line fault

[#1]

Morning all,
I have a raised ticket - question ID 47101427 but still have some concerns.
My line went down last Tuesday - I raised this Wednesday, BT capped me at 135k which led it to be unusable, so the line stabilised during the week and on Saturday someone finally responded to my ticket with, connection is fine, just slow, some errors but not to worry as you raised a no connection ticket and it is connected.
Well - although I feel fobbed off, I gave the guy a chance, he said it would speed up by Monday morning - Sunday evening I had 2mb which isn't my normal speed but I assumed I was capped.
All day Monday my line kept re-syncing - BT capped me agian at 250k this time.
So to recap, I am now capped due to instability at 250k. Obviously still unusable. There is clearly a problem with my line that needs BT to investigate - but I assume they haven't even been made aware yet. The first person I spoke to on the phone, I told them someone had been up my telephone pole the day it went down and I would like an engineer to perform some exchange tests. The second person I spoke to told me no fault teams work over the weekend - sounded stupid, and was proven wrong when the fault team fobbed me off on Saturday.
Where I appreciate that plusnet is very busy - this isn't meant to be sarcastic in anyway - I feel that after a week with no broadband, several fobbed off answers to my calls and no sign of anyone trying to fix it, I am getting slightly annoyed with the service provided.
It appears that forum posters get good responses by people willing to help from these forums, so hence the reason for my post.
Thanks,
Adam

[#2]

I'm just picking this up now, I can see that with the new router in place the connection is continuing to drop out. I've submitted an SNR reset which should lift the cap on the speed of your connection for now.
Going forward I'm submitting a fault report to our suppliers with regards to the dropping connection which seems to be causing the profile to be lowered frequently

[#3]

Thank you Adam, I am so happy just to see someone responding to this.
Where I appreciate the bumb back up to 2MB I think the same process will start again - not sure if you noticed in the tickets but when I was on the phone to you guys yesterday there was a massive amount of noise on the line, the subsequent phone line test came back with no fault though. The house opposite me had an entirely new line put in, so I am guessing the work carried out for them has destroyed my line. I am currently at work so wont be able to test the line out today until 5pm or so.
What's the next step - will this fault report lead to BT coming out?
Thanks again,
Adam

[#4]

Who do you pay for your phone, Plusnet or someone else? If your phone line is noisy it needs reporting as a voice fault before addressing the broadband side. Normally, once the line is sorted out, the broadband will sort itself out without further intervention.

[#5]

My phone is with Plusnet too - I raised it when I realised the noise was there - I don't normally use the landline but as I said, the test came from back plusnet  no fault found.

[#6]

Quote

I don't normally use the landline but as I said, the test came from back plusnet  no fault found.

I did re-test the line and got the same result, this does indicate that there may not be an issue with the physical line itself but doesn't rule out problems elsewhere such as at the exchange or with our equipment. With the latter in mind I know you've tried a new router but have you tried a different phone handset?
Adam

[#7]

I haven't - I will try when I get home, although while on the phone to plusnet it was clear again.
Just to note, when the broadband fault started, my phone wasn't even plugged in ( I really don't use it!) I only plugged it in to use the 0800 number.

[#8]

Hey,
The phone line was clear when I tested it this evening - with both current and new handsets. They are now completely removed from the wall as per normal.
My router is now syncing higher:

Downstream Upstream
  Data rate(Kbps)
4480Kb 288Kb
  Noise Margin
9 6
  Output power(dBm)
119 197
  Attenuation(dB)
42 24
However, after you removed the 250k cap this morning, a new cap of 135 is back on the line, I assume its been disconnecting all day to cause that.

[#9]

Not only has it been disconnecting but at some stage it has reconnected at an insanely slow speed.
If your router is supported by RouterStats and you are happy to leave a PC on you could monitor what is happening yourself.

[#10]

I will take a look at that.
So now I am thinking, in a logical manner that everything points towards the work that was carried out by BT up my telephone pole and probably in my exchange as being the cause - but as of yet I haven't heard anything about getting BT involved.
I spoke to a retired BT engineer today regarding this and the first thing he said was get an engineer to the exchange to check the previous work.
Is there anything else I can try in the meantime? I never realised how much I relied on the internet until I lost it for a week 
Adam

[#11]

Your upstream sync speed of 288kbps is very low, no doubt held down by the 6dB target noise margin. All seems to point towards line noise problems at low frequencies, probably phone related.

[#12]

Thanks for that spraxyt, still points towards a phone problem even with no phone plugged in?
My adsl knowledge is basic so apologies if that is a dumb question!

[#13]

Sorry, I don't know the effect on circuit behaviour of removing all phones from the line.
I guess what I really meant is that the problem seems line related rather than broadband related, even though testing (e.g. as mentioned in Reply #5) suggests physically the line may not be at fault.

[#14]

The attempted ringing of an incoming call puts extra voltage on the line - even if there is no phone connected. Also crackles on the line that are caused by dodgy connections between the exchange and you will still be there when the phone is not in use.
So yes, phone line problems can cause broadband problems even when no phone is connected.

[#15]

Thanks jelv, that makes sense, see attached image for the last couple hours from routerstats, got one disconnect when noise lifted.