DSL Phone Static Question for Lineman?

[ultrarunner]

I have had the same phone since 1980 and the line quality started out bad with lots of static and noise.... phone company never was able to make it clear but it worked OK for Dial Up Internet... Only one jack and it is direct through wall installation... no "Inside" wire to speak of.

In 2000 phone company sends out DSL OFFER and I accept... install crew has lots of issues as I am at outer limit and end up running a new line from quite a far away point...

Phone service is now crystal clear and DSL works great.

Since Christmas the line quality sucks... bad static, cannot hear callers often and DSL drops out all the time.

Call AT&T and they want to sell U-Verse... saying there isn't a lot that can be done with POTS service... not interested in cable for TV as I use rabbit ears.

Anyway, the only way to get the DSL working is to lift receiver on phone and then DSL will sync and works well.

So no Sync, Static on Line, High Open and have requested Metallic Loop Test.

Is there anything else I can do to prod AT&T?

Seems there should be some interest in keeping a loyal customer of 38 years or is POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) simply being left to rot in place?

 

[PILOON]

I once overheard some linemen chatting about how the bass was happy about how many land line clients they had lost.
The telecoms would cheer if everybody went to cell phone service as it is much more economical for them to maintain service.
Either you buy a new cellphone or they upgrade their computer.

With landlines they need a service vehicle, lots of trained staff and miles upon miles of wires to maintain and that is not counting poles that break and ice damage from storms.

 

[Tractor Seabee]

Piloon is absolutely right. I had a similar problem, finally a senior tech was sent out; he determined incoming from the pole was bad. He explained that we were on the end of a line that was 2 miles of old copper. There were only 6 subscribers on the 2 miles. He admitted that they would be pleased to lose those 6 so they could abandon that section as there was a not enough income to pay for updating the 2 miles. Some times there is a real reason why tech service seems to be less than desirable; deliberate means of losing customers not paying the freight to maintain service.

That tech explained that he was talking out of school but did not care as he was retiring in 6 months.

Ron

 

[mddorange]

I live out in the country and on our county road, they wouldn't even run cable as there are too few homes to make it payable.

I used to have DSL with Centurylink through the landline with the home phone at $69 a month, but it was very slow, < 1 mbps. When AT&T offered unlimited internet over their 4 lte cell towers for only $20 a month at a speed of 12 mbps, I jump at it and haven't looked back.

Now the POWER company is running fiber lines on their power poles and offering 100mbps of unlimited internet for $49.a month.

 

[ultrarunner]

This location is in the city... and at one time there was a wait list for lines... homes were ordering multiple lines back in the 80's...

Maybe it is no longer true but landline phone service is still under the PUC and highly regulated where as the alternatives not so much?

A lot of taxpayer money went into connecting America by Landline... friends in Santa Cruz are deep in a Redwood forest 7 miles from pavement and off grid EXCEPT the phone company put in miles of underground in 1970 as funds for rural service needed to be spent.

Maybe landline will go the way of the ice man?

 

[thepumpguysc]

I still have DSL thru my landline & when it arrived it had a "filter" that was supposed to plug into EVERY phone jack that had a phone attached to it..
Just for kicks I went & disconnected the filter & plugged the phone straight into the jack while reading this..
STATIC.!!!
Put the filter back in & its crystal clear..
I'll look around & if I have more filters, your welcome to them.. TPG

 

[mddorange]

I have six filters that I don't use, you are welcome to them.

 

[k0ua]

POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) simply being left to rot in place?

Yep.

Maybe landline will go the way of the ice man?

Yep.

The copper plant continues to deteriorate. The phone companies are interested in maintaining their fiber optic feeds to the cell towers and the other larger customers that they are feeding high speed data to.

 

[kcflhrc]

Some of this is true and some is definitely not. Being one of the biggest Telco's in the US we have no cell phone offering and no towers, I know, hard to believe right. I work at the local level doing Fiber to the premise, residential and business. We still maintain our copper plant but not a lot of new going into the ground, mostly just maintenance. So many limitations on copper as to very few limitations with fiber. Transport is big as well as cloud services but the cell market is just not a good business to be in, way too much competition. Everyone wants faster this and faster that, I get it. I don't run into the issues the guys that do copper plant get into, it can be a nightmare. Lots of stuff going on with CAF right now but still government mandate is still only 10 meg. Static can be caused by several factors, weather, bad connection, you name it. Fiber typically works or it doesn't. The filters you speak of have to go on every phone or at least 1 installed with all voice jacks connected to it. The jack for the DSL gets no filter. Good luck, sucks to live in the country. But when I go home at the end of the day to my rural 10 acres the last thing I want to do is get on the internet. And yes, land lines are regulated by the PUC for 911 purposes but broadband is not regulated in any way.

