External fault lasting 6+ years, not sure of next move.

[Pale91]

Hello!

I want to open this up to the community, to see if there's anyone with personal experience that can offer some options for me to perhaps pursue. I'll try to keep it short.

Every year like clockwork, beginning in November and lasting until around April, my broadband has a variety of issues. This has been ongoing for approx. 6 years. A quick list of these intermittent issues:

• frequent disconnections
• unstable speeds
• unable to reconnect after disconnecting naturally
• reconnecting at 1mbps after disconnecting naturally, requiring router reset to regain speeds
• phone crackling to different extents (this has always been present each year)

Currently, the issues are starting again. I have up to 50% packet loss, and the house phone will crackle loudly right before the broadband disconnects.

The difficulty is, every year the same thing happens. A handful of engineers will be sent out over this 4-5 month period. Each doing the usual within my home (In total it's approx. 20 engineers by now, over the years). Every time, the same ''solutions'' are put into place:

• routers are swapped out
• router moved
• socket changed
•  BT limits are put on the broadband speed in the hopes of stability
• I am fully wired, with new ethernet cables. I have also limited my bandwidth on my year old PC via speed & duplex, as the routers would instantly disconnect whenever my PC sought proper bandwidth.

None of these solutions have lasting impact, because as the wet months come, the problems restart.

This year however, I can't afford to take 4+ full days off work (no one can really).

I guess I'm asking if that's my only option, to go through the same process every single year? Easily predicted by the weather forecast. It's fairly clear that there's moisture or damage to the external lines, however, it seems absolutely impossible for any change to be made to them.

I need someone to explicitly tell me that it cannot be fixed, so that I can adjust my package accordingly/leave. Or, I'd love for someone to skip all the run around, look at my account and see that these problems are repeated and ongoing for years. It seems a ginormous waste of time and money for myself and for the engineers to keep coming out to where the problem ISN'T.

I'm sure you can imagine how frustrating this is, for 6 months of the year my internet is patchy. I'm at a loss, pretty desperately seeking help outside of a queue of engineers doing the same useless checklist within my home. I hope someone else has experience with this kind of everlasting issue.

Thank you so much for making it this far, I appreciate any advice offered up.

[rbz5416]

Report it as a phone fault. That should prevent any nonsense to do with the Hub, etc. & hopefully will go straight to Openreach.

[Pale91]

Thank you, I may try that again.

The previous times I've reported a phone fault, the engineers come out and test the line (from in my house of course) and they say they can't see any issue. It's intermittent of course, because it only happens when it's wet out. 😕 I don't know how to gather any more evidence of this, I feel the evidence is my whole account, lol. Years of it!

[imjolly]

If the problem is water ingress when it is raining then I don't understand how it does not happen any time of the year as rain is not confined to November/April 

[Pale91]

I think it's because it's much wetter then? Consistently rainy and cold? I'm not sure, that's my reasoning anyway, because it is absolutely confined to November - April.

Thanks

[Scott1210s]

Have you looked into seeing if Fibre Broadband is available where you live? If you already know it isn't available, then you can disregard what I'm about to say. 

But if you don't know, then if you search for 'BT Wholesale Availability Checker' and type in your phone number (or if you havnt got a phone number) then use your address instead, then at the top row of the chart look and see if it says VDSL available. Or I guess you could just ask your current provider if it's available, or shop around at other providers and enter your postcode on their sites to see if its available.

Because back when we was on ADSL, it became a bit of a nightmare for us aswell, was lucky to even get 1mbps most of the time because of faults and distance from exchange, and always a noisy phone line, and picking up the phone would make the connection drop. But when we looked into fibre, (which we really should of done sooner) not only was it available, but was also surprised how much cheaper it ended up being, because we had been on a separate line rental charge, and broadband charge for years, whereas now they are both included in the price.

I also did wonder if the faults would still be there when switching to fibre, but they wernt. Switching to fibre instantly bypassed or leap frogged over the faults, and straight away for the past 2 years we've had perfect Internet, and with good speed because of being close to the cabinet. (distance from the exchange doesn't matter anymore)

Even though it's still a copper line from the cabinet to the home, it makes me think that means our faults wernt on that stretch of line, and were probably on the stretch of line between the cabinet and the exchange, of which that stretch is now fibre. 

[Pale91]

Gosh, I'm so happy for you. I would be so relieved in your situation. I think I'm in the same position right now, issue sounds very similar to what you used to experience. The engineers only check via my home...

Unfortunately, that's not available for me. I'm in a village. I can double check other providers but I'm fairly sure that it's ONLY BT and only copper lines. 😞 It's a nightmare.

Thanks so much anyway & I'll definitely double check. They just tell me to email a certain Openreach site thingy, which I have been doing for years, lol.

Edit: yeah just checked, says ''FTTP is not available.''

[rbz5416]

It's a bit of a pain but be one yourself. If reporting as a phone fault doesn't result in a fix (it worked for me earlier in the year), become a "pain" yourself. Just keep reporting it the minute the fault resurfaces & keep on doing it.

Are you in contract? If not a couple of possible alternatives:

What's you mobile coverage like indoors? It might be feasible opt for a 4G router & dump BT/Openreach altogether if coverage is good. If it's important to you, you could then port your landline number to a VOIP provider.

A bit more extreme would be to consider ordering a second line. That would then give you a completely fresh connection to the cabinet & hopefully resolve it that way. If that works you could then cancel the original service & if not, cancel within 14 days. Again you'd probably lose your landline number unless you port it to VOIP. But you'd have to check for installation costs & whether they would be refunded if you cancel.

[JohnC2]

Hi @Pale91, thanks for posting and sorry you're not happy with your broadband connection. 

Are you now experiencing a fault? When you contacted us last week you already had a case open with the complaints team. They checked the connection on 3 days and couldn't find any fault. 

If your now experiencing a fault we'll be happy to check your connection again. If a fault can't be located and you're experiencing one we would need to book an engineering appointment to start the investigation. 

Cheers

John

[Pale91]

Thank you for this!

Unfortunately, mobile coverage is pretty patchy, too. Village in a valley in Scotland. I think if I want internet, I'm stuck with BT... and stuck with Openreach. Stuck with them sending 12 engineers out to test the same router 18x. It's completely insane!

I really thought I HAD been a pain, for years now lol. I hear you though!