Internet technician in the Eastern Suburbs, for units, old buildings and the frame downstairs.

Sound familiar?

In an Eastern Suburbs unit, and everyone says the fault is someone else’s?

The building says it's the provider. The provider says it's the building. Meanwhile nothing in the unit works.

We're independent of both, and of NBN. We test at your socket and at the building's frame, then put in writing which stretch of the line has failed and who owns it.

1. Plug a laptop straight into the router with a cable. Run a speed test while the problem is happening. Fast on the cable and slow on wifi: it is the wifi, and the WiFi Technician page is the one you want. Slow, or dropping out, on the cable too: keep reading, it is the connection.
2. Look at the lights on the box on the wall. The NBN box, sometimes called the NTD, tells you which part of the connection is alive. Only the power light on is not a wiring problem in the house. What the lights on the NBN box mean explains each one.
3. Reset the box and the router properly, once. Hold the reset on the box until every light flashes, then let it come back. Router off for thirty seconds, then on; if it was ever factory reset, it needs its settings put back before it will connect.
4. Ask next door. If the neighbours are down too, it is the street, not your house, and nothing inside will fix it. Ring your provider and wait for them.
5. If your provider says it is your wiring, ask for that in writing. Then ring us. If our testing shows the fault is not in your house, the full escalation report is what you send them.
6. In a unit, ask your provider for your cable pair details first. They save an hour at the MDF, the frame in the basement where the street cables meet the building’s, and they tell us which pair is yours.
7. If an NBN technician is already booked, let them come first. They test to the boundary at no charge. If they say it is not theirs, that is when to book us.

Recognise it?

No service, drop-outs, a silent phone: Eastern Suburbs faults as you’ll see them

The usual suspects

What goes wrong in Eastern Suburbs units and houses

More of our calls here come from units than from houses. In a unit the line runs through a frame in the basement and up the building, and three parties each own a piece of it.

• The jumper at the frame.

  Your pair joined to the wrong terminals downstairs, or never joined at all.

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  Eleven Eastern Suburbs enquiries were frame jobs, and units outnumber houses in our records, 50 to 47. A jumper wire links the network’s pair to the pair running up to your unit. Missing, loose or on the wrong terminals, it leaves the unit dead while everything tests fine at the street. It’s found and moved at the frame.

• The run up the building.

  The pair between the frame and your unit, broken somewhere in the risers or the walls.

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  Past the frame, the pair climbs the building to your socket, in a big block through a second frame on your floor. A break or a bad termination there is the building’s to repair, not the network’s. It’s traced from your socket down, and the faulty stretch is named in the report.

• The HFC wall box.

  On the cable network, the box outside where NBN's coax meets the house.

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  HFC is the biggest group of Eastern Suburbs connections we know, 23 of 70. The street’s coax finishes at a box and isolator outside, and a loose or corroded fitting there causes trouble that comes and goes. A reading at that box separates the street side from the house side.

• Old sockets on copper services.

  On fibre to the curb or the node, every old socket still connected drains the line.

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  Fibre to the curb and to the node make up 21 of the 70 known Eastern Suburbs connections, and both use copper inside. Extensions left from the landline days split the signal. They’re taken off the line, which then goes straight to the modem’s socket, as we expected to do in Bellevue Hill.

• The lead-in from the street.

  An overhead line to a pole, or an underground cable nobody can trace.

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  Thirty-five of the 196 Eastern Suburbs enquiries were about the lead-in, more than any other reason. Older houses here can still have an overhead cable to a pole, and a block can have a lead-in no plan shows. To the boundary it’s NBN’s; past it, it’s replaced.

• The phone line.

  A landline that has to work, on a modem port or a copper pair nobody has checked.

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  Phone lines are behind 32 Eastern Suburbs enquiries. Since the NBN, a landline is fed from the modem’s port, and the room sockets only carry it if they’re wired back. Noise on an older copper service gets traced back to the frame like any other fault.

• The modem.

  Plugged into the wrong port or wiped by a reset. Worth testing before you replace it.

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  Eleven of the Eastern Suburbs calls with a fault side recorded pointed at equipment. A laptop cabled straight to the NBN box settles whether the modem is the problem, and a modem that’s fine gets set up properly rather than thrown out.

• Building wiring for TV and lifts.

  TV points and lift phones run on the building's cabling, and fail with it.

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  TV cabling came up in 17 Eastern Suburbs enquiries and lift phones in 13. Both are building jobs, usually on cabling the building owns, and both are tested from the frame or the comms room rather than one apartment.

How it works

Socket, frame, street: an Eastern Suburbs visit in four steps

You leave with the answer in writing. Testing stops at the network boundary, because beyond it the network belongs to NBN and we work for you, not them. In an Eastern Suburbs block that boundary is the NBN side of the frame; in a house it’s the NBN box on fibre or HFC, or the first socket on copper.

1. 1
   

   Read the line at the boundary.

   In a block, at the network side of the frame; in a house, at the NBN box or the first socket. That reading says whether the service is arriving.

2. 2
   

   Find your pair.

   A tone from the socket in your unit, picked up at the frame, shows which pair is really yours and whether it's joined to the right terminals.

3. 3
   

   Follow it up the building.

   The run is tested frame to floor and floor to socket until the bad stretch shows. In a house, the sockets and leads are checked one at a time instead.

4. 4
   

   Mend it, or name the owner.

   What's ours to fix gets fixed on the visit if time allows. What isn't is written up with its owner's name on it.

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   A jumper moved, a socket re-terminated or a modem set up, during the visit where the first hour is enough; a new run is quoted. Where the fault is the building's or the network's, the report names the stretch and who owns it, and photos and video go into the full escalation report. We can't make anyone fix their side, but if you want us with you all the way, we do everything in our power to get you a result.

A real job from the field

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Bondi Junction, NSW · Copper pair through a building's frames · Filmed on site, 12 min

Months of drop-outs, and a vertical missing from the frame.

A medical practice on fibre to the building had lost its phones and internet on and off for months. Its pairs were on a block the level's frame didn't have, so a new line went in from the office to the main frame. A week later, no drop-outs.

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Bondi Junction, a medical practice on fibre to the building. For months the phones and internet had dropped out on and off. More than one technician had been, and NBN said the fault was not on its side.

The whole day was booked. Before anyone could reach a frame there was a site induction and a thirty-question questionnaire, about two hours, and the security staff didn’t know where the comms rooms were. A week earlier the practice had swapped the lead between the wall socket and the router and the drop-outs had stopped since, but they wanted the line checked anyway.

The building runs from a main frame downstairs to a frame on each level, in blocks of a hundred pairs, then into each office’s own small frame. A tone from the practice’s socket reached its level’s frame but didn’t show where it should at the main frame: the practice was on a vertical marked Y, and the level’s frame had no Y block at all. A spare pair on the X vertical, pair 83, was toned up to the level, and a new line was built from the office to the main frame. In the office’s own frame, the pair to the socket looked to have been pushed in with a screwdriver rather than punched down.

A follow-up call seven days later: no drop-outs, and the phones all working.