unstable connection in poor weather

[#1]

my line come from a pole at a neighbour's at the back of us and goes over the roof of their  house.   Recently they have had major work done on the house which resulted in the height of the house being raised.  The telephone (and hence internet) line is now touching his roof and since then I have been having problems with an unstable connection when windy.  Could this be related?  

[#2]

Very likely, @jand . Ideally, your neighbours builders should have checked the roof/cable clearance and warned their client about it, but knowing builders, I suspect they didn't even think about it.

Welcome to the forums.

[#3]

Thanks for your post @jand 

Our tests aren't showing any issues with your broadband connection (I've attached the test results below), but what you've said about the line touching your neighbour's roof doesn't sound good. 

I'd recommend contacting your phone provider to arrange a phone line engineer to assess this. Alternatively you should be able to contact Openreach directly for this by calling 0800 023 2023 (option 1) - taken from their webpage Here.

GEA Test Detail
Circuit ID	NA	Service ID	[redacted]

Test Outcome	Pass
Test Outcome Code	GTC_FTTC_SERVICE_0000
Description	GEA service test completed and no fault found .
Main Fault Location	OK
Sync Status	In Sync
Downstream Speed	40.0 Mbps
Upstream Speed	7.0 Mbps
Appointment Required	N
Fault Report Advised	N
NTE Power Status	PowerOn
Voice Line Test Result	Pass
Bridge Tap	Detected
Radio Frequency Ingress	Not Detected
Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise	Not Detected
Cross Talk	Not Detected
Estimated Line Length In Metres	616.0
Upstream Rate Assessment	Low
Downstream Rate Assessment	Very Good
Interference Pattern	Not Detected
Service Impact	No Impact Observed
Home Wiring Problem	Not Detected
Downstream Policing Discard Rate	0.0
Customer Traffic Level	Upstream and Downstream traffic detected
Technology	VDSL
Current 15Min Bin Retrains	0
Last 15Min Bin Retrains	0
DP Type	External
Profile Name	0.128M-40M Downstream, Retransmission Low - 0.128M-10M Upstream, Error Protection Off
Time Stamp	2021-02-26T16:00:00

Parameters	MIN	MAX	AVG
Down Stream Line Rate	40.0 Mbps	40.0 Mbps	40.0 Mbps
Up Stream Line Rate	7.0 Mbps	7.0 Mbps	7.0 Mbps
Up Time	898.0 Sec	900.0 Sec	899.9 Sec
Retrains	0.0	0.0	0.0

Current and Last 15 Minute Bin Performance
Parameters	Last Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)	Current Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)
Start Time Stamp	2021-03-11T15:29:32Z	2021-03-11T15:44:32Z
Ingress Code Violation	0	2
Egress Code Violation	0	0
Errored Seconds	0	0
Severely Errored Seconds	0	0
Unavailable Seconds	0	0

We're detecting a bridge tap though which may be a symptom of the issue you've described or another problem. A bridge tap is generally a wiring issue which can be external or internal. If your router's not already in this setup, it could be worth plugging your router into the test socket explained Here to rule out any internal wiring, making sure there's no extension cabling between your router and the test socket as that can also cause a problem.

Let us know how it goes.

[#4]

Thanks Anoush.   It is intermittent and seems to be mainly when it is windy - hence I was wondering about the cable snagging on the roof!   I was trying to join a zoom call at 3pm and kept being thrown off it with a notification that my connection was unstable, and had a problem with an audio skype call at 10:00am with a lot of interference (but got better as the hour went past!) .  And it is is fine again now (at 4:30pm)   I'll try checking via the test socket as you suggest the next time I experience problems as usually all seems good!  Also will call openreach re the line touching the roof, after checking re the bridge tap (so can try and kill two birds with one stone) -   I'm thinking that the bridge tap problem is quite likely to be outside too - when building my neighbour managed to break the line with his JCB and openreach had to come and fix it - look like there's a join halfway down now!   

[#5]

Thanks for getting back to me @jand 

No problem, sounds like it'll be the line at fault. Keep me posted on how it goes. We can arrange a broadband engineer if we need to, even though ideally this looks like something that should be looked at by a phone line engineer (the option for us to book a broadband engineer is available)