Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[hake]

I can find no exactly appropriate forum in which to air this problem so I placed it here.

I dial a number and either one of two things happens: -
1. The ringing tone and answering voice is distorted (fuzzy buzzy).
2. The ringing tone and answering voice is clear.

N.B. The dial tone always sounds undistorted.

Received calls can also be affected.

No distorted sound is heard at the other end of a phone conversation.

The following observations are always the same: -
1. ADSL connection is fast and reliable with minimal uncorrectable errors.
2. BT OpenReach line tests show no fault.
3. Quiet line test (17070) is absolutely quiet, even when the received sound is being distorted.
4. BT engineer has tested my house telephone and wiring installation and found no errors.
5. Once a call is commenced, no change of received sound quality happens for the duration of the call.

What has not been tested to the best of my knowledge is what goes on in the exchange.

To witness the problem needs a little patience.  You might make a call (or receive one) and the problem is there.  A few minutes later you make or receive another call and it has cleared.  You never know when it will happen.  I haven’t been able to discover a pattern.

If anyone has any ideas, I would be delighted to know of them.

[asbokid]

Sounds like a fault with equipment in the exchange rather than a subscriber line fault.  These days, voiceband services tend to be digitised, packetised and multiplexed at the exchange, for transmission with other types of traffic over fibre in "ATM cells" (the SONET/SDH backbone).  This is essentially VoIP at the network level.  The nature of the voiceband fault - the kind of noise corruption you are experiencing - could reveal its cause, and the equipment actually causing the fault.   It would be a surprise if other POTS (plain ol' telephone') subscribers served by the same equipment aren't suffering the same problems.

cheers,

[hake]

Thanks asbokid.  You are far more knowledgeable than me.  I reasoned that the incidence of the problem suggested a fault in pooled resources at the exchange.  These pooled resources would be allocated by the exchange as required, i.e. on setting up a connection, I guess.  It happens randomly.

Any forum members POTS subcribers on the Gatley (0161428) exchange?

[burakkucat]

No, sorry, is my answer to your last question. 

My suggestion. Do you have the means to record every call made / received until such time as you have sufficient evidence to play back to a representative of the Evil Empire of Newgate Street?

[hake]

Thanks burakkucat.  I know of no means by which I can record such evidence.  Anyhow, the problem incidence seems to be much reduced today.

I would have expected the clever people at BT to have developed self-checking systems but guess that low level components like Digital to Analogue Convertors might fall outside the scope.

Some years ago I had a very expensive CD player with dual DACs. The right channel sound was clear but the left channel sound became broken and fuzzy. Replacing the left channel DAC solved the problem. I don't know what my telephony problem is but I could guess that there is a faulty electronic component on a circuit board which is in a pool of circuit boards from which one is allocated to each line when a call connection is made.

[Jonnyteg]

I have seen this before on premises that have an alarm connected which was the culprit If you have no alarm connected to the circuit then ignore but sometimes the alarm guys terminate onto the back of the nte rather than running as a extension.

[hake]

The problem ceased about six days ago.  Nothing has been said by BT or PlusNet support but I would not be surprised if PlusNet support has had a word with BT and someone diligent has tracked down the problem and fixed it.

 

[burakkucat]

Good to read    and annoying 

You could have so easily been provided with an explanation. 

[kitz]

Glad to hear that the problem has ceased, even if you havent had an explanation.