Whilst deep technical knowledge of the exact nature of a fault is not always helpful to a customer, having more of an idea of what might be going on may prove to be vital when you have to speak to your Internet Service Providers call centre agent. Especially if the fault has to be progressed to a level 2, 3 or a specialist agent.
Common Phone / Broadband Line Faults
Symptoms |
Possible causes |
Open circuit / Dis fault | |
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. |
Short circuit / Loop fault | |
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. |
Battery contact fault | |
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. |
Earth contact contact | |
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. |
High resistance fault | |
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. |
Loop fault | |
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. |
Split pairs fault | |
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. |
Load coil fault | |
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. |
No authentication fault | |
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. |
No synchronisation fault | |
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. |
Comments
Mr Spencer
Hi Peter,
I would just like to say thank you for replacing my mater telephone socket. Since then I have been able to use the phone without any problems & the broadband seems really fast now.