

The BT guys who arrive have been good but unable to find a fault. They moved me to the other pair as the original was suspect. They dug a hole in front of my garden - no explanation given though!


Okay - here's the only clue I have. When I get to the situation of no dialling tone, what I can do is phone myself using the mobile and that call comes thru and I get the dial tone back - albeit with a lot of noise. So, does that put any light on what could be the problem?

Steve

 

[breezer]

nothing you can do about it, its not your cable.

its wet some where though

 

[OLD]

With phone lines that go noisey due to a poor connection if you test them which sends a voltage down the line it can temporaly fix the fault bt use to use blue crimps which are bad for this the new type are ok .So its back to bt and when the man turns up say the new pair did not fix it and he will then have to give you another pair and check all the line connections this is nothing new to them.

 

[sdelasal]

The problem is that when the BT man arrives, typically the line is clear. What I need is a direct line to a BT man who, when I have the noise, can come and investigate. Appointment is monday afternoon. So we'll see.
Steve

 

[kevindgas]

had a similar problem a few years ago took 20 visits before the found that it was a card in the exchange!

 

[tomy]

There are no "BT men " anymore we all work for openreach on behalf of whoever your service provider is which in htis case is toucan .

 

[Softus]

Just escalate the problem within BT.

Stay polite, but ask them for their fault reporting and fixing policy, and for the maximum length of time that an intermittent fault will be left outstanding.

When it exceeds that time, ask for a complaint to be raised and escalated.

With this type of fault an engineer has to visit each connection on your line between your house and the D-side cabinet, until they find the duff connection. Providers are unwilling to allocate an engineer for enough time to do this, but if you call Ofcom then they get more willing.

 

[AlanB27]

I would say its an HR Dis (High resistance Disconnection) somewhere on your line, which can be sometimes hard to find. However saying that a competent Openreach engineer should be able to find it using it a tone. Either that or check CSS for spare E and D sides, always the quickest easiest solution eh guys lol

 

[sdelasal]

Well the guy came on monday & fixed it. The line between my house and the cable is fine - A previous engineer thought it may have to be duh up!. Yjis guy put it down to poor connections in a manhole 30m down the road!

So, we'll see hoe long this fix lasts.... what was good is that the line stayed faulty/noisey all weekend up to when he arrived. He said the line was picking up a voltage from another circuit. That description & the description of the cure does not tally with me but ithe line is now clear so i'm similing!

Toucan then rang back two days later - to see if i was happy. I deviated from the script i.e. did not answer yes and asked whether they have records of the continuous faults on this line and why do they keep asking me to check my kit & threaten me with a 80 quid call out fee - but it was all too much for the wee lass on the other end - bless her cotton socks.

Steve

 

[OLD]

I could tell you about induction, longitudinal voltage and transverse current but the high resistance connection is fixed so your ok.

 

[Softus]

I could tell you about induction, longitudinal voltage and transverse current but the high resistance connection is fixed so your ok.

Oh, do tell.

 

[OLD]

50hz as you would expect is every were its our electrical system ,if you were to run a wire out for say 100mts and measure with a high impeadance instrument to earth you get ac induction voltage.Telephone cable is in pairs ,twisted pairs sometimes called ballanced pair if you do the above with this you get the same induction but because of carefull manufacture, when a telephone is connected to the pair both legs do the same and the longitudinal voltage in each wire is exactly the same and does not drive a transverse current through the phone so no noise.
A faulty pair with a dis in one leg has say 100mts induction in one leg and say30 in the other the imballance will drive a current through the telephone its a very low current buts thats what they work on so you get ac noise with switching and harmonics etc.
The most noisey fault is when one leg has a earth and there for no induced voltage and the other is clear but getting full induced voltage its so noisey you wont hear dial tone .

 

[IJWS15]

An e-mail to [email protected] worked for me when we were having problems and getting nowhere with customer services.

Don't tell everyone!

 

[foxhole]

Had a similar problem, brittle cable had been chewed by something cat/fox? and kept loosing line until engineer found cable damage outside.