Telephone fault from fibre installation

[#1]

This might be helpful to others!

We went over to fibre over  3 1/2 years ago but just recently started having problems with our phone line. Last month we had no dial tone at all at times and sometimes got the message that the line was in use and 'line cord error'. That came up as an error at the exchange when I tried the Line Fault Checker and was fixed, apparently.

This Monday it all started up again but in addition we sometimes got a loud 'siren' tone like what you get if the phone hasn't been ended properly by not putting the handset back on its base or not pressing the red button on the phone (depending on how your phone works), which isn't good when it happens mid-call. Also there was sometimes just a faint dialtone. Anyway, this meant people calling us were sometimes going through to 1571 and we couldn't always make calls out when we needed to and had to use our PAYG mobile phones instead.

Earlier this morning we got a call through from the Openreach engineer who was checking it out. He had discovered that though we have our fibre connection, the line hadn't been disconnected from ADSL and this was most likely what had caused the problems with the phone line. When we had the fibre installation in 2014, the booked Openreach engineer decided to go home before he'd finished all his jobs for the day, without letting BT know first (he rang us though, so I suppose that was something), so they sent a sub-contractor to do the job a week later. Somewhere along the way whoever was meant to disconnect the ADSL connection didn't and the engineer this morning said that could cause major problems.

Anyway, it all seems to OK now so fingers crossed that ws the cause.

[#2]

Glad to hear it's sorted.

Issues like that are rare but hopefully if they do crop up for other users this will help.

[#3]

It wasn't sorted after all and we started getting problems again over the weekend, so it's been bounced back to Openreach to fix again. It came up as another fault this time on the line fault checker, so hopefully they'll find that and fix it. Estimated fix time is end of Wednesday.

[#4]

Sorry to hear the issue has come back.

Hopefully its sorted today then, let us know how you get on.

[#5]

Thanks Lauren. We had texts and emails today to say it should be fixed now. Seems OK so far, so we will see if it continues that way! At least we have a couple of weeks till the question is closed, so if it does return we can get back to yourselves via the ticket.

[#6]

Great, hopefully there will be no further issues

If you do have any problems just let us know.

[#7]

Well, the repair at the exchange lasted for just over a month and now the problem is back again.

I did the line check thing again Friday night, having got home from an evening out and trying to find out if there were any 1571 messages. At first I was told the "number is not recognised" and "please try again". Aftet that there were all the usual oddities, including the siren noise instead of a dial tone, the faint continual ticking instead of the dial tone and "call already in progress" in my phone's display.

Anyway, following the line check (usual thing there too, an error message after the checking process and no email to tell me a question had been raised), the new question on the My Questions page gives exactly the same diagnosis of the fault as previously:
Fault location: FU
Diagnosis code: T088
and the usual message saying that sort of fault usually being fixed within 3 working days.

I noticed after recent wet and very windy weather that the dial tone was fainter than usual, before the fault came back. I wonder if the exchange gets damp into it somehow and that degrades the connections.

[#8]

Sorry to hear the problem had come back.

It looks like the fault has been cleared. Everything working again now?

[#9]

Yes, thanks, Openreach were onto it quickly on Monday. It seems OK at the moment, but time will tell.

I had a phone call later in the day from one of the Plusnet support team and we discussed what had been happening (as it has been apparently fixed several times now, over the past few months). If the problem recurs again, Openreach may have to look into it further to find out why.