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Internet cut-outs and the Landline

tigertr7
Newbie
Posts: 1
Registered: ‎12-08-2013

Internet cut-outs and the Landline

Hi there, I live in Lancaster, Lancashire (if that's of any relevance to the topic) and I've been suffering intermittent problems with my internet for several years. Here's the run-down of my issues:
My actual internet speed, for the most part, has been fine and I've had little to no issues in that regard (at least, none that weren't easily resolved); the main problem is that when the landline is called, the internet connection will drop out in a matter of seconds, regardless of whether the phone call is answered, declined or left to ring. If a call is answered, for the duration of the call, the internet will be down, and even when the call is over, the disconnection can last from anywhere up to 30 minutes more, but it's usually just for 10 minutes or so. And following the call, the internet will often be VERY shaky and unstable in that the connection may drop completely randomly for anywhere between a few seconds to an hour, this instability can last for a couple of hours. My mother uses the phone often for quite a lengthy amount of time each evening so I often have to forego usage of the internet then.
Even without interference from landline calls, some days the internet is stable and fine with no evident problems and other days, the cut-outs are so lengthy and frequent that it's impossible to get anything done on the internet. When the phone sounds clear, the internet will likely be fine, we've not noticed any correlations between weather and the connection, or anything of the like, it seems quite random and unpredictable whether the phone will crackle and the internet will go on and off, or not.
A little more on the interaction between internet and landline - the line will sometimes be very clear and sometimes it's very crackly (this is before actually receiving or making a call - just picking up the phone), when crackly, the internet will often be disconnecting a lot or the crackle precedes a disconnection, though this isn't always the case. When actually making a call, the line can be so loud/crackly that it's impossible to hear the person on the other side.
Now a little about what we've done to try and resolve the problems. We've changed both our home phone and our router at least four times over the past couple of years. We've changed internet providers twice and we've had Open Reach out two times, the first time we were charged and they found nothing. The second time, some wiring was changed at our front door - moisture had gotten into some of the wires. The third time we told open reach about the problem and they were going to send someone to have a look, the internet recovered unexpectedly so we cancelled it so that we weren't charged (and didn't waste the engineer's valuable time) and the internet was stable for a couple of weeks before the issues appeared once again.
To put this into perspective, I play quite a lot of online games - League of Legends, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars The Old Republic, etcetera - so this is a pretty huge problem for me and it's really affecting my enjoyment, I spend a significant amount of time on the internet each day (or attempt to); aside from the odd single player game, pretty much all of my activity on my computer is centred around the internet and I'm worried about it seriously impeding both my homework and school projects once I start out at Sixth Form in September, as a lot of the additional work set is based off of the school's Moodle - which requires internet to access.
Thanks for your time and I apologize for the essay! Any help, suggestions or information would be greatly appreciated.
2 REPLIES 2
Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Internet cut-outs and the Landline

Raise a fault - it may either be a line card problem or a wires problem
The bad news is that I had the same problem and it took multiple engineer visits to sort it
Changing from 20CN to 21CN helped in that it didn't drop every time but the upstream errors jumped up.
It was the same whether there was a phone plugged in or not - I phoned my number from my mobile to check.
In the end a very competent and conscientious engineer went to town on my line and fixed it by switching to another pair from the exchange to the main Cab (I am on a subsidiary cab from the main cab)
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Internet cut-outs and the Landline

Hi there,
Sorry to hear that, as Jim says it'd definitely be best to raise a fault - you can do that at http://faults.plus.net
As for the engineer charging, if the connection still drops with just the router and a single phone plugged into the master socket (please make sure you try two microfilters while you're doing this in case one of those is at fault) and nothing else plugged into the line then you've proved it's a fault external to the premises and won't be charged.
Hope that reassures you, we'd be happy to look into this and get it sorted for you.