What to do about continual line quality problems?

[#1]

Hi all
I've been a Plusnet customer for getting on for a year now and am just about at my wits end.
Not Plusnet's fault, I should add but the line itself.
Our problems started back in the spring (2010).  Tree growth rubbed through the last section of line leading to our house and the cable (plus 3 telegraph poles) needed to be replaced.  Eventually BTW gout this done but we still had issues.  BTW My main reason for having a land line is for my broadband which is essential to my lifestyle, we did also get audible noise on the phone.
Several months later BT sent round a special investigations team and a few days later the fault was fixed.  They identified 4 faults on our line, including one on the new piece of cable where it had been pinched when installed.
All was OK until the extreme cold in December and we now have unreliable connections and intermittent noise on the phone AGAIN.
BT have had a look but say they can do nothing unless they see the fault.  Obviously I think they should send back in the team that identified the previous faults as they have test gear that will identify the fault.  I've spoken to the BT engineers who say it will be a high resistance connection but without the special test kit it isn't possible for the ordinary engineers to find the fault.
In the meantime, every morning the connection is down and its up and down during the day also :((
I'm so frustrated and no one at Plusnet support seems to be able to help.
What can I do?
BTW I have 3 routers, so not a router problem.  BT replace their ADSL v1 faceplate every time they come in so its not that at fault.  We have no phone extensions, just the master where our one phone and the router is connected.
Any one here able to assist?
Regards
Frustrated

[#2]

keep prodding plusnet so they keep prodding BTw?

[#3]

Have you raised a ticket for the new fault?

[#4]

I did raise a ticket.  BT investigated and couldn't find anything, at the time the DSL was working and the line not noticeably noisey.  Not sure whether the ticket is still open.

[#5]

When you next hear the noise on your voice line do a quiet line test and record the conversation.  Demonstrate this to BT.
Can you identify a pattern to when the noise occurs?  Does it happen when it rains, for example?

[#6]

When things are bad you can *sometimes* hear noise on the quiet line test.  BT are quite happy to accept that there is a fault as they know how troublesome the cabling can be in our area but say that it'd be impossible to find it if the fault isn't present when the engineer turns up.  Their test equipment isn't good enough.  All the engineers are local and I know most of them now:)
We are 7km from the exchange and its all overhead cabling that goes through trees, gets eaten by squirrels etc.
BTW the DSL connection tends not to loose sync, but the data error rate is so high that the PPoA connection drops and then won't re-establish for ages.  I see this as very, very slow response at times then the connection drops.
When it was all working well the connection was surprisingly fast given the distance from the exchange.  The special investigations engineer tested the line at 2mbps and said that it was error free at that speed once the original faults were fixed.  Now I'm lucky to get 900kbps with a connection established at about 1300kbps - although stability is more important to me than speed. 
Its really a very poor show.
Regards

[#7]

I think to get this kind of problem sorted you need to be a "thorn in the side" of the companies concerned.  Keep hassling BT and PN.

[#8]

HI FarmerGiles,
your line certainly doesn't look stable. The first thing you need to do is raise a fault. We can then chase it form there.
Jojo

[#9]

@FarmerGiles: One thing to remember is that, if you raise a fault ticket, it will be automatically closed if there is no updates to the ticket for 2 weeks.  This will happen even if the fault is not fixed so make such you keep updating it regularly.

[#10]

Ticket raised.
tx