Unbreakable Dialtone
David Singer
In article <16...@accuvax.nwu.edu> pallas!kabr...@uunet.uu.net (Ken
Abrams) writes:
>You provide a fairly complete picture of the symptoms. It is HIGHLY
>likely that GTE has a defective DTMF receiver in your CO. They are
>probably getting a few other similar complaints but haven't seen a
>pattern yet. I would suggest that they have a reversed link in the
>switch but most modems don't depend on the line polarity to make the
>tones. This kind of a problem is difficult to find but not
>impossible. It takes a little time for them to test all the receivers
>but usually takes longer to convince them that they need to do it!
>All of the above only applies if your CO is of the analog variety. If
>it is a digital switch, all bets are off.
I just called GTE and they confirmed that I'm on a digital CO (GTD-5).
(I'm actually impressed -- the Business Office got me that information
without asking why I needed to know!)
I should have mentioned in my first posting that my equipment always
generates tones when I push the buttons (or ask the modem to dial),
and that they sound good to my ears.
David Singer -- Internet: sin...@ibm.com BITNET: SINGER at ALMADEN
Voice: (408) 927-2509 Fax: (408) 927-4073
(amusing disclaimer du jour goes here)
Dave Levenson
In article <16...@accuvax.nwu.edu>, SIN...@ibm.com (David Singer) writes:
> Once in a while (maybe one call out of ten), pressing the keypad on my
> phone (or sending DTMF from my modem) won't break the dialtone. If I
> hang up and retry, it will almost always work. This happens on both
> my lines, using various instruments.
Perhaps your central office has one or two bad touch-tone receivers.
When I lived in Summit, NJ, we had an old 5-crossbar central office
until about 1980 or so (201-273, but now it's 908-273). We had
touchtone service, bought and paid for, on both lines, but on about
one call in 30 or so we'd get a dial tone which did not react to tone
dialing. When I reported this to 611 repair service, they told me it
was my instrument. When I mentioned it to a NJ Bell craftsperson
familiar with the Summit CO, he remarked that there were 29
originating registers in the office ... and that usually one or more
were out for maintenance. He thought that perhaps the
class-of-service register within one of those registers had a dirty
relay contact or something, which caused it to fail to latch up the
fact that we had touchtone service.
Dave Levenson Internet: da...@westmark.com
Westmark, Inc. UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave
Warren, NJ, USA AT&T Mail: !westmark!dave
Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857
Douglas Scott Reuben
I've had that problem on my 5XBar as well. All customers get tone,
whether they pay or not. I've never known the telco to go after people
or turn off tone on this exchange even if they don't pay for it.
Anyhow, I normally don't have trouble dialing with Touch Tone, but
once in a while, especially after I just hung up on another call, when
I try to dial with tone, I can't seem to GENERATE the tones.
For example, it seems like at times (maybe 5% all calls), the exchange
reverses polarity, and all my old "Bell System" phones won't generate
a tone. If, however, I pick up a Panasonic phone (at the same time),
the Panasonic has no trouble generating the tone, and the exchange
responds by breaking the dial tone.
I'm not sure if this was the nature of the problem that was posted. It
may have been that the phone COULD generate tones, but that the
exchange just didn't respond, which would not be the same thing as the
problem that I have described.
Doug
dre...@eagle.wesleyan.edu // dre...@wesleyan.bitnet
Joe Talbot
This is a really annoying one to get repaired! First, GTE ALWAYS
"clears" trouble reports quickly. The company's performance is based
on trouble reports being "cleared", NOT necessarily solving the
problem reported. Often people will just give up. When you report a
problem, you'll find that it is almost always "cleared" within and
hour, and WITHOUT anybody calling you back to tell you about it.
Intermittant problems such as bad trunks, bad DTMF receivers and
switch bugs are almost impossible to get fixed unless you are
persistant and somtimes nasty. Always keep a log of who you spoke
with, at what number and when. Always let the GTE person you are
speaking with (usually a clerk with no telcom knowledge or interest
and NO power to get anything done) know that you are keeping a log and
that if this problem isn't solved, it WILL come back to haunt THEM.
I hate to sound so down on them, but GTE runs its telephone operations
like a water or gas utility, or a governament bureau. To them, you're
just a number.
Joe Talbot Voice Mail 011-813-222-8429
[Moderator's Note: About twenty years ago I had a case where many
calls I made in the middle of the night were getting hung up in some
bad equipment in the Chicago-Hyde Park CO. No one in repair wanted to
listen to me. One night I got the troubled equipment so I kept it on
hold on my first line and called Night Plant on my second line and
asked him to go in the frames and find me; in doing so he'd find the
pathology and either fix it or busy it out. He went in and found it.
The next day the foreman called me and thanked me, saying "I've been
looking for that booger for a couple days now!" :) PAT]