Noisy landline, possible causes?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Noisy landline, possible causes?

tardtasticx

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#193463 11-Mar-2016 22:02

So over the past week or two we've had a lot of noise on our landline. Mostly its a constant hum, but sometimes it throws in some cracks and strange noises. It's really annoying to use so we've been using mobile where possible. We've tried:

Unplug all devices (including VDSL (spark supplied) modem from dedicated DSL jack) and leave only one phone plugged in.
Swapping phones and trying all combinations on every jack in the house.
Trying non-cordless phones.

The thing with using non-cordless phones though, they won't work on any jack at all. We've tried three with no luck. Is there a possibility the network isn't supplying enough power for the phones to pickup a signal? Would this be what's causing the humming?

We've got a Chorus technician coming on Sunday, but I'm keen to try and know more about the possible causes before they arrive. The person I spoke to in Spark Faults said there was a fault on the line but he can't tell me anything more specific.

A couple of other things that I'm not sure are related or not:

Starting today we've had SUPER bad pressure on most of the taps in our house. Some work fine but others don't. Council said there are no known issues in the area and problem would be local (in property or surrounding area).
Neighbours dug up the driveway which runs the length of our property. We live in a caul-de-sac and this driveway is between our house and the main road where services would come from.

Is there anything else I should try? Unsure if it's any use but here's the stats from the modem:

Uptime: 0 days, 1:12:59
DSL Type: ITU-T G.993.2
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 530 / 6,731
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [B/B]: 0 / 0
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 9.1 / 18.6
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 17.7 / 22.3
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 13.0 / 12.3

Any help/advice/tips much appreciated, just want to satisfy my curiosity more than anything really.

Technofreak

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#1511628 11-Mar-2016 22:19

Hmmm,

Sounds like it could be a faulty 045 cable from the DP to your house, or a faulty pair in the main cable. The main issue is water getting into the cable and causing low insulation between each leg of the cable pair or low insulation between either legs of the pair and earth, this can cause a hum.

You say the neighbour has dug up the driveway and you have piss poor water pressure. I'd say there's a fair chance your neigbour may have nicked the insulation on the cable to your house and your water feed. Can you see any unusually wet areas where they have been working?

Of course the wet area (if there is one) and the point where your telephone cable may be damaged may not be at the same place.

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tardtasticx

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#1511632 11-Mar-2016 22:29

We did have a quick look around the place but no obvious wet patches. The driveway was resealed with concrete (they dug down to clay layer, previously loose stone), so the whole area is wet from it being hosed down all day unfortunately.

Is there a map (without going to B4U dig) that'll show the location of the Chrous lines for our place? I've looked on the council site and the storm water drain for our street, and waste water for the street over, both run under his driveway. It'd be interesting to see if either of those run near lines at all. It seems our water mains run from the middle of the street so he probably hasn't clipped those which could mean they're separate issues. Ugh.

richms

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#1511664 11-Mar-2016 23:23

Check your water meter to see if its ticking over when you are not using it. The other thing with the water could be that it has dislodged a whole lot of crap that was settled in the pipe and your filter on the incoming water to stop the crap from messing up your taps is now totally clogged up.

The no power to old phones thing sounds weird tho. That would usually mean not enough current flowing to even make it go off hook, but analog phoens are weird things so who knows.

Richard rich.ms

tardtasticx

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#1511665 11-Mar-2016 23:40

richms:

Check your water meter to see if its ticking over when you are not using it. The other thing with the water could be that it has dislodged a whole lot of crap that was settled in the pipe and your filter on the incoming water to stop the crap from messing up your taps is now totally clogged up.

The no power to old phones thing sounds weird tho. That would usually mean not enough current flowing to even make it go off hook, but analog phoens are weird things so who knows.

Great idea, I'll have a look at that tomorrow morning. We did go out and check the water toby was fully on, we had someone turn it off once (but not fully) which resulted in the exact same thing so this was our thought initially.

Right now I can't seem to get a dial tone at all, just a continuous humm. Too late for me to be faffing around so will check that again tomorrow.

Thanks for the info so far everyone, will update tomorrow!

Technofreak

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#1511667 11-Mar-2016 23:41

richms: Check your water meter to see if its ticking over when you are not using it. The other thing with the water could be that it has dislodged a whole lot of crap that was settled in the pipe and your filter on the incoming water to stop the crap from messing up your taps is now totally clogged up.

The no power to old phones thing sounds weird tho. That would usually mean not enough current flowing to even make it go off hook, but analog phoens are weird things so who knows.

How many houses have filters on the water supply to the house? None I know of. Sure there may be filtered water on a drinking water tap but not otherwise.

Analogue phones are pretty basic devices and certainly not weird. I suspect the Line Circuit relay in the exchange has been operated by the low insulation and the circuit has timed out, that's why there's no dial tone. If this is the case no phone will work. I'd bet if you rang the number you would get the busy signal.

