Whose issue is this?

blastman

Hi all, having a bit of a problem with my home broadband and I'm just wondering who I need to get in touch with about it.

The story is basically this: I'm a Vodafone customer by default, having been there since the Esat days, through the BT days and up to today. I've always had problems with noise on my phone line, which meant that although I had been upgraded to 8MB BB through the years, in reality I rarely got better than 1MB, maybe 1.5MB on a good day (very rarely!). Also, the BB signal would drop any time I got a phone call and at other frequent random times. I had learned to live with it, although I wasn't terribly happy about it.

Last Thursday, though, the signal dropped and I haven't been able to connect to the internet since then. I rang Vodafone, who said there was no fault on the line in their "test" and that I would have to call them when I was at home so they could go through fault-finding on my router. Since then, I have done all the fault-finding myself (I'm reasonably technically minded) and in summary, I cannot connect on my phone line despite trying two different routers (including resetting the router I've been regularly using and entering all the settings again) and a broadband modem, but my regular router will connect straightaway on a friend's Vodafone line without changing any settings. I've also had the cable in the house replaced by another mate who used to work for eircom, and he reckons there is a fault on the line coming into the house (you can hear almost constant crackling on the phone).

So, my question(s) is (are), can I contact eircom direct about this (as a non-eircom customer), or do I contact Vodafone and let them contact eircom on my behalf? I also heard that as my house is over a certain age, eircom are obliged to update the copper coming from the main line, is this true? If it isn't, am I liable to pay to have the line replaced? Any advice appreciated.

Hank Scorpio

Contact vodafone and they`ll get eircom to check it out. Best of luck mind, eircom are known for not giving a toss about other ISPs customers

blastman

I thought that might be the case alright, nuxxx, thanks

jor el

Yeah, you can't contact eircom at all about this. Even if you could, they won't do anything about broadband problems, only voice. Since you have a noise on the phone line, you should contact Voda and ask them to log a call with eircom because of the voice noise issue. This is the only way to get eircom to do anything about a line.

dub45

nuxxx wrote: »

Contact vodafone and they`ll get eircom to check it out. Best of luck mind, eircom are known for not giving a toss about other ISPs customers

That isn't true in my own experience. Some months ago I had a fault on my line and I contacted my isp which is Smart (LLU) I contacted them in the afternoon and much to my surprise there was an Eircom tech at the door the next morning and the fault was fixed pretty sharpish.

I got in contact with Smart again to thank the csr concerned as to be honest I didnt even expect Smart to get onto it until the next day. He told me that there had been a big improvement in Eircom's response times due to agreements on service levels and so on being put in place.

While I don't for one minute doubt that Eircom can contribute to delays I also think that it is easy for other isps to blame everything on Eircom too.

Irrespective of that factor good communications systems seem essential between the isps and the Eircom wholesale wing and that does not appear to be always the case.

vibe666

jor el wrote: »

Yeah, you can't contact eircom at all about this. Even if you could, they won't do anything about broadband problems, only voice. Since you have a noise on the phone line, you should contact Voda and ask them to log a call with eircom because of the voice noise issue. This is the only way to get eircom to do anything about a line.

yeah, it's a good idea to stick with the voice noise rather than the broadband, you'll get a much better response generally. the rules on providing decent call quality are much more in the customers favour than the broadband ones.

blastman

Just an update on this:

I contacted Vodafone and reported this as a voice line issue. THey said they would report it to eircom on my behalf which they duly did. To be fair to eircom, they showed up a couple of days later and traced the fault (it was outside the house after all), although the eircom guy said he would have to come back to fix it as it was a two-man job. He turned up the folllowing day and duly fixed the issue, and I now have a clear phone line for the first time this century, probably. All told it took three working days to resolve, which is fair enough and kudos to all involved.

However (you knew it was coming, right?), I still cannot connect to the internet!! On my Belkin modem/router, all the lights come on, but the Internet light which indicates connection to the internet blinks blue as if it is connecting, but after a minute or two starts to flash orange and that's it, no internet connection.

If anyone has had a similar issue or any other suggestions as to what is causing this, I'd be grateful, before I lose my reason altogether!

watty

Try an non Belkin modem to rule out Modem issue? Make sure user name, password and other parameters are OK.

matt-dublin

is that the original modem you recieved from vodafone?

try plugging it into the first phone port in the house, it could be an internal cabelling issue and eircom will only support upto the main entry box into the house, after that you're looking at an electrician.

If you plug a phone into the line where the broadband box is does the line sound crackely when you pick up the reciever?

blastman

I never received a modem from Vodafone as I became their customer by default.

Have tried two different modem/routers and a USB modem, and the line is no longer crackly thanks to eircom (although I could actually connect to broadband even when it was, at least up until two weeks ago). Tried all phone sockets, nothing else connected, all that.

lucernarian

Make sure you follow this up with Vodafone so the fault's not marked as "resolved". Would you have any idea how far you are from your exchange? With the repairs eircom made, did you try to plug in the modem with all extensions etc disconnected and the modem plugged into the socket nearest the line coming into the house? It's usually in the hall.

dub45

blastman wrote: »

I never received a modem from Vodafone as I became their customer by default.

Have tried two different modem/routers and a USB modem, and the line is no longer crackly thanks to eircom (although I could actually connect to broadband even when it was, at least up until two weeks ago). Tried all phone sockets, nothing else connected, all that.

Have you confirmed with Vodafone that the dsl signal is still on the line? (just in case the Eircom guys did anything in the exchange for example) Also confirm the password and sign on with Vodafone just in case....

blastman

Another update in case this helps anyone else.

I finally got to the bottom of this over the weekend. It appears Vodafone switched off the login that I've always used, as I can no longer log in using it, but if I change to the default vodafone:broadband login, I can. However, they very kindly neglected to pass this information on to me (even during two support calls to them), and in the ensuing attempts to get to the bottom of it, the Windows installation on my main PC has become so flaky I'm looking at a re-install to resolve it.

So, in summary, my broadband is back and working reliably. However, my main PC cannot connect to the DHCP server in the router, so I have no connectivity on this smachine (wired connection). I ran through the Services on it yesterday and compared them to the Services on my laptop (which is working fine wired or wireless). Only a couple of the Services that are on both had different settings, but when I changed them, the main PC did work and connected to the internet, however on the next reboot it was gone again.

At the moment, I'm assigning it the IP address the router normally gave it manually, and I can ping the router. But there's still no connection to the internet. Interestingly, though, uTorrent is working, so obviously it was able to tunnel its own connection through the router. The rest of it I'm ready to pitch out the window....