Copper degradation - we can't help you

FapCop

FapCop

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I've been having a hell of a lot of noise on my ADSL line. Had OpenServe technicians in and out with no measurable improvement. You can't make out what people say on the phone very well because of all the noise, I cant play games online and my internet experience is overall ****.

The last OpenServe technician that came over this morning said that he now believes that the cause of the problem is copper degradation between the box on the pole I'm connected to and the exchange. He said that's not going to get fixed, because of of time/funding and all I can do to improve my experience is to downgrade to 4Mbps even though I'm about 1.5km from the exchange.

Am I being unreasonable to think that this is unacceptable? Surely they have to fix their network if something broke down?
 
Copper. 4Mbps is lucky in many places. At work, years back telkom told us the same and said we should downgrade to 2.
We got fibre instead.
 
Their entire copper network is falling apart... and they are not bothering to fix it.
 
AstroTurf said:
Copper. 4Mbps is lucky in many places. At work, years back telkom told us the same and said we should downgrade to 2.
We got fibre instead.
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Problem is I live in Pietermaritzburg. Only 5% of town has fibre and according to multiple OpenServe technicians, my area is years away from getting fibre. I'm basically up ****-creek without a paddle.
 
Arksun said:
Problem is I live in Pietermaritzburg. Only 5% of town has fibre and according to multiple OpenServe technicians, my area is years away from getting fibre. I'm basically up ****-creek without a paddle.
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Yea we were as well. Luckily Mybroadband and Crystalweb. It was not cheap but at the same time was essential.
 
I reported a dead line on 5/4/2018 in Garsfontein. It is still not fixed and the excuse is that the problem lies in a dangerous area in Lynnwood. One techie can't go there alone and they must wait until more problems get reported so that a few techies can go together for safety in numbers.
What a useless bunch.
 
Stokstert said:
I reported a dead line on 5/4/2018 in Garsfontein. It is still not fixed and the excuse is that the problem lies in a dangerous area in Lynnwood. One techie can't go there alone and they must wait until more problems get reported so that a few techies can go together for safety in numbers.
What a useless bunch.
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Frogfoot has fibre in Lynnwood?
 
Stokstert said:
Thanks for the information.
I am not looking for fibre, I am just looking for a working phone/ADSL line. ;)
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However if you have fibre coverage, it will fix your problems and save you money. Why do you think the demand for fibre is so high, because of the need for it from people like you that have issues with their current connectivity. ;)
 
Well, to give an update, I'm not taking this lying down. I've logged fault after fault and I will continue doing so until my line is fixed. It's been the same routine. Technician "fixes" the line, less than 24 hours later the noise comes back and line stats plummet, I relog the fault, technician comes again, fix lasts less than 24 hours, rinse, repeat. As it stands right now, my 10Mbps DSL line can't even maintain a stable sync at 2Mbps.

Although, just the other day I came home to my line syncing at the speed it was supposed to, zero CRC errors and on fastpath. It stayed like that. Then I got a call from a technician saying he was fiddling with my line doing tests. Five minutes after that call, my line went to **** again. I think someone may have properly fixed my line and this guy went and broke it again.
 
Arksun said:
Well, to give an update, I'm not taking this lying down. I've logged fault after fault and I will continue doing so until my line is fixed. It's been the same routine. Technician "fixes" the line, less than 24 hours later the noise comes back and line stats plummet, I relog the fault, technician comes again, fix lasts less than 24 hours, rinse, repeat. As it stands right now, my 10Mbps DSL line can't even maintain a stable sync at 2Mbps.

Although, just the other day I came home to my line syncing at the speed it was supposed to, zero CRC errors and on fastpath. It stayed like that. Then I got a call from a technician saying he was fiddling with my line doing tests. Five minutes after that call, my line went to **** again. I think someone may have properly fixed my line and this guy went and broke it again.
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What type of fault are you logging?

Log a voiceline fault for noise, nothing else. Do NOT mention adsl/internet at all. Ask the call centre to run a full line test for you as well.

Next time a guy comes out ask him if he could move you onto a different pair but he will have to determine in which cable section the noise originates from and that is a biatch of a job many guys simply don't wanna do as it requires them to carry a ladder around and get up poles to isolate the source of noise. Took a guy half a day to locate the source of the noise and then he moved the line over to a spare pair in the affected cable section.

Keep all your refs and pm me if the next visit is not helping.
 
More technicians have been in and out and my problem is still not fixed, but I have been given a straight answer at least. So here's the deal:

It's an underground cable problem and it's gotten worse. A stable sync can only be maintained at 2Mbps. It's going to be a royal pain in the arse to fix it, because it's an underground cable problem. Because of what a pain in the arse it will be to fix it, nobody wants to do it. I literally only have two options - downgrade my 10Mbps service to 2Mbps or move.


So I found a new place and I'm moving at the end of June and downgraded my service to 2Mbps until then.

Thank you, Telkom.
 
So I moved. To the other side of town. 800m from the exchange.

It's even worse now. I'm going to do my ****ing nut. I'm stuck with the same goddamn problem. I can't begin to describe to you exactly how much I ****ing hate Telkom right now. I'm so ****ing angry.
e51ef96f433254f2401ae5b1658427ad.jpg
 
I was planning on starting a massive bitch and moan session, but I'm too sick and tired of fighting, swearing and cursing. Still not fixed.

@TelkomZA please help a guy out.
 
Arksun said:
I was planning on starting a massive bitch and moan session, but I'm too sick and tired of fighting, swearing and cursing. Still not fixed.

@TelkomZA please help a guy out.
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Get them to disable assia on your line, that should improve your situation by a bit, best way to get it done is to pm @TelkomZA or send them a dm on twitter.
 
What router are you using? From my experience the Broadcom based routers get better speeds on very bad copper lines.

I had similar problems with my 10Mbps line which had been usable for many years until it developed another fault and there were no more free pairs available. The technician installed a temporary line which was so noisy that it could only manage 4Mbps on a dry day. After multiple callouts I just gave up and switched over to Rain Fixed LTE.
I also use the Telkom 450GB Nightsurfer option from time to time if I need to do large downloads.
 
yeah dude, I wouldn't bet on openserver helping you out.

Our phone lines got stolen to our business complex (urban area with plenty of businesses around). Openserve just told us flat out that "they were not going to replace the cables so we had to make another plan". Lucky for us Fibre had just been installed in the area and so we moved our Switchboard over to VOIP (was actually a blessing in disguise as our charges for our telephone bill is only 25% of what we used to pay per month). A couple of months later we get a call from Telkom trying to sell us on LTE based telephone system, told them to go play in the middle of a highway.
 
ronnie_94 said:
Get them to disable assia on your line, that should improve your situation by a bit, best way to get it done is to pm @TelkomZA or send them a dm on twitter.
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Disabling ASSIA probably won't help either, he'll probably have too high a packet loss for it to matter.
Only options are move to LTE, WISP or fiber, though maybe you'll one day get lucky and get a competent tech that will actually try and fix it, but that probably hasn't happened as you must have cycled through all the ones in your area.
 
Probably just a loose connection at the connection before it goes to your house. Will take them 30 minutes to fix. But they are lazy and useless. Maybe you can get VDSL?
 
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