Telephone conection problems

[Robert H]

Hi,

We have our telephone and internet service from UKTelecom (used to be AS24Telecom) and always have had the very occasional problem with connection or/and line quality. However, these problems now seem to be on almost every call or at least 60/70% of calls. i.e.

1. On making a call, the person being called cannot hear me. Sometimes I have to redial more than 3 times before we can both hear each other

2. On making a call I hear nothing and the caller hears nothing.

3. On making a call I hear or the person being called hears a delay or echo. This is getting more common.

We have UK telephone handsets with the correct adaptors and I have changed them, thinking this was the problem, but the same problems occur.

Does anyone else have any of these problems? And does anyone have an idea of why it is happening?

Thanks. Robert

[Martin963]

I'm not familiar with the company that you use,  but as you mention "adaptors" for the telephones I'm assuming the calls go as ordinary landline (baseband analogue) calls (as oposed to VOIP),  albeit maybe with an over-ride code to use UKT,  or maybe that you need an over-ride code to get the call to go via FT.

Anyway,  assuming this is the case what happens if you do use FT to make a call?    What is the quality of your landline like - any crackles,   hiss,   whistles?   Do you have the same one-way problems when the call is carried by FT?

[Anton Redman]

As far as I am aware all that happens is that you still pay FT for a landline but AS24 or however they are a far lower price that FT. The actual routing of calls etc remains the same. My first chec would be a walk round the property looking at the telephone cables for obvious damage / water ingress.

[Robert H]

Hi Martin. Thanks for your response.

I should have mentioned that I have a FT line and pay FT line rental. I pay a monthly charge to UKTelecom for calls and broadband for which we have free calls to French landlines, UK landlines and North American landlines.

And you assume correctly, it is a landline (baseband analogue) and is not broadband based.

[Robert H]

Martin,

Sorry, I forgot to answer your question re quality.

Apart from the echo we sometimes get, there are no hisses, crackles or whistles. As the line is rented still with FT as I mentioned in my last post, I suppose it is their responsibility.

[Robert H]

Hi Anton,

Thanks for the response.

I will have another look at the outside and inside cable. My first check some months ago showed nothing abnormal.

Robert

[Martin963]

Well it sounds to me as though it's probably your call provider.     Difficult to be certain but generally echoes and one way link-ups are due to cheaper "spare" (and often inferior) capacity being pressed into service.    

My understanding is that a lot of the cheaper/older lines/links are sub-let by national/international providers cheaply to operators such as yours and the quality (or lack of it) is all too evident.   Which is why I suggested you try a quick call via FT itself (circumventing your normal provider) and see if it's better.     Certainly we'd get some rubbish lines in the days when we used an over-ride code to access onetel.fr's cheaper call prices.

Could be that lots of other Brits using the same company are overloading the system during the holiday period.  

If your internet is holding up well it's unlikely to be a line issue - but do check for the obvious.

[Robert H]

I have received a response from UKTelecom and as expected they say that as I rent the line from FT it is their problem.

But you are probably right about the cheap call charges and clogged links and lines.

Will call FT in the morning and see if they refer me back to UKT.

My internet speeds are Download: 6.42mbps and Upload: 0.52mbps, by the way. Is that OK?

[Martin963]

Well your download speed is 10 x mine,   so a) I'm envious and b) your line is working well!!!  (at least for ADSL).

[Anton Redman]

Try at 5 am