 

[DrRod]

We had terrible static on our line and changed out the little rectangle box in the line [filter?] and it got much better.

I have also gone through the self-assessment protocol [which is tough because you have to drive six miles for cell service to check in on each step] and found a loose wire in the outside box was the culprit. Do you have access to the outside box?

Just to pile on, Verizon couldn't care less about us out in the country. A truck knocked our line down last summer and the phone company insisted the problem was with the computers on their end and it would take two weeks to fix since they were all out fixing storm damage. I could see the line coiled on a fence post but they wouldn't hear of it. Then they made an appointment to fix it and didn't show up. I called and called and no one cared.

The bad thing is that we don't have cell service so without a land line you are isolated -- very bad in emergencies.

 

[Dutch445]

i still have a copper dsl line but have dropped the land line phone. ours is thru Frontier, rural area.
over the years there have been issues like you mention, and every time they come out with their meters
and start checking signal and work their way backwards. last time i believe they found a bad component
a mile or so down the road.
they always want to pin it on something in my home, make me disconnect everything, but it always
ended up being their equipment. there were those little filters also, but i'm not sure how well they work
if you have a good signal.
i would think you have some right to repair of the system you are paying for, and maybe if you can't
get anywhere with them a local tv station may take interest?

 

[Coyote machine]

I went around for years with my local Telco on going first from dialup to DSl, they told me too far, (over 18,000' from the sub-station switch). I kept calling the engineering dept, every six months or so, (not the front desk receptionists, who would just route the call to nowhere). Finally I got through to a woman in engineering who said she would have my line rerouted to a different switch in the opposite direction from the current one I was connected through.

I agreed to sign a 18 mo. contract for DSL- it had recently been rolled out. I told her IF it worked, but if it didn't they had to put me back to my original dial-up line connection. Like I wanted to go back to dial-up?!:confused2:

It worked, but I was only able to get their lowest amount of 'speed'. Meanwhile closer customers to the switch got way higher speed for same monies! I was funding their higher speed access but not benefitting from it.

Then they rolled out 'Fiber' and it is great - no drops, 1Gigbyte speeds. That's after a very long roll-out time where they screwed up with out of state contracted labor that must not have heard of New England rocks, and must have been the lowest bid on planet Earth. They had to ditchwitch the last 150 ' of underground line to the Fiber box, (I required be mounted inside my garage's back wall) THREE times because they kept doing it wrong and couldn't complete the connection to required depth, etc. Everything from my on site telco pole was aerial run.
Now the new fiber is routed on telco poles rather than the old copper underground lines. So now if a storm knocks out electric lines it usually takes down the fiber line too. Then you have NO outside communication, unless you happen to have cellular from your residence.

With your DSL, try going direct to the engineering dept; like I did, and take names of everyone you speak to. They may tell you, at first, they're only required to provide dial tone, everything else is gravy. Technically maybe, but that is just their standard BS kick to the curb response. Go as high as you can telling them you want them to fix your line or put you on a different line to your house, AND you will not stop until you're satisfied with the results, OR you will go to the PSB of your locality and file a complaint. When you tell them that you should get fairly instant results.
They fear the PSB, and don't want to incur their wrath.
Use 'squeaky wheel' philosophy!:thumbsup:

 

[ultrarunner]

I will get out the ladder to check MPO on the weekend.

Until then simply lifting the hand piece off the phone and getting dial-tone clears the modem Red Lights in about 20 seconds...

So my work around is to take the phone off the hook when I need the DSL to work

 

[kcflhrc]

Unplug everything except the DSL modem and see if it works. Taking the handset off hook completes the loop so you may have something going on with the phone or another device.

 

[Gator6x4]

I have had the same phone since 1980 and the line quality started out bad with lots of static and noise.... phone company never was able to make it clear but it worked OK for Dial Up Internet... Only one jack and it is direct through wall installation... no "Inside" wire to speak of.

