Very late one night last week, and again tonight, my internet connection completely failed. Instead of displaying the website page I want, my browser defaults to my router admin page and it tells me there is "no response from the remote server." It fixed itself overnight last week, but tonight it's been out all evening. I used Spark chat to talk to the broadband team and they asked me to try my phone line. Picked it up... no dial tone, just deafening crackling and hissing. So they told me to call faults instead. After over an hour on hold, I got through to faults who told me that they couldn't find a fault on my line so my phone was probably faulty and it was affecting my internet. However, I'm on VDSL and my modem is connected directly to the master splitter at the ETP outside my house. It's not connected to the line the phone is on. Also, I unplugged the phone, power cycled the router, and still no internet. I asked them to book a technician, who can't come until Friday afternoon. They told me I'd probably get charged the $140 call-out fee because it was my equipment causing the issue.

I just wanted to check with the wise folk here... can your phone cause your VDSL connection to drop out when it's not even on the same internal wiring? 

I should add that twice in the last 6 months I've had to place fault calls for excessive crackling on my line and the last time it was also causing my internet to cut in and out. I tried several different phones and the problem was the same on all of them, so it was definitely not a problem with the phone itself. Each time Chorus has come and poked around in the street and in the box where my master splitter is installed, and whatever they did seemed to fix the issue immediately. On both occasions, they confirmed it was an issue with the wiring outside of my dwelling.

So, in the meantime, I am internet and phone-less (the dial tone comes and goes, but it's crackling so loud as to be unusable) and I work from home and rely on my broadband connection to do business. I have a huge deadline due tomorrow. I guess I'll be chewing through my mobile data.