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tardtasticx

3075 posts

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#1511668 11-Mar-2016 23:44

Technofreak:

richms: Check your water meter to see if its ticking over when you are not using it. The other thing with the water could be that it has dislodged a whole lot of crap that was settled in the pipe and your filter on the incoming water to stop the crap from messing up your taps is now totally clogged up.

The no power to old phones thing sounds weird tho. That would usually mean not enough current flowing to even make it go off hook, but analog phoens are weird things so who knows.

How many houses have filters on the water supply to the house? None I know of. Sure there may be filtered water on a drinking water tap but not otherwise.

Analogue phones are pretty basic devices and certainly not weird. I suspect the Line Circuit relay in the exchange has been operated by the low insulation and the circuit has timed out, that's why there's no dial tone. If this is the case no phone will work. I'd bet if you rang the number you would get the busy signal.

We have a filter just after the main enters the house, before any taps etc. This was replaced a couple of months back by a plumber. I'm not sure if a blocked filter would cause only some taps to be low pressure though? Unless there's another filter we don't know about but I doubt that's the case.

Would the issue you mentioned above affect DSL services? We have VDSL working normally right now (though slower than usual) on the same line. Master filter installed obviously, but done before we got the house.

richms

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#1511670 11-Mar-2016 23:46

Technofreak:

How many houses have filters on the water supply to the house? None I know of. Sure there may be filtered water on a drinking water tap but not otherwise.

Analogue phones are pretty basic devices and certainly not weird. I suspect the Line Circuit relay in the exchange has been operated by the low insulation and the circuit has timed out, that's why there's no dial tone. If this is the case no phone will work. I'd bet if you rang the number you would get the busy signal.

Plenty do, its a warranty requirement for most mixer taps and is a good idea to stop crud getting into the washer on the valves if you have a low pressure hot water system. They are usually a small brass thing with a thread on a 45 degree angle that you turn the water off then unscrew to get access to the small grate in it.

Here is a helpful google image search result

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richms

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#1511671 11-Mar-2016 23:47

DSL will work when there is a somewhat damp connection on the line, or one side is shorted to ground etc, all those will stop the phone from working.

Richard rich.ms

Aredwood

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#1511705 12-Mar-2016 01:10

Had all sorts of issues with ADSL to my place until telecom finally replaced the 60m long underground line to my house. Probably had at least 10 callouts before they finally decided to replace it. The tech who got approval for the replacement said that I had a rare fault in that the conductors in the cable were shorting to eachover. Yet no leakage to ground.

Often the voltage would drop so low that the phones would stop working. But ADSL would keep working (but slower). Measured 2.5V on the line once when it should have been 48V. ADSL sync was about 2Mbit. Went up to 11 Mbit when new line installed. ADSL was always more reliable than the landline phone (on my line at least).

OPs water pressure issue might be a failed limiting valve.

tardtasticx

3075 posts

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#1511850 12-Mar-2016 10:58

Updates!

Water pressure is a lot better but still not as good as it once was. Usable now so we'll get it looked at next week by a plumber when weekend callout rates don't apply!

Landline is completely dead, VDSL working fine. By dead I mean the cordless phones all think the line is connected just fine but when we pickup theres no dial tone, calling something like voicemail and we can't hear anything from the machine on the end.

When I call our landline from a mobile a couple of things happen:

Landlines all ring but sound funny. So normally it'd be like. ----..----.. .. .. ----..----.. .. etc. But now it's like ---..-.. .. .. --..--- and so on.
When I pickup the landline while it's ringing, my mobile says "Calling" still and I can still hear a call tone. Listening to the receiver on the landline I can hear a faint calling tone (as if I'm trying to dial out and I'm waiting for the other person to pickup).

robjg63

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#1511855 12-Mar-2016 11:02

Did you check your water meter is not whizzing around while you have no taps turned on?

Should be the first thing you check.

If there is a leak after the meter (ie between your house and the meter) you wear the bill.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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tardtasticx

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#1512237 13-Mar-2016 12:08

And we're fixed!

Yesterday arvo around 3 the internet completely stopped working, and I had to watch **gasp** broadcast TV.

Then an hour after that Chorus called and said the issue was fixed and all should be working just fine, and it was. Line is now crystal clear and internet is back to the awesome speeds we had before.

The guy told me there was some corrosion on the cable, but I can only assume it was at the exchange/cabinet because we didn't see any vans on the little grey pillar outside the house. Apparently the cable just got trimmed and reconnected so was an easy fix for everyone.

Line stats to compare:

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 7,190 / 33,387
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [B/B]: 0/0
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 6.2 / 15.3
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 6.7 / 16.4
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 11.7 / 11.8

So big thanks to Chorus for sorting it out so quickly and painlessly, and to Spark as well for not messing around and getting everything organised.

Water issue is obviously completely unrelated now hahaha. Has gone back to being near on no pressure which is getting frustrating but someone will have to be called in tomorrow I guess.

Thanks for the info and tips everyone.