Engineer came out today, really helpful guy but again, BTOR wasted his own time and ours. He tested the line and saw the condition where an incoming call drops the ADSL connection. He also did the following:
- Changed our exchange connection to new TII termination blocks that was recently installed in the exchange
- Installed a new BT5C Mk4 faceplate
- Tested line conditions
- Our upstream has now been hard capped at 512k despite asking for it not to be
Had around 6 disconnections - on the last drop out I did another quiet line test and had 5 minutes of listening to sizzling crackling noises. Line finally reset to the stats below.
The problem I've identified so far:
- Incoming phone call drops the connection
- Upstream is whats typically affected (can see that in in the amount of HEC errors etc)
- More instances than not, crackling can be heard on the line at the point of drop out (need to test this further)
- Crackling on the line is intermitant
- Same fault condition is happening across all residents in the same close or worse (i.e total broadband and telephone line failure - all connected to the same cabinet)
The engineer told us that the close we live in comes up a lot in conversation and has had problems for a long time but because engineers dont have 'their own patch' no one has really taken ownership of the overall problem.
We can see that BT engineers have been digging up stuff around 10mtrs away from our house to fix a neighbours problem who has had no landline or broadband for over 7 weeks now. Interestingly one of the engineers had mentioned to its a known problem with the underground wiring (our wiring is underground all the way to the cabinet) and BTOR is not going to replace it but again, this is not being looked at systemically. That same engineer advised residents to raise a directorate complaint.
In the meantime I will get cracking on calling a parish council meeting on this, bring the local MP along wth BDUK representation and invite all names/addresses of affected residents in preparation for a petition to BTOR and respective ISP's. Why? Everyone here feels powerless and has given up, I know how that feels and its just not acceptable.
So I'll wait for BT to get back to me, move on to the next stage with the helpful guys from BT and see what can be done - I'm sure we will all grab a spade if BT wants some digging power!
| Downstream | Upstream |
| Line Coding (Trellis) | On | On |
| SNR Margin (dB) | 9.1 | 21.1 |
| Attenuation (dB) | 53.5 | 33.0 |
| Output Power (dBm) | 0.0 | 12.6 |
| Attainable Rate (Kbps) | 3996 | 468 |
| |
| Rate (Kbps) | 3641 | 230 |
Oh also forgot to mention. The engineer tested our line from the exchange - he described it as in testing our line as if it was not directly connected to the exchange to rule out line to the cab then line from cab to premises. He said despite removing the cable and cab from the equation, he could replicate the line drop on incoming call so suspected exchange equipment. He moved us to the newly installed TII Blocks.
