I'm posting this on behalf of my parents who have a weird noise problem on the phone line. I'm sure the problem is the telephone line for a number of reasons but I need to know how to convince Plusnet support that there is a line problem, and am hoping there is someone technical on this forum who agrees with my diagnosis.
With the current equipment my parents had no noise on the line. The noise started after BT/Openreach miss-wired all the phone lines in their street and peoples' phone numbers changed. It was a right mess. Anyway, after they came back to rewire everything correctly there was this noise on the line, like a loud hissing sound that comes and goes. Personally, I suspect a bad connection or missing earth somewhere.
My parents called Plusnet and a few tests were run that showed the line as being all ok. My parents were asked to remove all equipment and plug in a phone. There was no noise on the line, so tech support's logic was that it had to be something at my parents end so they called me to check it out.
With the phone plugged into the line (either old cord phone or cordless phone) on its own directly into the master socket with the front panel removed there is no noise on the line. Clear as a bell. I add the filter and the same thing, clear as a bell. I add the router and there is noise as soon as the router is booted. I pull the phone line out of the back of the router and the noise goes. If I instead unplug the power adapter to the router the noise also goes. I try two more filters with the same result. I change the cable to the router with the same result. So I suspect there may be a problem with the router. My parents have a spare router so I tried that. Again, the noise starts when the router is booted.
Oh, something I didn't mention is that my parents tell me the problem is worse when somebody speaks down the phone line. When somebody speaks, the voice fades away while they are talking.
By now I believe I have ruled out all my parents equipment but to be safe I took my own phone, router, filter and cables to try at their house and had the same problem. It all works fine at my house. Yet tech. support insist that if there is no noise on the line when there is only a phone plugged in then there is nothing wrong with the line. Now, I know that isn't correct because of a similar problem I had with my own line some time ago. What I need to know is how to convince tech. support that the problem has to be the line. The noise on the line is so bad that my parents can't always hear what is being said. I have told them to unplug the router for now when they get a phone call. We'll see how that goes. They haven't tried a phone call with the router unplugged yet so there may still be the problem of the voice fading out even without the noise on the line. When I tested for noise on the line I just lifted the receiver and listened.
Is there anything that could cause this problem that I haven't mentioned? Other than the phone line. I know the master socket needs replacing because it crackles, and disconnects if bumped when the front cover is on. This does not happen with the front cover off. It seems too much of a coincidence that the noise started after BT messed with the wiring.
I've attached some print-outs from the router in case that helps. Something I noticed is that the ADSL down speed is only 11K whereas mine is 15k and I'm further from the exchange than my parents.
Any help much appreciated.
TIA
Carl.
