Broadband problems, Advice requested.

[Isitme]

The low upload speed and noise margin show there is definitely a fault somewhere.

[Steph2010]

Don't know if the new SR102 router we were left with yesterday is faulty or if its just less capable of handling a bad line but it simply wouldn't hold the connection as well as the D-link does. I plugged that back in today & while its had more than a few connection drops through the day its been usable while the SR102 was losing the connection so often you simply couldn't use it.

Hopefully the BT engineer will find & fix the problem tomorrow (Something the last one clearly didn't) & we'll be back to the fast & reliable internet we've been happy with before this fault began 2-3 months ago.

[Steph2010]

BT Open reach engineer came out, Unfortunately several days of warm/dry weather mean that the noise on the line had cleared so when he ran his line test it all came back showing no problems.

Also it seems he was a telephone engineer rather than a broadband engineer so could do nothing but plug into the master socket & run what he described as a really basic test that would likely not find the sort of issue I was describing.
He said he was going to refer it to an Open Reach Broadband engineer who had tool's better suited to narrowing down where the connection was dropping as it can be hooked up to the junction boxes & stuff.

He explained that going by the symptoms I was describing & how it gets worse & brings noise on the line during/after rain & how it gets better after a few days of good weather that its likely water getting into the joints but that he wasn't qualified to go & look at them.

[bubblegun]

A Kelly's "Engineer"?

Sounds like it.

Why do they bother?
If they suspect the fault is the joints why don't they just replace the joints at the home and at the pole outside, isn't it a 5 minute job? Otherwise you could be waiting weeks for a simple fix. Or waiting a week to find out it isn't just a simple fix and then wait longer for an actual "Engineer" to find the true problem.

[Steph2010]

Well over the past few days the problem has suddenly got a lot worse, Tons of cracking/hissing on the line (Including at test socket) & our internet connection was dropping so frequently through yesterday that it was literally unusable for large portions of the day & there's so much noise on the line that its really difficult to hear the person on the other end of the line.

We were told by the BT engineer who came out on Wednesday that a BT Open Reach broadband engineer would be out Thursday or Friday yet they never turned up & we got no call, text or anything letting us know this so I've been sat in the house waiting for somebody to turn up for 2 days.


Were paying for a service that is at times been rendered unusable for lengthy periods of time & i'm starting to get quite annoyed with the whole situation as things are only getting worse & the people who get sent out don't seem to do anything that gets us any closer to the issue been resolved.



Here's todays routerstats noise margin graph taken from the test socket:
http://oi63.tinypic.com/j6uas2.jpg

And here is a short audio clip of what our line sounds like:
http://picosong.com/BiQE/

[seawright]

Check with Sky broadband technical if there is still an open fault report on your line. If there is check what action Sky are taking and when this will occur.

In the unlikely event that the fault has been closed you may have to get them to open a new fault ticket. Hopefully they will just run a line test without going through all the checks in their script which they are required to do with a new fault.

[Steph2010]

Problem I have now is that there hasn't been any rain for over a week so as usual all signs of the fault have once again gone away, No noise on the line & the internet connection has been stable since Saturday evening.

On the sky website the page that shows engineer visits etc... is showing that the issue was resolved last Monday after there engineer visit so I fear that phoning up now would mean having to start everything from scratch & given how good everything has been the past few days there line test's & everything else they do when you 1st report an issue are almost certainly going to come back clear.

Rain is forecast later today with more due over the next few so I might wait & see how that affects things although I guess I could call up later today & hope that they will just be able to send out the open reach broadband engineer that was supposed to arrive last week.

[lettice]

Problem I have now is that there hasn't been any rain for over a week so as usual all signs of the fault have once again gone away, No noise on the line & the internet connection has been stable since Saturday evening.

After all your visits, would it not have been easier for OR to just run a new cable and create a new line and stop many different engineers wasting time trying to fix it.

[Steph2010]

We have lived in this house just over 13 years now & with the exception of 2 issues prior to this current one both phone & broadband have been perfect.

The 1st issue was when our broadband was initially activated within a week of us moving here, We had issues that was traced back to a damaged overhead cable which was replaced & from then until 2012-2013 everything was fine. Then in 2012 we began having similar issues to what we are having now & a few months later (After 2 OR engineer visits) it was traced to the cable going from the junction box to the master socket which for some reason was about 1m longer than it needed to be & looped under the dirt to hide the excess & it had got damaged, That was replaced by a very good OR engineer & since then everything has again been fine until 3-4 months ago when this current issue began.


Since the last issue was fixed in 2013 we have been perfectly happy with what we were getting, We were told to expect speeds of upto 20meg & were always getting between 19-20meg (With 1.3meg upload) & it has always been really reliable so recent issues & the fact its taking so long to sort out has been a big frustration.
The drop in upload speed is especially annoying (Was around 1.3, Is now 699kbps) as I upload a lot of things like videos & stream gameplay etc... with friends (Especially as one recently moved to Australia) so were all uploading stuff to keep in touch. To be perfectly honest i'd love fibre broadband primarily for the faster upload speeds but current prices are a bit too much right now & I was fairly happy with what we were getting anyway.