Spooky

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I have a Gigaset cordless phone in the workshop. Just the one handset, base station plugged into the landline.

A few times recently - including last night at about midnight, it has rung. But not the normal ring. And no other phones in the house on the same line ringing.

The ring is odd - a sort of musical jingle like it was played from a tape running backwards. Sort of fades in, and cuts off abruptly. Then repeats. Goes on for about 30 seconds. Display reads new message. But no way of reading it.

[Tim+]

Someone sending a SMS to your land line.

Tim

[charles]

years ago, we had something like that. It happened when the heavily laden South African Airways jumbo passed overhead.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Nick Odell brought next idea :

My set of four BT8500's light up and display a 'line cord disconnected' what seems like every evening between 21:00 and midnight. That is the regular line test taking place.

[Dave W]

I have a Gigaset phone. When I receive a call but don't answer it the display says 'new message'. But it doesn't mean SMS. If I go to 'messages' it gives the time of the call and where from (I have caller ID enabled by BT).

So what do you mean by "no way of reading it"? When people send an SMS to my landline I get a robot speaking the text. If I don't answer it I think the system tries ringing me again at least twice.

I have never had a strange ring like you describe. If your wired phone didn't ring then you might have got some voltage spikes like someone else suggested.

[Nick Odell]

Could it be the routine BT line test, which should not trigger a landline phone, but the Gigaset threshold is set too low?

Nick

[Chris Green]

Most Gigaset phones will happily display SMS messages sent to a landline, just go to the Message menu and read the message.

[Steve Walker]

At one time SMSs sent to landlines were read out by an automated voice, does that not still happen?

SteveW

[Andy Burns]

Still happens if your landline phone isn't text message compatible.

[Roger Hayter]

And still happens if you don't tell BT otherwise. With my Gigaset phone you have to send an empty SMS message to 00000. But I don't know if this is general. It also needs repeating when the BT system forgets.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've no idea who would be trying to send me an SMS to my landline. And there is a call blocker in circuit which stops all spam calls.

[Andy Burns]

I think my Philips phones automatically made a call to enable it, I now have Gigaset phones, but presume the line remained enabled for SMS.

I've never had to do anything manual, but in reality get very few SMS to the landline ... just tried sending from mobile to landline and it immediately reports "number incorrectly formatted" CBA to investigate now.

[Andy Burns]

SMS are delivered to landlines by a "silent" call with a voltage reversal but no ringing current, followed by 1200(?) baud signalling similar to caller ID.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

Probably some idiot attempting to send spam. I get similar one ring things both on the mobile ad the land line I ignore them. Of course it could also be the phone company running diagnostics. I doubt its any kind of dodgy activity, just a response to something which really should not actually happen. Brian

[Chris Green]

Yes, though I'm not sure if the above is a general fix. I've had to ask specific senders not to translate SMS to voice at times. It's often totally impossible to persuade a sender that one's landline can accept text messages.

[Chris Green]

That's odd, my mobile can send SMS to my landline and it's what I use to check if it's still working. I didn't have to do anything to make it do this.

[Andy Burns]

Oh it used to work, I sent to myself in 2017 and again in 2018.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'll try that to mine. Think I have had one read out to be by a machine in the past.

[Andy Burns]

what's the gigaset model?

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

on 07/04/2020, Dave Plowman (News) supposed :

I have just tried sending a text to my landline. On Plusnet - nothing, but my phone showed up a blocked call from an 0845 phone number, which coincided with my sending the text message.