I am facing a baffling problem. I have a corded and a cordless phone
hooked in my apartment along with AT&T DSL internet on the same phone
line.
Few days back my 900Mhz Uniden cordless phone stopped ringing whenever
there used to be incoming call. My corded phone continue to ring and I
could even use either phones to answer the calls. There was no problem
for outging calls also from either phones. Some times for incoming
calls the corded phone use to ring only once and gets directly
connected. I picked any of the phones I could answer the call.
I thought it could be a problem with the Uniden phone and purchased a
2.4Ghz GE phone. It also behaved exactly the same way. Both the
cordless phones have answering system, which is also not working. I
checked GE and Uniden cordless phones at my friends place along with
all the DSL filters. Surprisingly the phones and answering system
worked just fine.
Now I felt the problem is with my telephone service / Line. I got it
checked from At&T and they informed me the line is ok. He mentioned it
could be due to "Interference" with wireless network. I tried using
the phones without DSL and without wireless routers. Things did not
change. Now I am wondering if wireless networks in my apartment
vicinity (there are several of them) are interfering with my cordless
system? Can any body explain the phenomenon and the way to solve it?
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The first thing which came to mind was
not that there was 'interference'. If there was 'interference', you
would occassionally hear 'static' or something similar on the line
when you were using it. Also, you would probably receive spurious
ringing (no rhyme nor reason to it; just occassional tingles from the
ring-making device on the cordless phone) when the 'interference'
bothered the cordless unit. Before you go around polling your
neighbors to see about their cordless phones and wireless apparatus,
I would first go by the clues you gave in your first paragraph:
(1) You recently got AT&T DSL service. and (2) the cordless phone
only rang _once_ and was directly connected. That 'one ring and then
connected' sort of sounds ot me like a short on the line. Not enough
of a short to make your line totally busy but enough of a short that
with sufficient ringing voltage (as oppposed to voltage to talk with)
something is happening.
I'd try unplugging all the phones and the DSL incoming line. Then do
a controlled test where you place a call to yourself (maybe from a
cell phone?) with _only_ the wireless phone plugged in where you
normally have the wired phone plugged in. See if your wireless phone
and its answering machine now start working, or see if you can make
the cordless phone 'ring once' and then be connected. If it does work
okay at that point, then the hassle is in the wiring of one or more of
your phone outlets. I suggest that in most cases with wireless phones
and answering machines, only two wires are used; for simplicity, the
red and the green. But sometimes, on cordless phones and answering
machines the outside pair (yellow and black wires number 1 and 4) are
also used. Is your answering machine set up to cut off whenever a
phone is picked up? If that is the case, then sometimes the
yelllow/black wires 1 & 4 are 'jumpered' to green and red (wires 2 &
3) inside the phone somehow or _maybe_ in the wall box. After you do
these litle experiments I suggested, get back to us here and
_carefully_ document what happened. PAT]
sanjay.gaikwad@gmail.com