No ring signal

[Roger Mills]

A couple of years ago, there was a thread - raised by Andrew Gabriel, I think - about a line with no ring signal.

Does anyone know how it got resolved, because I have exactly the same symptoms at my holiday flat.

I thought I had a problem before I came here because, when I tried to access my answer machine remotely, it just 'rang' without answering.

Now I'm here, I can confirm that it doesn't ring at all - although the caller hears ring tone.

If I do a ringback test, the phone detects that a call is coming in - and displays caller ID - but no ring. I've tried several phones - including one which tests ok on a neighbour's line - and none rings, even when plugged into the test socket on the master with nothing else connected.

I can make outgoing calls, and there's no noise on the line. ADSL on the line works perfectly - it's just ring that's missing.

I've reported it to BT, whose automated test doesn't show a fault. They could send an engineer, but that comes with warnings of a £99 charge if it turns out to be anything at my end.

I don't see how it *can* be anything that's my responsibility. Am I missing anything?

[The Natural Philosopher]

it COULD be an open circuit capacitor on your master socket.

put a meter or a scope on the line. It should show ~ 70VDC across teh incoming pair changing to a chopped 70vAC/DC on ring.

IF your master socket is still BT supplied, if that isn't generating a ring signal, that's their problem. If you have replaced it with a filtered face plate its yours.

[Brian Gaff]

I did hear of this a while back apparently a close by lightening storm had affected the master socket in some way and the symptoms are or were as you suggest. Brian

[Nightjar]

I've had them say that a couple of times, despite my telling them that the fault keeps happening, even after I have changed everything on my side of their master socket. They come along, find that there is no fault on my equipment and then go away and find the real fault.

Colin Bignell

[Paul D Smith]

...snip... We get something similar when someone leaves a phone off the hook. For a while it will warble, then go quiet, and then incoming calls don't ring, but the caller hears a ring.

If we pick up another extension (not the one off-hook) there is no dial-tone. Putting the phone down and picking up will either retrieve a dial-tone (if that phone was off hook) or nothing in which case we have to try the next phone.

Hard to "pick up the handset" if you're trying to do this remotely though :-(.

Paul DS

[Andrew Gabriel]

The friends never bothered to report the fault, and decided they didn't want incoming calls. Line was used mainly for ADSL, which included VOIP. They moved out after 18 months. BTW, you're not in a flat in Muswell Hill, are you? ;-)

Can you answer the incoming call by picking up at this point? They could, and by holding off answering it, we could tell it wasn't a ring-trip, as it only answered when you actually picked up the handset.

I measured the line and what happened during ringing was that the line voltage went to zero in the same pattern as the ring cadence, rather than the AC ring voltage being applied. You could imagine the line being switched to the ring voltage, but there was no ring voltage there.

That's also partly why they never got it fixed, and that they couldn't be bothered to stay in for BT to visit.

[The Other Mike]

If you don't have an external NTE

(assuming there are no BT supplied extension sockets) the separation of responsibility is at the internal NTE or master socket. Their responsibility for a BT / Openreach supplied faceplate was open to question last I saw. Personally I'd see it as the operators responsibility and as it is operator supplied then I think the courts would hold the same position.

But, if you have removed the lower faceplate and plugged it into the test socket, and you know the phone works elsewhere (try a few to be absolutely sure) then it can only be the fault of BT (unless you have a pet or human that pissed on the socket or have wired onto the line side of the NTE)

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Roger Mills writes

Ring tone is generated locally to the caller - it's completely unconnected to whether your phone is ringing or not.

As TNP says, it could be an open cct cap in the master socket. Try disconnecting all extension wiring, and plug a phone via an ADSL filter into the test socket behind the faceplate on the master.

Call it (e.g from a mobile). If it now rings, try it without the filter. If it now doesn't ring, that confirms there is a fault in the master socket and you can call Openreach out.

The ADSL filter contains a ring capacitor.

[Tim Lamb]

I make sure we have one handset rented from BT. If that doesn't work plugged in to the master socket, it has got to be worth getting them out.

Strangely several overhead line faults have turned out to be historical damage caused by air rifle pellets:-)

>

[The Other Mike]

Holy f*ck. At least £3.30 a quarter for a phone,

[The Natural Philosopher]

good grief. You can buy a whole phone for that on ebay.

[news.virginmedia.com]

Shirley the ring cap's in the master socket, otherwise the "rear" socket (behind the faceplate) wouldn't ring? I think the cap's in the DSL filter are there to block the DC line voltage (and possibly the ringing voltage, which is at 25Hz but a high voltage and not terribly good for the DSL signal).

But correct, if the internal cap' in the master's kaput, nothing will ring...

