Hi Speedtouch,

Your only real option here is to ask / insist for a MAC (migration authority code)

Once you have this you can migrate elsewhere.

My advice to you (and everyone else) is NOT to tie your broadband in with other products /deals.

STICK with BT for you phone line  rental, and have a cheaper call option package by all means with another provider (such as utility warehouse) BUT keep with another independant provider for broadband. Using BT for broadband is a  clear  advantage since BT "owns" the whole network (i.e.the "problem) - but it's not essential for this reason alone to go with BT 

Once you are in this situation - ALL telephony issues relating to your phone line - upto your master socket (assuming that any internal phone wiring to extension sockets has NOT been installed by BT) is the clear responsibiltiy of BT, and ... any Broadband issues are the responsibilty , initially with your internet service provider. - I say "intially" becuase some of the broadband issues are still the responsibilty of BT - such as your actual phone line, which carries the broadband signal from the exchange, and in most cases, the terminating equipment in the exchange (i.e not LLU)

As you are at the moment, there are several things you can do to "help" yourself.

Have you looked at measuring the line loss and noise margin figures ? (most good ADSL modems will allow you to "see " these figures - these relate to the quality of the basic broadband signal reaching   " your end" - and also a measure of how much "interference" is being superimposed on your broadband signal.

If theses figures are poor - then this means that your modem is "struggling" to hear the broadband   signal - and this will mean "disconnections" every now and again - and IF this is due to poor wiring etc "your end" - then changing supplier WONT make any difference !!

Also - if you suspect poor connectspeeds - try logging onto the BT test realm (this means changing temporarily the user name in your modem / modemrouter  and perfoming    a speed test ......

have a look at:      

 http://www.more-solutions.co.uk/support/bt-test-user.html

The thing is here is that you really need to KNOW where the problems lie before "jumping ship"  - because as I've said - it may not be all the fault of TT !!

But - having said that  - as I've said before - you do get what you pay for - and some of the smaller operators like us like to think we give better customer service and advice ( like here !)

 

Regards

 

Eric - ISP 

 

 

hi jason

please please help me and other people get off talktalk.it has now got so frustrating with disconnections every 5 mins or so.slow pages loading taking up to 1 min.carnt acsses email.in fact the only thing that does work is the phone lol.i have signed pertitions about tt,ive complained by email when i can get into my account.ringing them doesnt help either.ive been with TT since august 2006 and ive just about had it.please help

 

cheers speed touch 

eric

i dont think you got my email as it bounced.can you cantact me please 

 

lincon7echo AT gmail.com

cheers speedtouch


 

Can't speak to you today but I will try later this week.

Hi Jason.

 

i know we've spoken before - have you still got my contact details ?    Can you give me a call sometime regarding this ?

 

Regards

 

Eric

Good advice Eric - perhaps you'd like to be a moderator for broadband (hmm?)

If you can send an email to info AT 7serve.net I can help you further

 

REgards

 

Eric-isp

hi eric

thanks for this info.can you supply me the adress to where i can purchase this please. 

Hi there,

We supply and fit the NTE5 filter plate in customer installations where it's use is required.

We can supply these on a "fit it yourself" basis.  (i.e .....we are not responsible for any wiring issues, failure of telephone / telephony  service (bells not ringing on extensions etc  or any other telephony /broadband issues after you have fitted it. )

If you do fit an NTE5 filter plate, You should make a careful note of line loss and noise margin figures first, and take careful note also of any existing wiring on the "old" plate before removing same, and fitting the new plate.

Please note also that it is "illegal" to remove the main part of the master socket fixings / wiring. Only the "front" plate can be removed.

Armed with this information , it should work without any further problems, and you can then recheck the test figures, and note any improvement.

Regards

 

Eric-isp 

 

 

 

were can one buy an NTE5 from please because i have trolled the net but they seem to be discontinued.any help would be gratefully excepted

Good answer with a little more detail than I gave. I was just trying to keep it simple for the untechnical people who frequent this forum.

Just to add another note which most people will never have or need to worry about but SDSL is the alternative to ADSL. Sadly SDSL is still too expensive although its suprising the amount of people who would be better off with it that ADSL.

The ISP's seem to think people will mostly download information from the Internet, while this is true its not always the case. I find myself often uploading 10's of GB's of data. My line is 8064x512 and as you can imagine it takes a long time to do anything.

Hopefully the major ISP's will get the idea soon that giving someone 16-24mb connections isnt going to make some people happy. I would much rather have 8/8mb than 24/1.

Maybe in a few years we will have OC or at least Coaxial connections available in most property's so network speeds between 10/100mb are available but I think we are a long way off that yet.

Hi

Just a footnote to the previous entry by "immo".

