If people think this should be in another forum please let me know and I'll have it moved.

When my landline phone is connected directly to the phone socket in the wall it works fine - I have a dial tone and I can make and receive calls fine. If I connect it through the filter (so my internet can connect) I get no dial tone - the phone will ring if I get an incoming call but if I pick it up I can't hear anything. I have tried 2 different phones and 3 different filters and I've also tried it all ways in the test socket and I still get the same problem. Orange (my broadband provider) won't take responsibility and BT (my landline provider) won't take responsibility - what do I do?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

bab
x

Hi, when you try the phone with filter is the ADSL modem also plugged in?

Have you tried it with just filter and phone?

Hi, I've tried it both ways and there is still no dial tone with just the phone plugged into the filter (no modem)

OK , I'm just trying to cover all the possibilities (which you probably already have too).

Did you remove the faceplate on the master socket when plugging into the test socket? So there'd be no extension wiring or anything else to upset the line.

Sorry - did my previous post sound annoyed - I didn't mean to!

I'm not sure - I unscrewed the bottom half of the socket on the wall removed it and used the test port that is behind that section

No certainly not.


If you unscrewed the bottom half of the socket etc there's nothing more you can do.

It's fairly obvious the BT line is close to the point where it's possibly going to fail completely and I'd guess that if you had a multimeter you'd find there was barely sufficient voltage/current to power the phone handset.

The ringing tone is getting through OK but when you pick up the phone, it isn't getting enough power to work properly.

I'll bet that even without any filters involved, you can't get two phones in the house to work at the same time.

In that case you are fully entitled to get BT out to have it fixed.

Ok, cool - I'll have another go at them and see if they'll come out - bit annoying as it's a new line they put in about 2 months ago

Thank you for your help

Don't let them fob you off, you tell them what's wrong.

Hi babinaba

I am sorry to hear you are having problems with your broadband, although your broadband service is not with BT I can check your line to see if there is any faults on it that may be causing the problem. If you could email your account details to btcare@bt.com I will gladly check your line. If you could please include your forum username and that it was a query raised on digital spy.

Regards David

???

My broadband is fine - I have no problem with that! And I have had a line check done by BT and it's apparently fine which is why I was told it wasn't BT's problem.

Appreciate you trying to help though, but I think I'll have to take it further than an email to customer services

Hello babinaba,

The email address we have asked you to contact is not a customer service email address. The email will come directly to our department. We are the forums and twitter team. We will be able to take over your case to try and resolve the problems you are experiencing. From the details you have provided on this thread it dose sound to me like the microfilters are faulty. However I will be able to run some further test on your line to see if the fault stems from your landline.

Please can you reply to me via email for the attention of myself to btcare@bt.com with your account details and a contact number to reach you on. In your reply could you also put that you contacted us via Digital Spy and please put your username babinaba. This is so we can trace the details of your complaint.

Fionnuala

To completely cover yourself, is there any chance you can take the microfilters and your telephone to a neighbour or friends house and try them in their phone line?

It's unlikely that 3 filters or 2 phones are faulty but at least you can then be certain they are all OK.

I've been told that the problem is that the ties in the exchange connecting the broadband line and the phone line haven't been connected - I'll find out tomorrow if an engineer is going to go out and look at the exchange (they still don't agree which one out of Orange or BT are responsible!!!)

If they tell me the engineer isn't going then I'm going to Ofcom and apparently they'll investigate and they will put the responsibility with one of them and maybe that will make one of them buck their ideas up. I may go to Ofcom anyway to complain because I've spent hours on the phone to one or the other over the past few weeks and it's unacceptable.

Ah well, they at least accept it's an exchange problem.

It is hard to understand how the telephone works at all without this tie pair being connected, maybe openreachpeep could shed more light on it if he reads this thread.

I had a similar problem last year. Not quite the same as yours, but I could hear the broadband signal on the phone.

Eventually got it sorted but we had the same thing though, O2 saying it was BT's problem, BT saying it was up to O2 to sort out.

This liasion between BT and ISP's really needs to be improved drastically.

the tie pairs are the link cables from another OLO b/band equipment to our MDF(main distribution frame).
they sometimes go faulty either the cable itself is faulty or the port on the adsl equipment is faulty.
never had one that has caused this kind of fault though.
though they say they havn't been connected, therefore the OP shouldn't get any b/band signal at all.

to the OP, i know you've tried several filters already, but were they from the same box(i.e did they all come with the router in the post) as they could be a bad batch.

Hi - no, I can only find one of the filters that came with the router, one other is from bt when I was going to have bt broadband and they sent me an extra one by mistake (and I didn't return it - please don't tell on me ) and the last one was sent out to me by whatever company distributes the filters for Orange - it didn't come direct from Orange but some tech company.

this is a bit of a strange one, as previously said in the other posts would be very rare for all 3 filters to be faulty.
and like i said i'v never come across a tie pair causing this type of fault.
so to recap, phone only o.k in socket, phone and microfilter only fails, and obviously phone modem and microfilter fails.
as previously said could be an issue on the line(possible high resistance) causing the filters to malfunction, but if this was the case you would certainly have crackling on the line when using just the phone.

Yup - phone ok when plugged into socket - no dial tone when filter connected with our without router connected. Don't know if this makes any difference or not - but if the phone is plugged into the filter and someone calls me, the phone will ring but I can't hear anyone on the end of it, similarly, I can call someone but can't hear the dial tone or anyone on the end of the phone - they can hear me though.

There is no crackling on the line - the phone is perfect when it's just plugged into the socket direct and making and receiving calls is fine.

Thanks to everyone for trying to help me with this. Apparently an engineer hasn't been booked as the technical team need to go over everything with me again........I despair!

babinaba do you have a 2nd phone you can connect into the system?

I would try taking both phones off the hook together (without filters in the circuit) and see if you can still get dial tone.

You could also dial the speaking clock ( 123 ) on one phone then pick up the second and see if it is still audible on both.

If the line can't supply enough power for 2 phones you've at least eliminated the filters as the source of the problem and the engineer should accept that test when you speak to him/her.

I only have 1 socket in the house

Just an update - I'm now going through both companies complaints procedure in the view to taking it to their independant resolusion scheme then if necessary, Ofcom. Talking to both of them, no matter how far up the change I take my issue and how much I argue the case for the other company - i.e. what BT have said to me to tell Orange and vice versa, it's making absolutely no difference apart from me wasting my time when I should be using it to study. I find it ridiculous that this has got to go through an official complaints procedure before one of them is told it's their responsibility and does something about it. And I agree with what was written above that the communication between BT and the broadband providers is non existant and something needs to change. I've been in tears over this and spent hours and hours on the phone to get absolutely no where and I'll be expecting a written apology from whatever company is held liable.