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[sheddyian]

This problem has now gone away, but I wondered if anyone here might have an opinion on what on earth was going on.

Yesterday, I called a friend.  When she answered, I could hear her, but she couldn't hear me.

I hung up and redialled.

Same problem - I can't be heard.

I dial her mobile phone.

She can hear me clearly, and I can hear her.  I explain the problem, and decide to try her land line again.

I call landline, and once more, she can't hear me but I can hear her.

She calls me back from landline.  We can both hear each other!

I call her back, she answers on a different handset, and can now hear me.  I hold line while she puts phone down and picks up the original handset.  She can hear me on that too.

We both hang up, and I redial.

She answers on original handset, and once more can't hear me.

Later on the problem goes away and hasn't come back.

Handsets at her end both wired in.  Mine is cordless, hasn't given any other problems.

This has happened 2 or 3 times to us over the last few years, but only ever just the once - if I dialled back it was all ok.  This went on a lot longer.

As far as I know she's had no other problems with the telephone or service.

Any thoughts?

[burakkucat]

Most peculiar. 

I am having difficulty in rationalising that entire scenario . . . 

I wonder if it 'rings a bell' with Black Sheep?

[ColinS]

Ian,

You haven't said where your friend is (even if she is in this country!), but the symptoms are reminiscent of 'one way trasmission'.  In time past, long distance circuits were split, for transmission purposes, into 4-wire trunks.  One pair used for send, the other for receive.  It was then possible for a fault to develop on one leg of the circuit.  And if, for example, the route was little used, and the circuit was one of the first on that route, then it was perfectly possible for the same trunk to be selected each time.
It does't work like that now, but I guess it must be possible even digitally, for one leg of the transmission path to be faulty as they will be (re)generated as different streams.

[sheddyian]

You haven't said where your friend is (even if she is in this country!)

Ah, if it were that exotic, I'd have mentioned it!

I'm in the South East, and my friend is in London.  Barely 50 miles distance.

In past times, it would have qualified as "long distance over low cost routes"[1]

Ian

[1] I think that's what it used to be called.  More expensive than a local call, but a bit cheaper than a long distance call.  I assume this was Post Office/BT implementing a cost structure based on modern digital multipexing or early use of fibre?  A quick Google on this is unhelpful.

[renluop]

As a kid I lived 15 miles out of London, Harold Wood in Essex. In the old days of Button A/B such calls were "toll" and longer distance ones "trunk", and one had to use the operator.

[ColinS]

I think that's what it used to be called.

I can't recall what it was called for customer purposes, but (depending on when we are speaking about) it would probably have been what was called 'an adjacent charge group' call.  When STD was introduced the country was divided into a set of local charge groups served by (one or more) Group Switching Centres.  Calls within a single charge group were charged as local calls; calls to adjacent charge groups were charged in the way you refer to; and calls between all other charge groups (i.e. non-adjacent) were STD calls within the UK.

If I recall correctly! 

[ColinS]

As a kid I lived 15 miles out of London, Harold Wood in Essex. In the old days of Button A/B such calls were "toll" and longer distance ones "trunk", and one had to use the operator.

Spot on, pre-STD.

[kitz]

Whilst not able to give you an answer, and Im not sure if the problem is at your end or your friends..  I wonder if this could in someway be related to your REIN issue?

The only reason I mention is that a couple of times in the past few weeks when my daughter has rang me part way through the convo we stop being able to hear each other and she has to redial.  Because she was on her mobile, we just put it down to the mobile network. 
However, when Plusnet rang me the other day there were several times when I could hear him fine, yet he couldnt hear me.

[sheddyian]

Whilst not able to give you an answer, and Im not sure if the problem is at your end or your friends..  I wonder if this could in someway be related to your REIN issue?

Unfortunately, I'd stopped running Routerstats last week and haven't restarted it, so I can't see if anything unusual happened to the ADSL at the time 

Phone has been fine since!

Ian