Problems with Phone and ADSL

[mika1000]

i'm having problems with telkom for almost three weeks now. then my phoneline work, then not. sometimes hours, other times days. as times there's very heavy static on the line. other times its as dead as a doornail.

the same with my adsl. had been all but dead for the past ten days. worked only for a few hours in that time (ten days).

various technicians visit the premises. plugged some line tester in and left to return later and remove it and say there's nothing wrong. one technician told me i've got a "siht" phone and that my adsl pots filter is dead.

replaced the splitter and pots filter and no change. still the same.

for the time being the phone work but often when its ringing and you answer it goes dead. both on a cordless and a normal phone.

i'm at the end of my LINE as i simply can not deal with telkom's incompetence any longer.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

I know it's probably not an ideal solution and expensive, but if you willing to try it why not get Telkom to install a new line at the premises. See if the new line works and then cancel the old one. Risky but it may be the only way that doesn't involve a trip to the hospital for high bp.

 

[mika1000]

got four lines. and they've been replaced with fibreoptics. thats where the problems started

 

[Sonic2k]

I know it's probably not an ideal solution and expensive, but if you willing to try it why not get Telkom to install a new line at the premises. See if the new line works and then cancel the old one. Risky but it may be the only way that doesn't involve a trip to the hospital for high bp.

that is what I had to do in the end... Telkom refused point blank to fix the old line. The problem always "magically disappeared" when they test the line.

The cause is these new MSAMs that they put on ADSL lines. I proved that, if they remove the ADSL provisioning on that line, it goes away immediately.

I have done it twice now.. third time lucky, phone line got put on a different part of the same exchange.. no issues!

 

[mika1000]

if there were proper technicians it would have helped.

my 1mb line is running @ 512kbps. 2mb @ 1536kbps (got two of them). and my 4mb @ 2596kbps.

its sad...

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

What do the line stats look like on the corresponding lines?

 

[mika1000]

snr 10.5 / 8.0 (43.00 / 15.00)

line att 12.5 / 6.0 (11.0 / 6.0)

data 1536 / 448 (2048 / 512)

max 3488 / 572 (used to be 12704 / 1128)

---

(Time unit: ms. 1 ms = 1/1000 second)
Ping google.com with 32 bytes of data

Reply from google.com: byte = 32 time = 370
Reply from google.com: byte = 32 time = 450
Reply from google.com: byte = 32 time = 470
Reply from google.com: byte = 32 time = 470

Ping statistics for google.com
Packet: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 370, Maximum = 470, Average = 440

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

snr 10.5 / 8.0 (43.00 / 15.00)

line att 12.5 / 6.0 (11.0 / 6.0)

data 1536 / 448 (2048 / 512)

max 3488 / 572 (used to be 12704 / 1128)

---

(Time unit: ms. 1 ms = 1/1000 second)
Ping google.com with 32 bytes of data

Reply from google.com: byte = 32 time = 370
Reply from google.com: byte = 32 time = 450
Reply from google.com: byte = 32 time = 470
Reply from google.com: byte = 32 time = 470

Ping statistics for google.com
Packet: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 370, Maximum = 470, Average = 440

What are the numbers in brackets for the SNR? You attenuation looks pretty good but the lines seems to be noisy - has there been any new electrical equipment been installed on or near your premises like an electric fencing maybe?

 

[mika1000]

inside brackets the old numbers before the problems started

 

[mika1000]

still no solution. the tech insist there's nothing wrong. even after telkom called me and reset my adsl port while talking to me and did all the tests and according to the person that called me from the technical centre its an exchange fault.

my upstream data rate is now only "96kbps". its a nightmare...

 

[HerZeLeiD]

I've had the dead phone too and the noise (only when my ADSL router on, when it's off, no noise). I lose sync from anything from a few minutes to hours. It also don't always sync at the proper speed (1mbit). My latency is 100% fine, but I can almost never play online games with insane packetloss. When sync is lost, the best way I can fix it is manually remove the phone line from the router and put it back in to resync (else it can resync hours or a day later on it's own). I've checked in my router stats and I always have an insane amount of upsteam errors.

Weird thing? It seems to be worse during the day.

With the first techie he concluded it was a problem with a connection right outside the room, where the cable from the pole reaches our roof. After that, the problem was gone for a month.

Second techie came and said there are no issues with the line on the premises so he did the usual thing by plugging in that tester thing and drove off to further test it somewhere else. Came back an hour later. Line works flawlessly. Again about a month in, same issue.

Third techie replaced the cable coming from the pole to the roof, just incase it might be that (was a very old cable). Again, plug in testing thing, leaves, comes back 30 minutes later and says it was an underground cable issue. He says it should be working fine now. He leaves instantly. I go to my PC and the issue is exactly the same as before he arrived.

Sent a fault report last Saturday night. I'm still waiting.

 

[mika1000]

my problems started when telkom replaced all the cables as part of an upgrade. logged a fault three weeks ago and its still open. keeping the fault open they make sure you cant log any more faults. phoneline sends an engage signal when you call it. and when you call from it either dead or very heavy static rendering the line useless. but i got to pay for for a faulty phoneline and adsl.

 

[mika1000]

I've had the dead phone too and the noise (only when my ADSL router on, when it's off, no noise). I lose sync from anything from a few minutes to hours. It also don't always sync at the proper speed (1mbit). My latency is 100% fine, but I can almost never play online games with insane packetloss. When sync is lost, the best way I can fix it is manually remove the phone line from the router and put it back in to resync (else it can resync hours or a day later on it's own). I've checked in my router stats and I always have an insane amount of upsteam errors.

Weird thing? It seems to be worse during the day.

With the first techie he concluded it was a problem with a connection right outside the room, where the cable from the pole reaches our roof. After that, the problem was gone for a month.

Second techie came and said there are no issues with the line on the premises so he did the usual thing by plugging in that tester thing and drove off to further test it somewhere else. Came back an hour later. Line works flawlessly. Again about a month in, same issue.

Third techie replaced the cable coming from the pole to the roof, just incase it might be that (was a very old cable). Again, plug in testing thing, leaves, comes back 30 minutes later and says it was an underground cable issue. He says it should be working fine now. He leaves instantly. I go to my PC and the issue is exactly the same as before he arrived.

Sent a fault report last Saturday night. I'm still waiting.

SMS your number @ F (no spaces) to 0114822941. maybe your lucky!

 

[mika1000]

another week passed. its now 26 days my phone line and adsl are faulty. no solution. telkom simply dont care. and the technicians even less.

 

[mika1000]

tomorrow its a month since i first reported a fault. the fault's still open. and unresolved. neither my phone line nor my adsl is right. when you ring my phone its engaged, since the 6th of june. there's very heavy static on the line. my 2mb line sync at 1536kbps down and 96kbps up. and disconnect all the time.

replaced the splitters, filters, router, phones, wires etc. still the same.

and telkom excells in their silence and absence!

complaints to hellopeter.com did not help.

phoning, email and sms telkom dont help.

contacting my isp and adsl line provider did not help.

ai...

 

[mika1000]

on friday 12 july 2013 a technician appeared connected a device for several hours, returning and leaving again and after about 4 hours he told me the line had been fixed. i insisted he test the line and the fault was still there, very heavy static with just the phone connected and the adsl disconnected. he attached the device again and left. around an hour later he returned and this time it did work. as well as the adsl, though not at its right speed.

there's currently a general cable fault and they're testing it. hopefully this would be finally fixed soon...