In 2000 phone company sends out DSL OFFER and I accept... install crew has lots of issues as I am at outer limit and end up running a new line from quite a far away point...

Phone service is now crystal clear and DSL works great.

Since Christmas the line quality sucks... bad static, cannot hear callers often and DSL drops out all the time.

Call AT&T and they want to sell U-Verse... saying there isn't a lot that can be done with POTS service... not interested in cable for TV as I use rabbit ears.

Anyway, the only way to get the DSL working is to lift receiver on phone and then DSL will sync and works well.

So no Sync, Static on Line, High Open and have requested Metallic Loop Test.

Is there anything else I can do to prod AT&T?

Seems there should be some interest in keeping a loyal customer of 38 years or is POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) simply being left to rot in place?

In the first sentence you said you have had the same phone since 1980 and had static then. That is a long time. You also said "Anyway, the only way to get the DSL working is to lift receiver on phone and then DSL will sync and works well." I would start with a new phone. One can be purchased at Wal-Marts for less than $20.00.

 

[k0ua]

I doubt a new phone will help, nor do I think replacing the DLS filter/filters will help. I believe that drawing the typical 20ma of loop current when you lift the phone off of the hook, helps to restore the near open connection you have in one or more of the connections from the DSLAM to your residence. When you pull loop current, it is almost like a tiny "welding" of the connection that lasts for a little while. Until that defective connection is found and repaired you problem will persist.

What is a DSL filter you ask? A DSL filter is a tuned circuit consisting of L (inductive) and C (capacitive) components that block the DSL signal ( an over 100khz signal ) from flowing into the telephone ( a low impedance device), yet still passes the DC loop current, and the low frequency AC signals (voice energy) and ring voltage (20 hz AC). The DSL signal is taken off of the line by the ADSL "modem" before any DSL filters. DSL filters can also have a secondary incidental function of blocking RF energy from nearby AM broadcast transmitters or Amateur radio transmissions before they can get into a susceptible electronic telephone and be rectified and heard in the phone. Typically an older analog phone such as a 2500 series phone are more resistant to these RF signals to begin with. But cheap electronic phones are often susceptible to RF energy.

 

[ultrarunner]

The phone is a rotary desktop...

The circuit has but a single jack in total... the MPO has maybe 10" of wire where it pokes through the wall directly to the jack in the upstairs office.

I have tried other phones (Made in China) and the voice quality is worse so it is back to the Western Electric rotary which is currently off the hook as I write this.

kOua, I believe you are 100% correct... there is a connection problem somewhere in the circuit and lifting the receiver changes the current flow just enough to make all the difference in the world.

It also has been raining on and off the last couple of weeks... where as there has been no rain about 6 months... rain/wet has been a problem before.

My provider is ATT which had been a company I held in the highest esteem... that is no longer the case from my dealings with ATT over the last decade or so... best summed up like this... if ATT had as many linemen as they do sales people I'm sure the company would still be the gold standard.

 

[k0ua]

The phone is a rotary desktop...

The circuit has but a single jack in total... the MPO has maybe 10" of wire where it pokes through the wall directly to the jack in the upstairs office.

I have tried other phones (Made in China) and the voice quality is worse so it is back to the Western Electric rotary which is currently off the hook as I write this.

kOua, I believe you are 100% correct... there is a connection problem somewhere in the circuit and lifting the receiver changes the current flow just enough to make all the difference in the world.

It also has been raining on and off the last couple of weeks... where as there has been no rain about 6 months... rain/wet has been a problem before.

My provider is ATT which had been a company I held in the highest esteem... that is no longer the case from my dealings with ATT over the last decade or so... best summed up like this... if ATT had as many linemen as they do sales people I'm sure the company would still be the gold standard.

Yes, wet cable is nearly always the cause of these type of complaints. Not that this isn't still a failure of the cable plant, because it is, but the wet weather is the "cause" of the the symptoms.

 

[ultrarunner]

Leaving the receiver off the hook for a few hours has provided a bit of a respite...

The line is used mostly for Internet... plus a call every now and then as I have been winding down the residential property management side of things...

 

[coobie]

Have your local power company check for loose hardware on your power poles.Have any of your neighbors installed a electric fence for cattle/horses and such? A lot of phone companies attach to your ground rod by your meter socket.Drive a separate ground rod for your incoming phone line.Turn your car radio to AM and drive close buy to see if you get more static in one location verses another.