First day with Plusnet, no dial tone

[#1]

This is my first day after switching my home phone from BT to Plusnet.  Everything worked fine for the first 18 hours or so but now I don't have a dial tone.  Broadband absolutely fine.  Corded phone in Master Socket, no other telephone equipment connected.  Incoming calls do not ring/connect. Help.

[#2]

Unscrew master socket put in test socket and retry
That's what you will be asked to do anyway so may save you some time.

[#3]

And now it's working again before I could do anything.  Incoming and outgoing calls working again.
FWIW, it would have taken me a reported 15 minutes to get through on the telephone to log the fault and 42 hours to get a response online.  I felt the online system was pushing me heavily towards reporting the fault by telephone by sending me all around the houses before I could log a fault online.

[#4]

And now it has gone again.  What is going on?

[#5]

My dial tone went off/on/of/on over a period of about an hour between 8pm and 9pm yesterday, 26th June, which was the first day of my telephone service with Plusnet.  It might have happened more frequently but those are the losses I noticed.  Incoming calls also failed, giving just a whine with no message.  I presume there is no telephone equivalent of a radius log so those disconnections went unrecorded by Plusnet.  My broadband service remained up and at the normal sync rate throughout that time (except once when I pulled the wire to make sure the router was not hanging the phone line).  There was also a resync later at around 11pm.
During that time I discovered it is quite difficult to report a fault to Plusnet, or at least a long wait is involved.  I seemed to be in the same queue as people who wanted advice on how to get email on their new computer - that is there is no distinction made between phone and broadband nor between fault reporting and technical support.  Lets hope I never get a fault that doesn't go away spontaneously.
I checked between my house and my telephone cabinet (and beyond)  and found no BT engineers at work so I presume it was somebody working in the telephone exchange who was messing me around.  Since I switched my telephone service from BT to Plusnet I see no reason for fiddling with my wiring.  Perhaps it was somebody else switching to/from a LUU supplier and my wires got in the way?   

[#6]

Hi ReedRichards,
I've escalated the faults ticket back to you asking you to perform some checks so that we can rule out your equipment and/or internal wiring being the issue. Please respond when you've carried these checks out so that we can go ahead and raise this to Openreach. There was no fault found during the line test so it will probably involve an engineer attending the property as well as the exchange if this needs to be raised.

[#7]

Which I would like to add - would be exactly what I mentioned above.

[#8]

Hi Linn.  I replied on the ticket.  I was about to follow Petecov44's suggestion and remove the faceplate, even knowing there is nothing attached to my extension wiring, when the dial tone returned for the first time.  I had already done everything else that is requested in these circumstances.
But given the symptoms of:

• No dial tone


• Incoming calls are 'cut-off' without any response


• Broadband working perfectly with no loss of sync speed

I don't think the problem can have been caused by anything other than somebody messing with my telephone wiring at the telephone exchange.  Could it? 

[#9]

If your line has a break or issue, generally you'll either get an engaged tone or it will just ring without anything happening the other end.
If you are getting a solid tone (unobtainable) then chances are it is a fault at the exchange. Certainly if you have tried a wired phone in the master test socket (often worth trying a second phone to be on the safe side) and you don't have a dialtone then it is safe to assume either someone has called you and not hung up at the other end (hung line) or a break in your line between the house and exchange or dead or failing card at the exchange.

[#10]

Thanks DomS.  I dug-out the corded phone and tried that to no avail.  Outgoing there was just a faint hum with no dial tone.  Incoming was a solid tone.  I've experienced several line breaks and they always reduced my broadband sync rate quite a lot, whereas when I checked last night it was very slightly better than normal with no dial tone present.  At the time I was worried that some clerical error in the handover from BT to Plusnet had lead to my telephone service being cut-off but thankfully it seems to have been a temporary problem.

[#11]

RR,
This rather sounds line the line is "out of service". Possibly an issue with the BTOR change of CP process or a complete break on the voice frame in the exchange.
For the ADSL to be still working, at least one side of the pair must have a continuous connection to the exchange line frame.  However, whilst that sinks dial tone, incoming calls still get ring tone - as I had last week.
Kevin

[#12]

There was no ring tone on incoming calls whilst my dial tone was absent.
I think my neighbour said she could not 'get a line out' when she called me at that time, indicating that she had the same fault as me rather than just being unable to call me because my line was out.  But I need to clarify this when I next speak to her.  At the time I thought it was going prove to be an issue with the handover process of my telephone service but then the on/off/on/off/on pattern of service makes me think that somebody was messing around with 'the voice frame' in the telephone exchange.  I have experienced ADSL with only one side of the pair connected in the past.  It still works but it's a lot slower; this time there was no diminution in speed. 
This was an inauspicious start to my telephone service with Plusnet.  I'm hoping they can eventually tell me what happened.     

[#13]

Very fortunately this problem has not recurred since 26th June.  It seems likely that BT Openreach were working in the telephone exchange and temporarily disconnected me.  According to the Plusnet agents who answered my support ticket, there is nothing whatsoever that can be done about this, not even to just report it as an outage.  Hey-ho.