Symptoms

Possible causes

Complete silence on the telephone handset when picked up, broadband may still work.

Damaged wires, faulty or damaged telephone sockets, faulty telephone lines, supply equipment at the exchange. Damaged customer-owned wiring or equipment.

Complete silence on the telephone handset when picked up, broadband may still work.

Wires touching, faulty or damaged telephone sockets, faulty telephone supply equipment at the exchange. Damaged customer-owned wiring or equipment.

Noisy line, hum, buzzing, or crackle sound on the line

Contact with an additional voltage source, such as another line circuit often caused by water acting as a conductor where wires have become poorly insulated. Damaged customer-owned wiring or equipment.

Noisy line, hum, buzzing or crackle sound on the line

The line is being earthed somewhere along its route from the exchange to your property. Wear & tear of cable insulation, damage to cable allowing contact of earth. Damaged customer-owned wiring or equipment.

Noisy line, hum, buzzing, or crackle sound on the line

The effects of poor contact at a joint could be due to corrosion in unprotected joints. Often within the supplier network. One example of this would be a badly soldered or incorrectly inserted Main Distribution Frame joint at the exchange. This can lead to various types of loss such as insertion loss, and unbalanced signal transmission which generally lead to noticeable errors on both the voice & data sides of the circuit. Damaged customer-owned wiring or equipment.

Incoming calls ring once then stop, caller will be on the line when the handset is picked up.

Corrosion across the pins in a telephone socket, corrosion across the PCB tracks in the socket, worn insulation in telephone cables especially when routed directly under high foot traffic areas. Could also be caused within the provider side of the network.

Overhearing or cross-talk on the phone. High levels of errors on the broadband.

Mainly due to incorrect re-jointing of external cables within the supplier network.

Designed to improve voice communications on a line. However dramatically negatively affects broadband services.

Consequences of introducing inductive devices along a cable to improve the low-frequency response. Destructive to high frequencies of many broadband services. Generally only used in local loops longer than 5.5Km so should not be present on most broadband-enabled circuits.

You will have no internet access This will often not affect the ability of your router to detect that a physical connection is available.

The username or password in your router device has been reset or changed or become corrupt.

You will have no Internet access, and as a result, your router will not be able to establish if your physical connection is available.

This is often due to a physical fault on the line or equipment from end to end of your circuit. It can also be caused by incorrect equipment configuration.