Broadband connection drops when a phone call is re...

Question

Hi
I am new to this forum so please let me know if I don't supply all the necessary information.
For a couple of months now we have had a consistent problem with the broadband connection dropping when an incoming phone call is received, prior to this it had been fine for a long time.  After making the normal user checks, as recommended by BT, the problem persisted.  A BT engineer visited my house and was able to reproduce the fault at the master socket.  He traced the line back, via the manholes under the street to a connection box outside the village.  After working hard for four hours he seemed to have fixed the fault and was able to demonstrate streaming video uninteruppted by an incoming call.  He told me that he had solved the problem by re-routing the line, he also replaced the mark 2 router with a mark 3 router.  Twenty four hours later the problem returned and is again absolutely consistent - even with just the router connected to the master socket the broadband light will go out when an incoming call is received.  On phoning the helpline I was told that there was a problem at the exchange, which should be fixed within 24 hours, but it wasn't and I didn't hear back.  Further investigation showed that both of these issues had been marked as resolved.  We are a long way from the exchange and have had a history of problems with both the line itself and the exchange.  In the past the hard working BT engineers have always managed to get things sorted out when they have visited.
This time I am struggling, as I can't seem to find the right approach to BT to persuade them to build on the work that the engineer who came out so recently did - I always seem to end up describing the problem from the beginning and then being told that it is my internal wiring that is at fault, nobody will acknowledge any of the work that has been done by the engineer that visited or the person that approached the exchange.
Sorry for such a long post, but it is very frustrating - I have considered changing the phone number so that nobody can make any incoming calls, but then I would have no phone!!
Any ideas would be gratefully received.

Answer 1

Hi John
Thank you for your very prompt response.  Clicking on that link does not show up any problems in my area or with my line.  I have limited technical knowledge, but what you say about high resistance does fit the facts.  We have had a lot of problems over the years, most of which have been traced back to faults between the box at the edge of the villagae and our house - we have had the line replaced more than once, although I'm not exactly sure what that involved.  In the past the fault that recurred was very slow speed and dropping of the broadband connection, this is different now in that the speed is actually now quite good for our area, but the connection drops when a phone call is made or received.  I did have the fault logged with BT, but it has now disappeared from "track faults" without being resolved.
When everything is working it is a very good service.  My friend in an isolated village in North Wales had BT broadband as soon as his local exchange was enabled.  It has provided faultless service ever since, at a higher speed than I can get on the outskirts of a major city.
Thanks for the support, it has made me feel much less isolated - I'll keep reporting it.
Regards
Richard