Fri 4 Apr 2008
Why doesn’t my telephone ring? And yes, people are phoning it!
Posted by Craig under General with the tags annoying • BT • house • telephonesThis week I am mostly hating telephones.
In the new house, we took out all the internal phone wiring as the sockets were all in weird places (why would you want a phone in a cupboard?) and also the wiring was pretty old and dodgy looking.
Now that the hallway is all plastered I thought it time to run some new cables which could be hidden under floors and behind the walls. Now this cabling is brand new, and all the sockets are brand new, yet it doesn’t work.
How frustrating!
The phones we had bought were the iDect X3 cordless model, so at first I blamed the phone, however they work in another house. Swapping them with phones from the other house didn’t work either - the other, older phones don’t work in our house either!
The symptoms are thus - the phone dials out fine, but any incoming calls don’t ring. If I phone the house from my mobile then although the house phone doesn’t make any noise, if I pick it up then the call connects - so that means the actual line should be okay, there’s just some other reason for why it’s not ringing and I can’t think what it is!
What is the real kick in the teeth is that a normal, corded, phone does ring so obviously it’s just that the house and it’s wiring doesn’t like cordless phones - which is pretty annoying!
I think quite logically and I think I’ve tried almost every combination I can think of.
All of the above has taken place at the test plug on the master socket where the wires come into the house so obviously it’s not the internal wiring that’s at fault as it’s not connected. But because a corded phone works there, it would appear the outside wiring up as far as the master socket works.
Is there some sort of physical difference between a corded and cordless phone - apart from the cord obviously! Does a cordless require a higher voltage or something? Perhaps the line is faulty, but is strong enough for a corded phone?
If it hadn’t been for the fact that the corded phone worked, I would have called BT in but I have a feeling that if I do they will just blame the cordless phones and leave having charged me a fortune for their time.
So far my usual saviour, the internet, has let me down on finding a solution for this one - but for now it’s off back to Google…
September 24th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
did you get any joy with this as i have exactly the same problem ?
September 25th, 2008 at 10:00 am
@db: I did eventually - having checked, double checked and triple checked all I had done in the house I contacted BT who sent someone to look into it. I wasn’t in but they said there was a fault at the connection where the line entered the house so all should be okay now, but when I checked later it was just the same so they sent someone else who then found a broken wire outside the property - but again this didn’t remedy things! Eventually they tried yet again and went through a load of tests with me on the phone, only to admit there was a fault in the exchange - thankfully all working now, and as it was a problem at their end then there was no charge.
I would suggest ensuring it’s nothing you’ve done inside the house - try different phones etc, and then keep pestering BT unil they sort it out. If they really did sort something every time they say they did then there were at least 3 faults between the exchange and our house so their system must be in a bit of a state!
Good luck