We live mildly in the sticks, on the top of a hill, quite a way from the nearest FTTC cabinet, and on a good day our broadband will get about 13MegaInternets, averages about 10-11.

The last, I dunno, probably half mile or more of the incoming phone cable is suspended on telegraph poles, and obviously gets blown about a bit in bad weather (did I mention we live on the top of a hill?). It feels like the broadband gets worse at these times, but speed-checks come out about normal, but it ‘feels’ a bit more ‘droppy’, especially on Teams calls etc.

Is it the weather, or am I imagining it?

Yes, it’s entirely plausible if you’re on copper. Over the years humidity and water ingress into the various connections causes all sorts of noise and problems. There’s a BT cover outside our house that used to give us our phone line and it would fill up with water in heavy rain. The humidity in the connection box was such that dampness caused electrical noise in the connection. This was explained to me by the engineer, he said that much of his job was dealing with that kind of thing. If you’re on a wire, then if it swings in the wind it could very easily be causing cable damage, and the connections could be damp too. Just like when the cable starts to break in your headphones and you hear that crackling sound when you move it.

I *think* mine is worse in bad weather too… but I’ve not got as far as testing it. My assumption (since my cables are not swinging from poles) is:

1. In bad weather more people are inside doing indoor stuff – so its a “contention” issue rather than a connection issue. That’s true just within my own house, so multiply by all the neighbours.
2. In bad weather the 4G signal is definitely worse, so more people reverting to ADSL – adding to 1.

It’s a thing. We had the same. Similar local we would get 2-3 meg and frequent drop outs.

Overhead lines for about 4 miles was the issue.

When they moved the fibre cabinet to 300m away and replaced all the poles + line our internet become 100% more reliable in wet and more specifically the wind. Now we get 20-25meg and no drop outs.

This happened in Feb 2020…… Which was lucky as working from home would have been impossible before.

Yes.

Our phone line has a significant amount of foliage nearby, so continually gets tugged and stretched.

Openreach do exactly as much as you would expect, to prevent anything going wrong.

yes, I’ve just gone FTTP as the copper phone wire was toast and internet would drop out for 5 mins start of any rain spell. Not ideal for WFH

Ah, right, so it’s not my imagination then.

Over the years humidity and water ingress into the various connections causes all sorts of noise and problems.

To be fair, the telephone cabling at the property is a right bloody dog’s dinner, with numerous extra connections and an external bell that isn’t used any more but may or may not have been disconnected properly. I’m not actually sure which one is the ‘main’ socket, as the previous owners left ADSL filter wotsits in at least two of them.

It may be worth reporting it as a fault. But,

To be fair, the telephone cabling at the property is a right bloody dog’s dinner

… you need to sort that out before doing anything else. We can go through it if you like?

I’m not actually sure which one is the ‘main’ socket, as the previous owners left ADSL filter wotsits in at least two of them.

Typically ALL sockets require a microfilter, not just the master.

We installed a microwave link as backup for an O2 cell site whose BT fibre backhaul went down every time it rained (central London). A junction box somewhere in BT’s network was filling with water and the slowly drying out….

100%. I dread the first storms of winter. Almost always lose the internet to some degree. This year after the first heavy showers of autumn our phone dropped out completely. Considering we are 20 miles from the nearest A7E and have no mobile signal for 4 miles, this is not ideal when working outside in a pretty dangerous environment. It only took Openreach 5 days to come and fix the line (they were a day earlier than they predicted to be fair to them!!). Turns out the squirrels had eaten the outer ore from the wires where they run through trees at the end of the farm track and the water had then tracked down the copper cores and rusted them out.

To be fair, the telephone cabling at the property is a right bloody dog’s dinner

Look for where the line comes into to the house, disconnect everything but that socket. When the Openreach guy comes round be nice, offer tea and biscuits and see if they’re replace the master socket with a nice new one. They also replaced the drop cable outside.

Or you can pay Openreach to replace / move it for about £150.

Well, I’ve just been outside and had a look, and it turns out the phone cable is actually underground until it gets to the just outside the property, at which point it whizzes up the telegraph pole (I new we had a pole there, I assumed there was one down the road as well) and then splits out to us and our neighbours. So it’s only that section in the wind, maybe 50/60 feet’s worth, but it’s still pretty windy. It does seem to be rain more than wind that affects it, and I am in an annexe on a WiFi link, could it be the rain (and especially windy rain) making it harder for the WiFi fairies to fly across the yard?

Look for where the line comes into to the house, disconnect everything but that socket.

Yeah, I’ll do this, we don’t even have a phone plugged in anywhere anyway.

Would bad weather make our broadband crap(per)?

Yes, if it’s exposed then it is susceptible to weather. Rain can also affect outdoor WiFi links so might be worth running an ethernet cable to the annexe instead (if possible).

Anything with white copper (aka aluminium) cabling is especially susceptible to corrosion and poor connections. The problem can be in any of the leaky underground chambers between you and the exchange/cabinet. Work have one here that fills up every time the river level gets high at the mill and the speed dips from 9Mbs to around 4Mbs.