one cordless phone can disconnect the line?

I have one corded phone and three cordless phones in the house. Recently there is a high frequency of the call getting terminated in the middle of a call, followed by no dial tone for a period of time (30 minutes to 2 hours). When I talked to the phone company about it, they told me this is usually due to the fact that one of the cell phones have broken, and will cause the entire line to drop, even cause the no dial tone problem. She recommended that I disconnect all wireless phone and only use the corded one for a while, and then introduce the wireless phone back in one at a time until I can figure out which one is bad.

Is this true? I have never heard of this before. Anyone?

O
Reply to
orangetrader
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Absolutely true. Been there, done that.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

I totally concur. I used to work for "the phone company" and that was the advice we gave (successfully) to customers. What most people forget is that cordless phones have batteries that eventually wear out and don't hold a charge like they did when they were new. Essentially, the no dial tone situation is caused by a short (of sorts) in one of the phones. Eliminate the problem phone and eliminate the problem.

Reply to
LFR

Just an add-on question. Is it possible that a neighbors cordless phone could cause this?

Thanks,

Wayne

Reply to
NoOne N Particular

Today, no. Unless he is on the same frequency, but that has pretty much been eliminated with modern technology.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

I agree. All the phones are connected to the same telephone line. If any of the phones go faulty, or depending on the type/model the rechargeable batteries in the cordless hand sets wear out, or external sources of electrical interference misoperate one or more of the cordless phones it can 'tie up' the telephone line. The situation is much the same as if you had a tenant using a phone connected to your line and they kept knocking it off hook or deliberately left the handset off! BTW if they were 'cheap phones' it may be better to chuck them out rather than run the risk of not having service when essential/vital. See PS below.

Couple of semi technical points.

1) House phones that do not have the handset wired to the phone unit are often referred to as 'Cordless' or 'Wire free', although they have be placed back on the unit to recharge. 2) The term 'cell phone' (also called mobiles in some countries outside North America) generally refers to a portable phone that is connected via radio towers; has nothing to do with the telephone service coming to ones house by means of wires. Although the services can be coordinated or packaged into one bill; it is a completely different technology. 3) The term 'wireless', which was the original name for any communications through the ether and which for a long time was referred to as 'radio' has come back in use once again, although more in connection with computer devices that can connect, to the internet via a 'wireless hub' in a building or home. So while it is correct to say some of your cordless phones are connected 'wirelessly' it is not the same technology as connecting say, your PC, via a wireless connection to your internet service.

As an example my neighbour has had several phone problems and depends on his phone for contract work. A number of times I have gone over and found out for him whether the trouble was inside his house or outside. Twice it was bad line outside; couple of times it was HIS equipment. The first two were repaired by the phoneco. But if he'd called them and they had determined it was his faulty phone/fax/announcement unit they would have charged him $45 per hour and sales tax. And it wouldn't be their responsibility to fix the phone/fax because it was not provided by them! This is the risk you take when you add other gear; same as if your fridge is faulty? Once you have decided the power is Ok you don't call the powerco to fix your fridge! You either fix it yourself or call a refrigeration/electrical repair person. Same thing with phones!

Hope these comments help. Good luck.

PS. A most serious case of using poor quality phones involved a community volunteer fire captain. His sons obtained some cheap phones and plugged them in to the family line; whereupon he could not receive any calls and missed several fire callouts. Telephone company investigation found the problem and once the cheap phones, even though they appeared to make outgoing calls OK, and sometimes would or would not ring on incoming calls, were removed telephone service returned to normal. Also anything using radio/wireless and attached to a telephone line is likely to be that more sensitive to misoperation; so the moral is 'check your own telephone equipment first'!

Reply to
Terry

Only if your neighbor is answering your calls.

Bill

Reply to
berkshire bill

Agree: But it DID happen here several times with older/simpler/cheaper type cordless phones. In particular; one customer was complaining "Never made those LD calls!" and berated the telephone company for false billing! Then the question was how did customer ABC on street 1 get billed for calls made by customer XYZ on street 2? Problem was finally resolved by calling the LD party and asking "WHO called you"! Then it was found that both customers had independently purchased cordless phones! Two houses somewhat back to back, on different streets bought cordless phones; just by chance the two had identical (and in those days, fixed) 'channel' settings. The whole thing took some time for the telephone company, who weren't really involved, to resolve. I suspect in this era now of greater competition, where the telephone companies no longer have a monopoly on providing service, the local telephone company would be much less inclined to spend time on resolving such a complaint. These days there are so many devices that customers can buy and just plug in to an existing telephone line there are bound to be problems. In fact modern telephone equipment is arranged to 'time out' and disconnect service so that faulty customer equipment does not affect service to other customers. This is what happened to my neighbour and possibly the original poster of this thread?

Reply to
Terry

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