Weird line problem

general_koffi

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There's a lot of noise on my telephone line. You can hear it as static over the phone, and my SNR margin is not great. Normally it doesn't interfere with my internet, but recently the noise has been spiking and causing some sync problems.

The funny thing is that I can temporarily reduce the noise on the line by doing one of two things... It improves for a few minutes if I cause activity on the line by repeatedly picking-up and hanging-up the phone a few times. You can hear the noise go away, and my SNR margin improves from single digits to the mid teens. This doesn't last long, though.

A more lasting solution is to take a phone cable and plug both ends of it into one of the line extensions - repeating a few times. I got this idea from Google... This short apparently clears away the noise like nothing else. It seems to last longer than just fiddling with the phone.

If anyone else is having SNR woes, they may want to try the trick with the wire. But what is causing this problem? Why does the noise go away when I stimulate the line like this, but then creeps back in again later? If it was dodgy phone cabling, surely causing a short wouldn't help? Could interference from poorly shielded electrical wiring or equipment be to blame? Is something not grounded properly?

The phone has a filter, and the problem persists even if the ADSL router is the only thing plugged in to the phone line. It's one of those awful Billion 5200's, by the way, but it's done pretty well with a really terrible line. I've been thinking about getting a Netgear router, which allegedly handles bad lines better.
 
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you must log an fault with telkom there are something wrong with your line it could be wetness or an faulty cable on telkom's side...
 
Telkom aren't exactly keen to help you when your line is syncing at 4096kbps most of the time. They only care about speed if its less than 1mbps, and they only care about sync issues if it's a constant problem that the techie himself would notice after a few seconds. :( Even then, he'd probably blame it all on my router.

I have asked them to reset the DSL port, and that didn't help.

Believe me, I've tried to get them to fix it properly. It's just a matter of letting it degenerate to a point where they're forced to replace all the wiring.
 
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Since it's affecting the voice service on your line, log a fault for that, should sort out the ADSL problems as well. Voice service takes priority so they should resolve it quicker...
 
Log the problem as a normal telephone line complaint, do not mention ADSL at all.

You need a completely different department to solve this issue, the ADSL department is the wrong bunch of people.

So, call 10212 (faults) and log a complaint of noisy telephone line.

If this fails, you only really have one option left, and that is to order a new line, have it installed, and then cancel the old line (if the new line is better).
 
I have asked them to reset the DSL port, and that didn't help.

Believe me, I've tried to get them to fix it properly. It's just a matter of letting it degenerate to a point where they're forced to replace all the wiring.

Do NOT log a fault for your adsl, log it for voice.


Since it's affecting the voice service on your line, log a fault for that, should sort out the ADSL problems as well. Voice service takes priority so they should resolve it quicker...

+1


Log the problem as a normal telephone line complaint, do not mention ADSL at all.

You need a completely different department to solve this issue, the ADSL department is the wrong bunch of people.

So, call 10212 (faults) and log a complaint of noisy telephone line.

+1

Never during this entire process even mention ADSL.
 
Why, in this day and age, do Telkom still maintain entirely different support departments for voice and ADSL services?

But anyway... I'll try that. Hopefully the voice people consider crackling on the phone to be enough of an issue to sort out. I never actually use the landline (except to call them), but of course I won't tell them that.
 
Why, in this day and age, do Telkom still maintain entirely different support departments for voice and ADSL services?

But anyway... I'll try that. Hopefully the voice people consider crackling on the phone to be enough of an issue to sort out. I never actually use the landline (except to call them), but of course I won't tell them that.

I used to deal with BT (British Telecoms) on bealf of a UK ISP, they have seperate departments for voice and ADSL there too!

When there was a problem with line noise, we used to ask our ADSL clients to call BT and log a voice fault, cos ADSL faults used to take about a week to resolve, voice faults usually resolved within 48 hours.
 
Why, in this day and age, do Telkom still maintain entirely different support departments for voice and ADSL services?

It's the same section, now called Commodity Field Services. Was moved back to them about 18 months ago.

/for the old timers - Fitting & Faults!
 
I had a huge amount of static on the phone when i got back from holiday recently. Replaced the ADSL filter that the phone plugged into and its perfect now.
 
Any update on this? I'm curious to know how this turns out.
 
I had a huge amount of static on the phone when i got back from holiday recently. Replaced the ADSL filter that the phone plugged into and its perfect now.

Yes, that also happens, especially after lightning ;)

I keep a few spares around just in case.
 
the netgear DG834GT handles gagga lines superbly and the rate of recovering of sync failure is fantastic - 5seconds maximum.

Alot of modems these days you can specify the ADSL modulation type - ADSL2+ is known to having lower SNR and higher attenuation values than something like G.DMT (billion 7300G supports this manual setting)

currently on same situation - water - damaged line - apparently electricity of some sort got envolved...11 telkom bakkies fixing it as we speak @ exchange
 
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