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Between Rock And Hard Place

I'm getting desperate - grateful for any suggestions.

I am at the end of a long rural line. Until a year ago, I used to get rock solid 2.5 to 3 Mb/s ipprofile. Since then the line had been going progressively down hill. A fortnight ago, the internet went down completely. Intermittently, I can sync but the sync is slower than dial up modem. There has also been sporadic noise on the phone, and BT have been out to do a line check but found no fault. My ISP did a line test yesterday, which showed a copper loop fault. Today, BT performed a test that showed no fault. We have an overhead line to the exchange - whenever it rains, the internet goes down and we get noise on the line.

I am having problems getting BT to do anything because the phone fault is intermittent. My ISP won't do anything because they say it is a problem with the line.

I am getting desperate now - no internet for a fortnight now, any suggestions on how to get this sorted? My ISP says I need to get BT to swap the D- and E- side pairs and do a test with a Hawk meter. Do I move ISP?
 
This is typical for the issues caused by BT, they like to pass the book back to the ISP.

You have the weather on your side next time its is pouring down disconnect the adsl and report noise on the line even better if the winds are strong.


Next best email a complaint to Ian livingston.

To move ISP will only take the issue with you or even help BT to rid the problem by saying your line is too long to have broadband.
 
My ISP (Xilo) have been pretty good. It is definitely a BT fault, but I wasn't sure what the best route to get them to fix it was - directly or via the ISP. I think you are right, I am going to lean on BT. They have got to be one of the most frustrating companies that I have dealt with.
 
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As Kits has pointed out moving ISP's won't fix your issue as the fault is with your line and not your ISP.

We see this from time to time where BT will try to pass the buck becasue they dont want to fix your line and try to pass it off as a broadband fault.
This is not true, try to get a screen shot of the test Xilo did and forward that to BT to show fault with Voce circuit.
 
I have an engineer's visit scheduled for Thursday. It looks like the weather is going to stay dry and the fault go away. Do I rebook for when it is going to be wet, or do I continue with the appointment and wave the ISP's fault report at the engineer and demand a swap of the E- and D- side pairs?

I have noticed that when the fault appears, the line attenuation shown on the modem appears to drop from 57dB to 45 dB. I don't know what mechanism the modem uses to estimate attenuation, but maybe this drop gives a clue as to the type of fault. Previously, when the line was good, the attenuation was always around 57 dB. Currently the attenuation has crept up to 52 dB and I can sync the modem but at low speed (896 instead of 3000+ kb/s).
 
I would suggest gathering screenshots of the router when it is working plus one when its down. Get the proof from the ISP of the failure and the tests they have requested. There should be no charge for this but if needed I can supply an email address for you.
 
We see this from time to time where BT will try to pass the buck becasue they dont want to fix your line and try to pass it off as a broadband fault.

It's not that BT just do that either.

The amount of times we see LLU customers go to BT with line faults for BT to then say we need to deal with BT Wholesale.

Really does make me laugh but all it does it make the ISP look like we don't want to do anything - which couldn't be further from the truth and is simply a case of BT's own processes limit us in raising the issue further.

Matt
 
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There are some ISPs, AAISP for example, that have a.. somewhat unothodox.. way of getting problems like this resolved. However their service is really more designed for the technically minded. The problem here is, as others say, with BT and your only real route to a solution is via the ISP. The ISP will then put pressure on BT and should go to bat for you.

Sadly BT's SFI system is quite notorious, just do front-page searches of our news archive for "SFI" and you'll see what I mean.

Out of interest, have you considered using any mitigation methods of your own? Such as installing a ring wire filter on the master socket (assuming it's not a recent BTOpenreach [logo] one)? Granted this will not solve your underlying problem but it might help a bit.
 
Out of interest, have you considered using any mitigation methods of your own? Such as installing a ring wire filter on the master socket (assuming it's not a recent BTOpenreach [logo] one)? Granted this will not solve your underlying problem but it might help a bit.

I think I have found the ticket we have open for this on our systems and I believe the customer has a NTE5, and this shows error on the copper circuit when everything is removed, and faceplate off.

Matt
 
One of the problems is that if BT wholesale run a copper line test in the diagnostics process then they kick it back to the ISP as a voice fault which means then the ISP would find it hard to progress as a purely broadband fault.
 
Thanks for all your help and suggestions guys.

I was all prepared when the BT engineer came today with printouts and determined arguments but he turned out to be a really decent guy. Spent a long time up poles in the freezing cold tracing the fault. It was the cable between the house and the pole - a long run through 3 trees, a patch of jungle and over a couple of roads. Insulation was in tatters, he said, and couldn't believe it worked at all. Will have to wait for some bad weather to be sure but so far, so good. Just waiting for the ipprofile to rise from dial-up speed at the moment, but at least I have internet.

Apparently, there is over 5 km of overhead cable from the cabinet to the exchange and I am about 1 km from the cabinet, so I suppose I should be thankful the thing works at all.
 
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