Further to my post regarding Virgin Media transferring its ADSL customers to Talk Talk, this has now proceeded relentlessly, irrespective of and completely unrelated to the timing announcements from VM. As far as Internet services are concerned, I am now a Talk Talk customer. But VM also managed my telephone calls, and I assume these have also been transferred to Talk Talk, because the ringing tone from out phone has changed. Until two days ago, it was the standard ring-ring-pause-ring-ring-pause etc, but now it's rrring-pause-rrring-pause etc, IYSWIM. The 'rings' are longer and no longer double. Is this a feature of Talk Talk's phone service, can anyone tell me?
Very unlikely, however I'm not clear from your posting whether you are refering to what you hear when making an outgoing call or how your phone rings on an incoming call. The ringing tone that you hear when making an outgoing call comes from the distant exchange (some other tones are applied by your local exchange in some instances), the way your phone rings is controlled by 'your' exchange. Did you have any special services on yor VM line?
It's the incoming call, and no special services from VM other than the standard (and free) message recording if we're unavailable. Been happening for a couple of days now.
It is the other end that dictates what you hear while it rings, if you ring the Netherlands for example the tone is less strident and one long ring, then a pause etc. Brian
I'm talking about when someone rings me. The ring tone has changed in the last few days. It was very obvious the first time we heard it as it took us both a little by surprise. Peter Andrews says the ring tone is generated by the local exchange. Perhaps they're doing maintenance or something and this is a temporary thing. I'll contact friends on the same exchange to see if they've noticed anything different.
No, no welcome messages. I checked with a friend's phone on the same exchange as ours, and theirs rings perfectly normally: double ring - pause - double ring - pause etc. I also tried ringing our number from my mobile, and our phone was still ringing oddly: long ring - pause - long ring - pause etc, although listening to the mobile handset I could hear it doing the normal double ring. Another thing that's new is when I hang up the phone, after a second or so it gives a ping, sometimes two pings, which it's not done before. All very odd. I blame Virgin Media and their messing about with the system!
Ring-cadence is what you are referring to, I assume. This is generated by the "phone exchange" your phone is connected to since it has to "ring" the local phone. Ring-tone is what is heard by the caller and is usually generated by their local equipment these days so they don't occupy a voice channel resource just to listen to tones.
If you have been switched from one service provider to another, this it is quite possible you have been moved to equipment with a non-uk standard (nominally 0.4s on, 0.2s off, 0.4s on, 2s off when running) for the ring-cadence. Some UK providers don't follow this as people get used to the US cadence when watching TV - or using foreign-designed mobiles :-)
Thanks for that. Yes, I guess I mean ring-cadence. Sorry, not familiar with the technical terms here. Incidentally, Googling for ring cadence tells me it's what you describe, but also 'The ringing pattern heard by the dialer before the called party picks up the call' (See
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When I dial in to my land line phone using my mobile, I can hear the normal cadence (ring-back cadence?) in my mobile earpiece, but the house phone is giving the long ring - pause - long ring - pause etc, cadence, if that's in any way relevant.
I've now asked on uk.telecom and they're thinking about it...
Your link's description is only partly right and needs changing... I agree it applies to the old "mechanical" exchanges but, these days the transmission of the signals to the caller and called end is digitally controlled, so it requires less equipment to simply tell the calling end to give the caller ring tone than to encode it on a full speech channel from the called end.
Technically, the ring tone sent to the caller does have a cadence that breaks up the continuous tone to provide some information to the sender, depending on the services offered. At the receiving end, it's not a tone that is received by the called phone. It's a change in line voltage at 16.66Hz or now 25Hz originally designed to ring a bell with a cadence determined by the distant equipment. The caller never hears this.-No "I could hear your phone ringing in my phone, so I know it was working :-)
I've now seen it there and it's the best place to ask, so won't bother continuing here
It sounds like you're concerned with the incoming calls ringing cadence. That depends on the exchange equipment (and how it's configured).
I wouldn't have thought the ringing cadence would have been changed from the UK standard just because of a change of billing for your phone service so it does seem to be a case of your line actually and physically being transferred over from VM's exchange equipment to TalkTalk's exchange equipment which, for some peculiar reason now uses the yank ringing current cadence.
Incidently, if your line (or a telephone) develops a fault that emulates an off-hook tele handset, don't bank on reports from other callers of permanent engaged tone (PET) being properly acted upon since the crap exchange equipment doesn't meet BT standards in correctly responding to such problems and the TT "Engineers" who initiate a remote test will simply see the line as engaged rather than faulty.
A proper BT exchange will, after a few minutes of timeout on such 'off-hook' fault conditions, revert from engaged to Number Unobtainable Tone (NUT) or a voiced announcement of a service problem back to any callers.
I discovered the shittiness of talktalk exchange equipment and clueless customer service when trying to report my dad's phone line as being PET over several days (the phone itself in the house was dead/NDT). After being told that his line was testing ok despite remaining PET, I took a closer look at the internal wiring on my next visit to his house, eventually clearing the fault when I unplugged one of the many wiring extensions running all over his house.
In this case, it was the extension wiring to a long unused desktop PC's built in dial up modem which had been made redundent by the talktalk adsl modem installed a couple of years earlier.
I simply left the extension wiring disconnected, along with a few other such plug in extensions now no longer required. What annoyed me was that a problem like that would not have created the false PET signal to callers if he'd been on a BT exchange. Only in the world of cheap telephone exchange equipment bought by the likes of TalkTalk could such shoddiness exist.
BTW, I'd complain to TalkTalk about the exchange being misconfigured to American ring tone cadence and insist on it being configured back to UK ringing cadence. I'm used to hearing both cadences, the UK standard one for the business number and the yank one for the private 'Callsign' number which is about the only legitimate use, imo, for an alternative ringing cadence on a UK based landline.
I have seen many instances where a phone has been left off-hook with no active call, either accidentally or intentionally, and callers get ET not NU even after several hours.
You are making me doubt my sanity ;-) so as my line is still on a BT switch "System Y" IIUC I will try an experiment when SWMBO is out of the way.
Deepending on which carrier I'm using to call a number in N.A., I hear either a UK-style double ring signal, or a long single ring.
And if on a VM line I set up call forwarding (which I think they call 'call divert'), instead of the silent divert as on a BT line, I get the N.A. behaviour which is a very short single ring when an incoming call is being diverted (just as a warning; I don't think it allows you to pick up if you're near thephone, BICBW).
You may have to wait for the "Howler Tone" to be applied before NU tone or a voiced service announcement is returned to the caller.
Taking the phone off hook and waiting for the circa one minute timeout for the dial tone to be withdrawn usually requires another 3 to 6 minutes (the S & Z pulses may be on a faster timing in the local exchange these days) before howler tone is applied and NU returned to callers. Dialling an incomplete number may result in a faster reaction from the exchange equipment.
I would be interested in seeing the results of your tests.
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