Advice needed on line fault

[John1012]

I have TOT landline adsl.

It currently runs very slowly, or not at all.

TOT have visited my home, and attached a meter to my telephone connection in my house.

The prognosis was that I had a fault on the line between the TOT external line and my modem and that I needed to have the internal line examined.

The last time I had a real problem there was a faulty connection between TOT extrnal line and line to house. I did not see the engineer checking this connection on the current visit, only the internal telephone jack.

If there is a hardware fault will there be a constant loss of service? I now have access to the internet. albeit at 1/4 of maximum speed. Sometimes this drops so low that connection is lost completely. How is this possible from a hardware fault? I do not understand the mechanics of this, can someone explain how this is possible.

[NeverSure]

Something as simple as a kinked line can interrupt the signal. So can electromagnetic interference such as passing too close to a fluorescent light fixture. Even with telephone wires you have pairs that are twisted at different rates to avoid cross talk. If they get kinked they are toast. There could be a lot of things.

There is an electronic tester that can be hooked to one end of the wires and it puts out a signal. Then the other part of the tester is taken to the other end where it reads the signal coming through the wire and gives a readout as to the strength and quality. That should have been done while the guy was there. If that's OK it should be tested from the pole to your house connection and even on into the house.

So yes, all of that is hardware.