There is essentially a difference between the "attenuation" of a phone line in terms of the "normal" Telephony signals it conveys, which are essentially in the "audio frequency" range. In the early days of telephony this frequency range was deemed to be 300Hz to 3.4Khz.
These were the frequencies considered neccessary for intelligble speech to be heard over a phone line.

When we talk about attenuation for conventional telephony devices such as phone, fax etc, then we are concerning ourselves with the AUDIO frequency range, NOT the broadband frequency range, which, as I said before in the earlier post, is isolated from the "audio or telephony" spectrum at "your end - ie the customer end " by means of the "micro filter"

IF you inadvertently plug a conventional telephony device such as a phone or fax into an extension socket where broadband is in operation - WITHOUT a microfilter, then this device will "swamp - or load" the broadband signal , and hence signifacntly reduce its signal level - probably below that which the ADSL modem can detect.
THATS why you must have a micro filter at EVERY phone point which is being used, UNLESS you put a micro filter in at the "start" end, ie at the master socket - hence the NTE5 filter plate !

Note on "REN"
In order to make your telephone bell ring, an alternating current is applied to your phone line of sufficient level to make a (in fact several) "bell(s) ring.
When you answer your phone - a "loop" is created on your line, enabling a DC current to flow, which the exchange detects, and it then interrupts the ringing current. - i.e you've "answered the call"
Now in the early days again - this "bell" was an electomagnet, ie a coil of wire, which acutated an armature, which hit a physical "bell" and hence made it ring. NOW - its fairly obvious that if you had extension phones in those days, if you connected too many of them, then there wasn't enough energy in the "ringing Signal" to ring All the bells, and so basically you wouldn't know when an incoming call was there !!

And so they specified the number of Bells you could connect - which was related to "standard bell winding impedance", and was called the "Ringer Equivalance Number", or REN. So if your line had a REN number of 4, it meant it would only support 4 bells! - assuming each bell had a REN factor of 1. If you fitted a BIG bell outside so the lazy b*****s could hear it, then it might have a REN of 2 or more - cos' it took more energy to make it work - and so in that case you might have used up 2 + 1 of your "REN" allowance
Good ol' days eh!

The REN factor is still used today, but maybe is not so relevant becuase most phones now have electronic ringers, and so use very little power from the ringing current sent from the exchange - and so have a the minimum REN factor of 1 (but in practice is much less than "1")

Carrying on with the "attenuation subject .....................

(A good Hi-fi Audio system will operate between 20Hz to 20Khz or so, and someone of younger age, with good ears will be able to hear at least up to 15Khz - so we'll say that anything above 20Khz is "above audio" - or "ultrasonic"

Now - the attenuation of these frequencies over a typical line length of say 2 -4 Km is quite low, and consequently is not much of a problem for general telephony use

BUT - if you try to send much higher frequencies than this over a conventional phone line - (which is only a pair of loosely twisted copper wires between you and the exchange) then the attenuation rises sharply
In the case of broadband, which uses frequencies much much higher than the audio range then you can see that the signal you will receive NOW becomes very much a function of the phone line length.

AND - "broadband" - to give it it's proper name ADSL - ( "Assymetric Digital Subsrciiber Line") Is "assymetric" because it uses the LOWER frequency part of the available spectrum for the UPLINK data, and uses a usually larger "chunk" of "whats left" of the remaining UPPER part of the available frequency spectrum for the "DOWNLINK" data path.
(i.e assymetric - uplink not the same bandwidth as the downlink- unlike SDSL (Syncronous Digital subscriber line, where the uplink and downlink are equal)

NOW.....you can see that - as the phone line gets longer, and the available frequencies get restricted because of rising attenuation of the higher frequencies,, then the only thing to "give up on" here is the available Downlink bandwith and hence speed (in terms of Bits per second) !!!!

And so that's why the downlink speed varies, with line length (gets lower as the line gets longer) and - what's more,...... on ADSL Max (8Mb) , the exchange end effectively "tries out" how far it can "push the upper frequency limit" , by progressively raising the downlink speed, until the data "error rate" is unacceptable. It will then reduce the downlink speed until an acceptable level of error rate is re-established.
From those two "extreme "points an "acceptable" level of speed is then set - NOW - .................. that could be less than the speed you had before you switched to ADSL Max !!
("Could be " .........Because the speed is set after this "test period" to the nearest 500K "block", and it "rounds down" not UP, so if your "trial" connect speed was say 1950kB, then it would be set to 1500Kb (1.5mB) and NOT 2mB ,,,,,, which is what you might have had before going to ADSL max, due to your line being originally "graded" as capable of supporting a 2mB service)

So - I hope this sheds some more light on attenation, filters, REN , general telephony, etc.

And finally when you get to my age - you'll be lucky to hear 8 -10 Khz , let alone 15Khz !!

Those were the days !!

And for those of you that remember 405 line TV - remember how annoying the line timebase " whistle" coming from the line output transfromer at 10.125Khz was - wish I could still hear that now !!

