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Electrical interference to landline

(13 Posts)
Katie59 Tue 23-Mar-21 09:02:02

There are other appliances that may be always on, immersion heater, boiler, lights, a faulty fluorescent light fitting caused me a lot of hassle until it was found.

jeanie99 Mon 22-Mar-21 20:56:39

Still getting the problem, while talking to a company the phone went dead. yesterday. One TV on and the fridge freezer.
The day before the person who rang couldn't hear me intermittently.
Told to pull the plugs out but I have built in appliances and heavy furniture with plugs behind in some rooms, it's not possible.
Engineer said just turn electrical appliances off but someone else said pull out the plugs.
We are at a loss to know what to do next.
When I speak to companies I now ask them to ring me back if the phone goes dead. There is not much I can do.

Katie59 Sat 13-Mar-21 13:03:12

Where I lived 5 yrs ago they had been shooting pigeons, someone had shot through the overhead cables, when it rained no phones, it took 6 weeks to find the fault.

Teacheranne Fri 12-Mar-21 20:34:11

When I had similar problems lasting for several months, I too went round switching appliances, routers, cordless phones etc off while the engineer tested the line. It turned out that our phone cables were underground, no telegraph poles on the estate, and one of the cables had corroded, so after heavy rain water was getting into the cable causing all sorts of problems.

Katie59 Fri 12-Mar-21 20:20:39

My cordless played up so use an old plug in phone for the few landline calls I make, I use mobile for almost all calls.

Elegran Fri 12-Mar-21 19:31:13

Turnng off the fridge for a few minutes while phoning someone might show whether it makes any difference.

Elegran Fri 12-Mar-21 19:29:48

I had a lot of trouble with crackling on the landline. Various things semed to work for a time, but it recurred. At one point I always sat close to a metal radiator to phone, with one hand on the radiator, thinking that it was caused by static, and I was helping by "earthing" the phone through the central heating. After a while that didn't work. Sometimes it seemed to be worse in heavy rain, so I thought it might be water getting into the underground wires.

jeanie99 Fri 12-Mar-21 15:19:21

We have three wireless phones, the phones were replaced about 6 weeks ago as we thought this may be the problem.

The engineer tested the landline into the house so I would have thought anything in the BT box would have shown up on the testing.
We could turn off the TV at the socket for a try out, thank you for suggesting.
The fridge and freezer were replaced about 10 years ago, would there be something within these appliances then which could be causing this.
I am elderly and have no technical knowledge at all. If this is the cause, having to switch off these appliances is a bit extreme as most people leave such as these on all the time.
I appreciate everything you all have said and I'll try out what you have suggested.
I just want to sort this out.

Elegran Thu 11-Mar-21 18:00:28

If your cordless handset has a rechargeable battery in it, that may be reaching the end of its life. I have a set of four cordless handsets (in kitchen, sittingroom, study and bedroom) dating back to before mobiles were glued to our hands. A similar crackling noise which was heard on all of them was traced back to one of the batteries. I replaced them all and it stopped. It has to be rechargeable ones, though.

EllanVannin Thu 11-Mar-21 15:52:52

I had problems with my landline for months and was blamed for it being something inside the home, or a faulty box connection. It was chronic. At one time I could only phone out and had no incoming calls.
In the end I blasted the company and told them to sort it at their end and tell an engineer to get off his backside.

It was only fixed last year and found to be a fault in one of the green boxes that you see dotted around where all the telephone wires are---a junction box. Fault was found, but the ring-tone has changed to a drawn-out ring instead of the usual dialled rings but I'll leave well alone this time seeing that the phone's working, but it was bad while it lasted.

jusnoneed Thu 11-Mar-21 15:44:06

Do you have cordless phone with a base unit? They can be affected by anything that uses a signal to work, so shouldn't be too near a tv for example. These modern doorbells are another possible if you or even your neighbour has one.

Elegran Thu 11-Mar-21 14:37:16

I think you will be able to turn off your TV at the plug/socket. The fridge and freezer could be turned off for a few minutes without the contents going rotten. Turning off these three things while you check the landline again would eliminate them from being involved (You would turn the fridge and freezer straight back on again, of course, though the TV could wait until the next time you want to watch something.) Incidentally, the TV is still using power on standby, so you would save money by only switching it on at the plug when you are about to watch something.

jeanie99 Thu 11-Mar-21 13:43:18

We have been having intermittent problems with our landline for weeks.
Sometimes there is crackling and the phone signal drops off.
Sometimes mid conversation the signal drops off.
Sometime I cannot hear clearly the person ringing in but they can hear me or the other way round.

People tell me all the time when they ring it's not clear.

After many weeks of speaking on the phone to technical staff we had a BT engineer make a home visit yesterday.

The result of his tests were that the signal in was perfect.

His comment was that there is electrical interference causing the problem.
It may be interference from within our home or it could be a next door neighbour.

He suggested when the problem starts, make a note of all the appliances that are on.

After he left I made a phone call to our provider about another matter and the same thing happened,
I couldn't hear her clearly and she couldn't hear me at times and had to ring me back.
I checked all the electrical equipment which was on
fridge and freezer
TV on standby (cannot turn this off) and
TV box for Skye,
2 mobiles
Does anyone else have or have had this type of problem.