Topic: Internet, but no telephone!

[chorleydave]

This is a new one on me.  We often hear about people mysteriously losing their broadband connection, it's happened to me.  However, I currently have broadband but no telephone access!

I rarely use the phone as it is, but yesterday I picked up the receiver to phone my brother and it was dead, no dial tone or anything.  I tried plugging another telephone in, but still dead.  This was in spite of me being connected to broadband at the time!  I then spent a hour unplugging this, that and the other, all to no avail.  I then rang the home number with my mobile.  It was ringing according to the mobile, but there wasn't any life at all in the BT phone.

I went to the end of the street and using the public telephone I spoke to BT.  They claim it is a problem at the exchange and should be fixed by the 29th of September.

I am no telephone engineer, but it seems a little odd that I can use the internet but not make a phone call on the same line.  Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks.

[Simon]

It's probably to do with the fact that the line is split for broadband.  I think this creates two almost separate elements of the line.  If you had still been using a 56K dial up modem, it probably wouldn't have worked.

[chorleydave]

Well, I've got my telephone back.

According to the engineer, it was a fault on the line between the exchange and the green box at the end of my street.  Water had got into the line and caused some corrosion, a regular fault.  As the exchange is only 120 yards from here, and the box 30 yards, a grand distance of 90 yards from each other, I pity those people who have a distance of several miles between the exchange and box because god knows how much leaky areas they have to contend with.

[Simon]

You're lucky to have got an engineer out.  When I moved house last year, I wanted to bring my existing phone number with me, which should have been no problem at all.  However, I found that my line wasn't working from the day I moved in, and it took about 5 phone calls over a period of 3 days, to convince them it wasn't a problem with my phone, which worked fine at the old address.  They were threatening me with a £56 call out charge if the engineer came out and found the problem was my equipment, so I asked them what they were going to pay me in compensation if the fault was theirs, and whether they would cover my mobile phone costs while I couldn't use my landline, not to mention the trauma of not being able to use my PC!  Of course, the person in New Dheli I was talking to, then pretended she was not understanding me.  I eventually got a grand gesture of £4 towards my mobile phone bill.

[Clive]

Exactly the same thing happened to me a few years back Dave.  I too managed to get an engineer out who then reconnected the telephone lines to the wrong houses!  I'm currently suffering an intermittent fault myself.