Loud Crackling Noise/Slow Broadband Speed

[Helios]

Whether the noise is there or not when the engineer visits the fault condition may still show on his HHT.

Intermittent NSY lines are usually as a result of a HR DIS or Rectified Loop. Both can be tricky little sods to locate though.

[Tom_91]

Well, the engineer visited this afternoon.

As expected, there was no cracklng when he arrived. He listened the recording I had made though and he was bemused as to how it could be so bad at one point and perfectly clear the next.

He managed to locate the fault to the box on the front of our house and put it down to damp getting in, possibly due to all of the wet weather we've been having. He was able to fix the problem and our phone and broadband seemed to have returned to normal. Hopefully it stays that way!

As the fault was in the boundary of our home, I was expecting a charge. However he said as it wasn't our fault we shouldn't have to pay anything. We'll have to see when the next bill comes in!

A positive experience all round 

[Colin_London]

I have a very similar problem - intermittent crackling and reduced Infinity broadband speed.

Because of fear of charging I also recorded the noise when the fault was on - lucky I did as when the most recent engineer did visit the fault was of course not on.

Anyway I've had the line replaced all the way to the pole now, and still the problem is there. Just found out my neighbour has also been having the same problem for years. When he had BT out they just said to him 'oh yeah, we always have problems in this street' with no further attempts to fix his problem. He said that it was just a case of 'put up with it'.

So how do you force BT to take action when there are multiple but intermittent faults on an underground cable to a pole and it's not going to be an easy, cheap or quick fix?

The pole itself is faulty, on a slant, with a DP in poor state of repair. Luckily the engineer who replaced my overhead obliged to climb it but subsequent engineers have refused to climb due to the notice on it that has been there for at least 8 years since I moved here. This makes it easy for them to not investigate further. My neighbour complained about the pole but apparently was told 'it's not on your land, what's your problem'....

[john46]

is the line noise heard when connected to the test socket if it is then it is a no charge callout you need to go back to faults on 151 and report the noise

[Colin_London]

Yes - it's still there using a corded phone connected to the test socket.... When it's actually happening. But I'm so fed up now explaining the problem over and over to foreign call centre workers who are convinced it must be my problem when their automatic line test shows 'no fault'. My infinity 2 line has capped itself out at 50Mbos due to the intermittent faults causing drop outs (originally it was 65Mbps) but of course that is a 'good speed' which I should be happy with...

[john46]

when you call 151 you should not mention anything about broadband/infinity in the call it is a voice line fault

[Colin_London]

Yes John, I know that. The problem I was talking about was getting BT to address a problem that is going to need 350m of new underground trunk cable, a new pole & overheads, and which the engineers are basically just saying 'live with it' because they can't do anything beyond fix the cable from the house to the pole (because they can't do more than that in their timeslot).

So, have I got to gain evidence from all my neighbours using the pole? Have we all got to put in faults simultaneously? Have we got to write to an area manager at Opentreach about the dangerous pole? How big does a problem haveto be before they'll spend some money on it?

[john46]

use this link to report the leaning pole http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/contactus/tellussomething/tellussomethingaboutournetwork/tellab...