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Phone advice needed !!
Paul B3
Posts: 3,154
Nothing to do with plants in any way , but I can't seem to find an answer .
My telephone landline has been unuseable for the past week , unable to make or receive calls .
TalkTalk are willing to send out an engineer at some date pre-arranged by us , but what I don't understand is that my broadband is unaffected , even though coming through the same line !
Does this indicate a fault with the handset ? It is around 5-6 years old .
As you may gather , I'm not very knowledgeable in these matters , so was wondering if anyone out there 'in the know' so to speak could advise .
(I hope it is the handset really , then I can simply buy a new one ) !
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Posts
If you have a spare, try replacing it
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
This means you can use phone and broadband simultaneously whereas in the past you could only use one or the other.So it is possible there is a fault with either the DSL filter or the phone line itself.
The DSL filter looks like this and plugs into the phone socket.
I had my Dad's old phones, and when mine went, I used his for a few years until they started to fail as well, despite replacing the batteries.
Hopefully it's something that simple @Paul B3 and your friend's phone will work
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
We often have had a situation where the noise on the phone line has made it unusable but the broadband was still working. I know pretty much exactly what our 'normal' broadband speed is and I test it often, so I also know that although the broadband is functioning when the phone line is bad, it's a lot slower than when the phone line is clear.
We still get problems that when we make a phone call, it 'drops' the broadband out. We have brand new shiny filters and master socket - the problem is in the line not the house equipment (that's all been tested and tested and tested and tested).
IME, Openreach engineers generally don't understand how the system works. they simply work through a standard set of tests which tells them they have to go to such a such a pole/cabinet/exchange and they often don't have any real clue what to look for when they get there. So they just jiggle a few things - unplug it, blow on it and plug it back in again sort of thing - and hope for the best.
I think if you borrow a handset - or buy a cheap one in Argos - to see if it's your handset that's a good start. If you have an external filter like the one in madpenguin's post, get hold of a new one of those too. Otherwise it's entirely possible that it's a dodgy cable or a loose connection in the local 'cab' (green box on the pavement).
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
My neighbour had a similar problem a few years ago, fortunately I had several spare filters, we replaced all 3 of them and the phone worked again.
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
We keep an old wired handset around as these will still work during power cuts. They are also handy for testing the line as you can rule out any problems with the wireless side of things.