crackling on land line
 

Hi all

Over the last few days I have recently developed a variable crackling on my landline telephones which when bad drowns out conversation and disables my broadband.

The landline comes in upstairs and is connected to the ground floor by a very old and largely inaccessible cable. Downstairs I have 2 sockets with a number of devices attached via splitters including a broadband hub.

The upstairs phone where the landline comes in has no crackle. Here's the crazy bit: when I pick up the upstairs phone, the crackle on all other phones immediately disappears, and broadband comes back to life.

I have disconnected every device upstairs and down (except the sockets themselves) and whichever splitter and phone I plug in downstairs the crackle is there.

This must make sense to an expert. It makes no sense to me!

Any advice would be gratefully received. Best wishes

Stephen

Re: crackling on land line
 

Are you an ADSL (National) customer?

Sounds like faulty extension sockets/cables causing the issue of crackling on the line. There must be some damage somewhere. you'll need to locate where the damage is exactly before you can do anything.

:welcome: to the forum too :waving:

Re: crackling on land line
 

Thanks for the welcome.

I had suspected that faulty sockets/cables might be causing the problem. Thank you for confirming that.

I just thought that this bizarre and completely reproducible behaviour - abolishing the crackle by lifting the upstairs phone - might give a clue as to the cause, before I start ripping out all the sockets.