Attenuation

[#1]

@will2012

Just to save on our faults team passing the ticket back unnecessarily it might be worth replying back to clarify that you acknowledge the potential engineer charge before we can take this further with the supplier for you. I'm only mentioning this as you did state that you don@t agree to the charge and that might be construed as a reason for us not to be able to take this further.

[#2]

Hi Adam,
Have done. Someone replied to me earlier confirming that charges would not be incurred as the problem had been located externally on the network, although they did not say what it was - I would be interested to know what it was in my case.

[#3]

The noise has got much worse tonight, it is quite audiable now on the telephone line. Also the routers inbuilt noise protection has activated. I dont know how it works but i'll take its word for it that it does.

[#4]

Who do you pay line rental to? If it's Plusnet I'd give them a ring whilst the line is noisy so they can confirm that and push it forward as a phone fault asap - have the ticket number handy to refer them to.

[#5]

Its odd its hard to notice during a call, but if 0 is dialled to remove the dial tone white noise can be heard, with the occasional crackle. I take it thatisn't normal?

[#6]

There's a quiet line test 17070 option 2 if you want to listen more thoroughly. No, you shouldn't get any noise on a good line, just a barely perceptible hiss.

[#7]

Thanks for that. I have dialled that and there is more than a hiss. In the spirit of the forum i'll keep everyone posted on how it progresses/is resolved. Hopefully you're interested, if you're not, tough! 

[#8]

It looks like this error has been fixed. Apparently there was water getting into the junction box at the end of my street. BT engineers have said a wire used was too small, creating a gap for water to enter. Suddenly got worse before it was fixed though, with the dial tone being replaced with clicks 2 every second, for a few hours
Fair play to the engineers they were up the pole at 5:30 last night, it was freezing cold, blowing a gale and snowing like a b****rd.
Thanks to Matt and everyone else at Plusnet for sorting this quickly.

[#9]

Has your attenuation now dropped to something more credible?

[#10]

No, not yet. It's still the same as it was, 47.
I don't know whether this is likely to drop at all? But everyone says the line is fixed now so I guess there's something hidden causing it.

[#11]

Would a DACS cause a high attenuation figure?

[#12]

Infinite I'd say. 
(ADSL won't work at all with DACS.)

[#13]

So why do you ask about DACS?

[#14]

Well, back in Feb Openreach turned up unannounced, and told my neighbour that they had to reposition the telephone cable so it was 5m high. There were two lines going from the pole to each of our houses.
What they did was cut both telephone lines at the pole, cut them so there was a few metres of cable left coming out of each house, fit a box to the wall, wire both wires up to this box, and then fit one cable between this box and the pole.
I looked in Feb, but have not looked since but seem to remember this box said DACS on it.

[#15]

It will just be a connector. They did exactly the same when my overhead cable was replaced.
A typical modern "drop wire" has two pairs in it so can carry 2 phone lines.
Not all though and the old grey "flex" type (as I had) are only a single pair.