Regards

Eric - isp

Just another not to add to the list of things you have explained there Eric.

The more devices you have connected to the other sockets in your house the weaker the signal will be. If you put the faceplate back on the NTTP and the problem arises make sure you disconnect all the other phones or fax machines in the property as it may not be the fact that you have wiring problems it could simply be that the line gets too attenuated.

I think from memory every house gets 3REN into the property (electrical signal phone lines use), a standard telephone uses 1REN. Obviously therefore the more devices you have the weaker the signal will be and the higher the lines attenuation will be.

Wow! Eric-isp, that is a lot of really good advice!

I like your style - particularly the analogy:

"Because it's more likely to be similar in level to the wanted signal --- i.e. it's just like trying to hear a quiet voice in a room full of noisy partgoers!!!"

Kind regards,
Samara

Note on Microfilters and related issues.

1.The function of a microfilter is to separate the higher frequency "broadband signal" from the normal low frequency "telephone" signals that travel along your phone line. This "broadband" signal, once seperated, is then connected via a seperate connetion to your modem, or modem router.

2. When your phone line enters your premises from outside , it is intially terminated at the "Network Termination point" which is your "Master socket". Normally, the master socket can be indentified by the fact that it has a lower rectangular part / plate , held by two screws, which can be "legally" removed by you to facilitate internal "DIY" wiring to additional / extension phone sockets by means of the push down connectors that are found on the back of this removable plate.

IF you remove this plate, you will see that it plugs into a recess which is in fact a socket identical in nature to a normal telephone socket ........... NOW if you plug something into THIS socket, the IMPORTANT THING TO REALISE is that ALL other wiring in your premises has been disconnected (assuming that no one has done "illegal" wiring by connecting "behind" the master sokcet.!!)

SO - when you connect a microfilter at this socket - you are connecting it DIRECTLY to Bt's Network Nermination and Test point (NTTP) , and ALL other wiring is disconnected/eliminated from this "installation".

NOW - What you need to be aware of is: There is a high probability that internal phone wiring, particularly poorly installed DIY wiring, will pick up noise / interference from mains wiring, electronic devices such as TV's, Fax's, thermostats etc etc, AND,
..... if your broadband set up now appears to work more reliably when connected as discussed to the NTTP , then it's almost certainly / probably due to the fact you've now "eliminated" this noise that was coming from your internal wiring.
(This is because this "noise" "interferes" or "competes with" with the "wanted" broadband signal separated by the microfilter - and consequently reduces the ability of your modem to reliably "hear" the broadband signal - known as "noise margin" )

Note - when the modem "hears" the broadband or "ADSL" signal, it "locks" onto it, and is then said to be "in Sync" (syncronisation) and this is usually indicated by the "ADSL" lamp going from flashing - to "steady".
If the ADSL lamp is seen to keep going back intermittently to "flashing" then it indicates that the modem is struggling to "hear" the signal - possibly because of noise presence

(Many good modem /routers will allow you to test this "noise margin" figure, and then you can actually see the improvement that you have obtained by connection directly to the "NTTP" (Note - the figure (in Db's) goes UP as the situation improves)

The other test your modem should show is "line loss" (in Db's) , which is effectively a indication of the "received strength" of the broadband signal reaching you from the exchange. (Note: The higher the line loss figure - the weaker your signal is)
That is: the longer your phone line is from the exchange, the more the broadband signal is weakened. - AND - of course - if the signal's weak becuase you're a long way from the exchange, then the noise picked up from your end is more likely to cause problems - because it's more likely to be similar in level to the wanted signal --- i.e. it's just like trying to hear a quiet voice in a room full of noisy partygoers!!!

So It's improved - BUT - what do you do now??? ......... IF you put the master socket back as it was - then the problem's back again !! - no matter how many microfilters you place elswhere - becuase it's the wiring picking up the noise - and microfilters won't stop that ... because they are on the "wrong side" of the wiring which is picking up the offending noise!!!

The solution is that you replace the master socket lower "plate" by a similar looking component, which includes an inbuilt microfilter. This is called an "NTE5" filter plate, and this device not only performs the function of a microfilter, - but - ALSO, and perhaps more importantly - ISOLATES the remainder of the internal wiring - because ALL of this wiring is now connected to an identicall push down connector strip which means that it's now the "other side of the integral faceplate filter" - and hence the noise still being picked up from your internal wiring is now "isolated"

This filter plate has two sockets, one for a phone/fax etc, and the other for your modem / modem-router
IT DOES mean however that your modem / modem router has to be connected at this point, i.e. the master socket, but that's a small price to pay for a more reliable connection !! - AND - you DONT need any microfilters elsewhere on extension phone sockets !

For more help and advice - read my other posts

Regards

Eric-isp