I have a "breakout" cable for this sort of thing, a 'phone lead with the cores taken to a piece of choccy-block, pins 2 and 5 are directly across the line (and should show upwards of 50V DC "on hook"), pin 3 to the "customer" side of the ring cap' - there should be a DC open circuit between 3 and 6, and ringing voltage of about 80V AC when rung. *IF* there's less than about

500 Ohms between 3 and 6 nothing will ring, because a phone's off the hook... Or thinks it is ("stuck switch-hooks")

Dave H. (the other one)

[dennis]

They Start from 48V DC at the exchange, not 70. (ISDN could be about 70V but then he wouldn't have any ADSL on it.)

changing to a chopped 70vAC/DC on ring.

That could be true but the AC in the exchange ringer is normally about twice that.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , news.virginmedia.com writes

Yes, it is, it presents ringing voltage on pin 3 (the ring wire). The line is across pins 2 and 5. In a typical installation pins 2, 5 and 3 are carried to all extension sockets, and ringing voltage on pin 3 is derived from the cap in the master socket.

However, a lot of people disconnect pin 3 at the master and just wire the 2/5 pair to extensions because the single ring wire acts as an antenna and picks up crap which degrades the ADSL signal.

The BT iPlate does the same thing - it adds some filtering but its main purpose is to disconnect pin 3. A nice little earner for BT.

Yes, they do, but there is also a ring capacitor to regenerate ringing voltage where it is not present on pin 3, because it's been disconnected at the master socket.

Not all phones *need* ringing voltage on pin 3 - they can detect it on the pair on pins 2 and 5.

That's why I suggested the OP try the test socket on the master with an ADSL filter - it has the cap in to generate ringing voltage. If his phone now rings it strongly suggests the cap in the back of the master socket is u/s, or is not actually a master socket.

[Man at B&Q]

All this "it doesn't ring but the caller hears a ring" reminds me of my late god mother, bless her, who couldn't understand why she still heard the same ring tone even though we had a trimphone installed.

MBQ

[Man at B&Q]

Is it? It certainly (or used to) vary with destination of the call.

MBQ

[Roger Mills]

My master socket *is* BT supplied - but not BT installed - I blagged it off an Openreach engineer who was here a while ago to fix an earlier fault, but never got round to fitting it until yesterday.

The previous master was the old type with the incoming pair and extension wiring kroned into the same IDC terminals. I fitted the new NTE5 to see whether it made any difference - but not one iota. At least now, I can confirm to BT that the problem is still there when using the test socket, with no extension wiring connected. I couldn't with the old socket, because I couldn't easily disconnect the extension wiring.

It would be a co-incidence if *both* the old and new master socket were duff - but not impossible. But I've also tried with and without ADSL filters - which should supply a ring signal on 3 even if the capacitor in the master doesn't work.

And I haven't got a filtered faceplate here (I have at my main home) but, as others have pointed out, it wouldn't make any difference because the capacitor is in the fixed bit - not in the faceplate.

[Denis McMahon]

Ring caps are a red herring on modern 2-wire phones.

History:

When we went from (mostly) hardwired pulse dialling to plug in pulse dialling, the ring caps and separate ring wire solved a specific problem

- bell tinkle when you connected pulse dialling phones in parallel.

However, now (nearly) all phones use mf signalling, and a lot of them are

2 wire mf, not 3 wire mf. 2 wire mf tones don't need, use or rely on the bell cap in the master socket.

Quick way to tell:

There isn't a 100% guaranteed one, *but* if your phone equipment only has

2 connectors in either (a) the BT plug end of the cord, (b) the device end of the cord, or (c) the socket on the device that the line cord plugs into, then it must be a 2 wire device.

Only if you have 3 or more connectors visible at all those points is it possible that you might have (older) 3 wire equipment.

I think all CE marked equipment is 2 wire as well, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Note that with ADSL, if you have 2 wire equipment throughout, you do not need the "bell wire" connected at all (and it /may/ improve the ADSL if you disconnect it).

Rgds

Denis McMahon

[Roger Mills]

Thanks, but I don't think that's my problem. There's no problem with dial tone - and the problem was there (as signified by answering machine not answering) when there was nobody here to leave a phone off the hook.

[Roger Mills]

No, the flat's in the New Forest (Hampshire), and we've owned it for nearly 3 years and only just had the problem.

Yes. If I dial 17070 and then 1 for ringback and put the phone down, I can see BT's 0800 328 9393 displayed. If I then pick up the phone, the voice says "Ringback test completed . . ."

Yes, I did the same, and the voltage does seem to go to zero for some of the time when it should be ringing.

It's even worse for me. The earliest they can come is next Monday - by which time I shall be 100 miles away!