Telephone line hell - suggestions please?

[Gizmo]

Hi All,

I'm having difficulty with my telephone line but its intermittent which means the BT engineers can't find it by the time they get here. Hence I'm now facing callout charges and still haven't got my problem sorted. So have any of you heard of anything like this?

From around Friday night to mid Sunday evening my telephone line is as crackle-y as hell and the internet goes up and down like a yo-yo. Can't keep connected for more than 5-10 minutes at a time.

Its not the wire in the house, the BT engineer says the lines are fine, the router has been reset and restarted several times over each weekend to try to fix it. And our provider don't have any issues currently that are being reported anywhere by them or by moaning customers.

Come Late Sunday night/early monday morning its fine again.

This has been happening on and off for the last few months and when it was happening three years ago it turned out a bird had been eating the line insulation. That wasn't as intermittant issue though - it was relatively evenly distributed through the week.

Any suggestions?

[Kittish]

Couple of questions. First, how old are the lines in your neighborhood? If they're pretty old, that may be the biggest part of the problem.

Second, how many people in your area use DSL (I'm guessing that's the service you have)? From what you're describing, I'd guess that part of the problem is the lines being overloaded.

If the issue is either or both of those, then I hate to bear bad news, but there's probably not a lot to be done about it. It won't get better until the company that owns the lines replaces/upgrades them.

Is there another affordable option for internet where you live? That might wind up being the most viable solution.

[Gizmo]

It is a DSL connection. Its a relatively usual neighbourhood and in the UK DSL is a large percentage of the market so most will do.

Not sure on age of lines around here.

There isn't really another option. Even if we went over to Virgin for our internet I still think they use the same system. It surprises me that the overload wouldn't just make it slow but would force crackle on the phone line and lose the connection though. Hmm..

[Bandit]

One question that may sound strange....

What's the weather like when it happens? Is it raining and/or windy when you have the trouble?

It could be that there is a crack in the insulation somewhere that only causes problems when it gets wet/rubs against a tree or whatnot.

B

[Gizmo]

Not always. Last weekend was fine and calm and it was awful. The prior weekend it was relatively horrible and windy and it wasn't that bad. I've had it in all weathers, winds and tempratures unfortunately.

[raudf]

It may also be an intermittent problem at their junction box. Ours is at the end of our driveway and that thing used to get drowned whenever it rained for more than 5 minutes. Caused horrible line crackles and inability to use our DSL at all. Once the rain stopped, it dried out and was usable again.

Of all of us in the area that run off that box, we were the only ones that complained, because it would eventually start working again. Phone company drove by while it rained, "found" the problem, moved the box further back and onto a larger pile of dirt. So we have far fewer problems with it than we had.

[Cia]

For us every 5 years or so the phone lines would get crackly from squirrels using the lines as highways. The phone company would come out, do stuff and no more crackles for about 5 years.

[Chromatix]

There was a similar problem at my parents' house in the very very far north of England. When the problem occurred, it was clearly audible to the operator, yet when the engineer came around it was rarely still present - which of course made troubleshooting very difficult.

After replacing the entire line from the cabinet to the master socket, we eventually concluded that the cabinet itself was probably faulty - that area being generally damp with sea air, the terminals would have corroded over time.

[ComputerNecromancer]

Second, how many people in your area use DSL (I'm guessing that's the service you have)? From what you're describing, I'd guess that part of the problem is the lines being overloaded.

DSL doesn't work that way. With DSL you have your own *dedicated* pair of wires from the house to the exchange (either central office or a satellite exchange).

So the number of DSl subscribers only becomes an issue at that point, and it's not going to result in the sort of symptoms described.

*Cable* internet has all the folks in the neighborhood sharing one "line". With the attendant bandwidth problems.

DSL can have bandwidth problems from too many folks on the exchange, but phone companies are generally better about provisioning for that, since they can do it at a central location rather than having to spread new gear over the whole neighborhood.

The symptoms are definitely something going weird with the wiring at the house or between the house and the exchange. "Crackling" is a dead giveaway, because that's a problem with the *analog* part of the signal, and the signal is only analog between the phone and the exchange.

[Gizmo]

The only option I've been given by the BT engineer is if it happens again push our provider to book in an appointment for a Saturday morning (It honestly is only Friday night - Sunday night that it happens) and hope that it is happening that weekend.

Thanks all for your suggestions. It sounds like I'm going to be playing tag for a while trying to 'catch' the problem. We are away most of the coming weekend or I'd try to set it up for then.

[dalesys]

Is Gramps hanging his wire-rim glasses on the phone wires again?

[telecom_goddess]

is anything weird at the dmarc? That's the point where the outside line meets inside wiring. It's definitely something physical on the line somewhere, if not weather then an animal or moisture messing with it.