Modem/telephone connection help please Forums

Polo

I wonder if any of you knowledgeable people might be able to offer some help please.

A couple of weeks ago we had very bad and noisy telephone connection and also an iffy broadband connection. Having consulted BT etc. they suggested all the usual things like unplugging everything and then testing each item. Having done this we decided to go the whole hog and replaced our telephone and also all the broadband filters! Still no joy! Half the time we couldn't hear a conversation above the noise on the telephone and the modem keeps clicking and then my internet connection would drop out. Having done all this BT then sent an engineer in! He says he couldn't find anything but just replaced an obsolete box at the entry point and when he left all was quiet and we had broadband!

We have been having the same problems now. We unplug our modem and broadband telephone and just plug our telephone in on its own. Tonight we picked up the telephone to make a call and no line until I called our number on our mobile phone and its cleared it. As you can see I am on line at the moment but the modem keeps clicking and one of the indicating lights goes out and the internet then drops out!

Can anyone make any suggestions as to what our problem might be before I go back to BT again to try with them again. This time its likely to be a £114 call out fee plus I believe £98 for further time!

Any help would be appreciated. Sorry if I've put this on the wrong thread.

GerryD

Hi, this sound like a faulty master box, which would be the box that the engineer changed. Trust you are using a Broadband filter on all of your boxes. You can change the master box for about £6 from Maplins or B&Q just make sure the pack is labelled master and not slave. Wire it exactly as the old one.

Polo

Hi Gerry D thanks for that. The BT engineer did change the obsolete master box but he said that wasn't causing our initial problems but did that and put it down as the fault so that we didn't have to pay a call out fee! The Engineer couldn't really give us any suggestion as to what was the cause of our problems even though we now had brand new telephones and all brand new filters on every piece of equipment that needed them!

EJB

Presumably you have asked BT to check the exchange and the line before you do anything on your own property?

Polo

Hi I have tried twice to send a reply but my internet connection keeps dropping out. Yes this was the first thing that was done at the beginning of our asking BT for help. The line was OK to the house. We then did all their suggested tests and in the end decied to buy new telephones and broadband filters! BT then did a followup call and this was when they decided to send an engineer! He in his wisdom said nothing was wrong! but changed our masterbox as this was of an obsolete design! His paperwork stated that the masterbox was at fault so that there would be no call out charge! Since then the noisy telephone/no line/and broadband keep dropping out has continued.

Any suggestions, please

Briarose

Hi we have been having a similiar problem since about last Saturday, I try to connect to the net and get page cannot be displayed (no internet connection via the router) the BT Voyager router stops flashing on the end light.

A neighbour had a look for me and said he thought the router had had it, so I went out and bought a new one.

The neighbour came round to install the new one and for a start we had major problems connecting, I ended up ringing Orange who are my internet provider (phone line is BT) Orange said all my passwords etc etc were connecting from their end.

Eventually we got connected but I am now suffering with intermittent connections again it is always page cannot be displayed.

I am not sure if this is similiar to your problem or indeed what I can do to rectify the problem but it is so annoying.

Anyone have any ideas ?

Lets hope I am connected to post this

Steptoe

Hi Polo,

A similar problem came up the other day on this thread:

http://www.motorhomefacts.com/ftopict-37677-.html

As you now have a new master socket you could try the same steps, i.e. remove the two screws securing the lower faceplate, pull this off and plug your phone or broadband filter into the engineering socket that will be revealed. The point of doing this is that any internal wiring 'should' be disconnected and your equipment is connected directly to the BT line (internal wiring is not maintained by BT but the line from master socket to exchange is)

Hopefully you can then establish whether the problem is internal or external and proceed accordingly.

Incidentally is the noise you hear on the phone like bacon and eggs frying? If so this is a classic sign of a intermittant short, probably due to a wet connection somewhere along the line, so obviously more likely to be external.

sallytrafic · Southern Rally Co-ordinator

A couple of years ago we had a noisy line turned out to be the overhead wire from the telegraph pole to our house which was corroded. BT replaced our bit but fobbed off a neighbour who had the same symptoms. For a while all was well then the underground multicore cable started failing. Several of our neighbours were without a landline for months one even wangled a free diversion to his mobile phone out of BT.

The one thing we noticed was that, although we were all suffering similar problems (our overhead cables were shot - apart from mine Smile

as was the underground one), BT's response was different and they failed to 'connect' the various jobs together. When they got going to fix the problems they ran an overhead multicore cable to replace the underground one and connected one subscriber to it - me. Then a week or so later a different guy was up the pole connecting a different neighbour to the new cable.

Having said all that a few years before we lost our connection at Christmas called out the BT engineer but in the end he couldn't get to us but in the meantime I found the problem: water or more precisely coffee in a kitchen wall mounted socket. Luckily BT cancelled the call out without charge Embarassed

I just looked at a master socket that I have loose with me its a BT one (their logo is on the front) but connection of a phone to the engineers socket does not remove the internal connection that would be to the house wiring. Also these things are made for pennies in India or China and the components such as the surge protector have been known to be supplied faulty.

Steptoe