Telekom support is exemplary

I didn’t have time for troubleshooting at first. The reconnecting occurred more than ten times a day, but it was so quick that we mostly didn’t notice it. But someone who did notice: Deutsche Telekom. Three days after the problems started, I received a text message. Deutsche Telekom had determined that we had a problem with our connection. They wanted to help us, and we should call the hotline.

To be honest, this positively surprised me: proactive communication with the customer when they’re having problems, where else do you get that?
However, the timing was unfortunate: three days later we went on vacation, and I didn’t want to go to Italy with half-finished troubleshooting. So I ignored the text and spent the next three weeks on the beach.

The problem didn’t magically disappear

Three weeks later, I was curious. Maybe it was an external problem and it was solved? Unfortunately, it wasn’t. On the contrary, the problem had even worsened and was now getting annoying. I was kicked out of meetings during home office, GeForce Now was interrupted, VoIP was interrupted, and so on.

I had mentally prepared myself for the phone call with Telekom. But first, I thought about where the problem might be coming from. I quickly made the connection to the relocation of the FRITZ!Box. It seemed likely that something wasn’t working properly. First, I checked the router’s temperatures. Maybe it’s not getting enough air on top of the cabinet? No, that wasn’t it.

But the cable from the phone jack to the router was now hanging in the air instead of lying quite relaxed behind the TV cabinet. The router was five meters from the phone jack – this corresponded to the maximum cable length.

A shot in the dark that hit the mark

The cable is already old and came with the router. My suspicion now was that the cable quality isn’t particularly high and accordingly doesn’t react well to hanging taut in the air.

So before having a Telekom technician come, I thought it was worth a try. I quickly ordered a longer cable on Amazon and made sure the quality was right. Instead of a cheap wire, I chose a cable made of pure copper. It was ten meters long, twice as long as before.

What can I say? The cable was delivered, I replaced the old one with the new one and restarted the connection. Since then, there hasn’t been a single connection drop. Sometimes it’s just down to a cheap old cable. Even though they all look the same from the outside, a proper cable can make a significant difference. And it can save you the phone call with Deutsche Telekom.