Telephone Ringback Code?

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Posted by modeng2000 on 13/06/2022 10:18:14:

So Howie, what do we move on to? A sytem that isn't user friendly it seems.

John

You buy a new phone that will not work when there's a power cut now thats real progress.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Howi on 13/06/2022 09:02:41:

just to point out, Virgin landlines are BT land lines, just provided to the premises by Virgin, so all BT "codes" will work.

ALL land lines will go as a consequence of going full fibre (FTTP), ALL the copper infrastructure will dissapear as it is too costly to maintain. …

Bite the bulletr and move on…….

In the good old days, when telephony was king, consumers were connected end-to-end by dedicated copper lines arranged in a manually switched network. Didn't last long, the telephone system soon included various clever ways of multiplexing (multiple telephone conversations on one link, plus telex), where the link could be micro-wave, short-wave radio, twisted pair or coaxial copper.

Unfortunately time marches on remorselessly. When I was a young man, the UK telephone system had become an embarrassment because it contained a mix of everything from ancient equipment installed in the 1920's up to modern electronic prototype equipment. Much money was allegedly 'saved' by keeping old infrastructure going, but much more was wasted by the high cost of maintaining a complicated mix of old and new, where all the pre-electronic equipment had to be maintained by hosts of expensive skilled men.

In the usual British way, kicking the can down the road, led to a crunch – decades of government under investment resulted in an enormous cost-to-fix, not least the need to painfully dump large numbers of loyal staff.

Since then, the backbone network is almost completely modernised. Apart from the lines between local exchanges and subscribers, there is hardly any copper in the system at all. Though important, telephony has become just another service riding on the back of the internet. The internet uses the same packet switching technology to delivers all things communication from e-commerce, to x-rated porn. Most links are fibre-optic, carrying massively more information than copper, and much more reliably. There's nothing special about telephony.

Copper lines to the consumer have always been an anachronism, expensive to maintain, and requiring converters in exchanges to connect ye olde telephones across the backbone. At the same time, new consumers want high-bandwidths at home: these folk, spending much more money than basic phone users, likely don't have or want a land-line telephone, they want streaming services and mobile phone connectivity. So the pressure to get rid of copper entirely is enormous: it's happening. Mostly a good thing,

Unfortunately, every silver lining has a cloud. Although internet technology is highly reliable because it features multiple redundancy, automatic routing, error correction and recovery, without wobbly mechanicals, it is vulnerable to power failures. I don't know what's been done about this, but I guess it's similar to what's normal in important computer installations. The machines are powered via an 'Uninterruptable Power Supply', a device that filters muck out of dirty old mains electricity, and contains a battery big enough to run the installation for about half and hour, perhaps longer, and designed to give plenty of time for a standby generator to be sorted out if it fails to start automatically. (Standby generators have a nasty habit of not starting in genuine emergencies!) Assuming the maintenance team haven't nicked the fuel (they do), standby generators should run the installation on their own for several days.

This may not help a disabled person who has an emergency during a power-cut and only knows how to use a landline telephone. But I wouldn't have thought it difficult to fit their phones with a battery. Wot! spend money on a new-fangled phone, when the old one worked perfectly well. Not in my lifetime!

Having done some emergency planning, I'm fond of the truism 'Fail-safe systems fail by failing to fail safely'. An interesting paper on the subject discussed business recovery after serious earthquake damage in California and Japan. In both countries, many businesses found their well protected computer systems were fully operational, but they couldn't use them because the building was full of broken glass, flooded by bust water pipes, and had to be checked out by a surveyor in case it was about to collapse. In one case the the computer system was still running even though the offices above were gutted by fire, and the building had to be demolished.

What causes most of the trouble in disasters, is people, not technology! For good and bad reasons it often turns out that people don't do their jobs properly. Lazy incompetent know-alls, corner-cutters, thieves, drunks, bad attitudes, hangovers, domestic upsets, depression, exhausted by overwork, or ill, they all get it wrong. Men 'toughing it out' when they should be home in bed cause a lot of trouble, as do the dreaded 'willy wavers', and those for whom 'common sense' is automatically better than reading the effing manual!

We live in an imperfect world!

Dave

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

I've just noticed my spelling error in the title of this thread. I really do know how to spell 'telephone', honest I do.

I've given my keyboard a good ticking off so I hope it won't happen again.

Please, please, could one of the moderators insert the missing letter? Or will that muck up the search engine?

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Swarf, Mostly! on 13/06/2022 13:26:32:

I've just noticed my spelling error in the title of this thread. I really do know how to spell 'telephone', honest I do.

I've given my keyboard a good ticking off so I hope it won't happen again.

Please, please, could one of the moderators insert the missing letter? Or will that muck up the search engine?

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Fixed. Your wish in my command!

Dave

[Anonymous]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 13/06/2022 13:32:31:

Fixed. Your wish in my command!

If you're in a correcting frame of mind ….

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Posted by Peter Greene 🇨🇦 on 13/06/2022 18:34:12:

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 13/06/2022 13:32:31:

 

Fixed. Your wish in my command!

If you're in a correcting frame of mind ….

Unlikely

I wonder when SOD will be converted to digital and only type in ones and zeros

Edited By Dave Halford on 14/06/2022 16:33:14

[VicParticipant @vic]

I was going to buy some new home phones but I read recently that the system being rolled out by Virgin is not true VOIP but something different? Anyone know any more.

[Peter Cook 6Participant @petercook6]

My understanding is that although the underlying technology Virgin uses is VOIP, they do not make available the necessary SIP usernames etc that will allow customers to connect third party VOIP phones to the Virgin home phone system. See

Solved: Configuring a Grandstream VOIP Phone – Virgin Media Community – 4599513

The virgin router provides an (RJ11) telephone socket to which you connect a standard analogue phone. The router does the conversion to VOIP, presumably with the appropriate configuration built in. Without the SIP etc. data you can't use a standard VOIP phone to access your Virgin home phone. A VOIP phone will work over the broadband to other providers.

New home analogue phones should work, typical DECT ones for example, if you plug the base station into the Virgin router.

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Good afternoon, ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this thread, there have been some interesting inputs.

I'm now able to report the latest developments at Swarf Castle:

We were advised by letter that our change over to fibrephone would happen on the 21st June. That, of course, was Tuesday but for some reason I was convinced it would be Wednesday.

So, mid-morning on Tuesday we lost broadband for about twenty minutes and then discovered that incoming calls on the original Virgin land-line did not cause the phone(s ) to ring.

Having realised my mistake on Wednesday morning, I fitted the supplied RJ11 to 631A adaptor, transferred the living room phone from the domestic (i.e. non-Virgin) phone wiring to the adaptor via a six metre extension cable and re-booted the router. We soon discovered that while we could call out, incoming calls still did not cause the phone to ring. This situation has persisted until midday today (Thursday) when I grasped the nettle and called 150.

The situation here is that my wife is the Virgin account holder but, at nearly 80, suffers from memory loss. I am 85 but, as a secondary account holder, never knew the account security details. (The account dates from Nynex or Cable & Wireless days, before we were married.)

Having pointed out twice that the account password I offered wasn't valid, the Virgin phone bot said it was transferring me to 'a member of the team'. At this stage, I was resigned to a long wait but, credit where credit's due, I was answered in about six or seven minutes.

My wife had joined me at this stage and we explained our problem with remembering the memorable word (aka password). The Virgin guy led us through several security questions and we got over the forgotten password hurdle much more easily than I had feared. I then had to describe how I had connected the adaptor and phone and he tested the line but the test revealed no line faults.

The current state-of-play is that we are to expect a contact, via email, from the Virgin phone specialists within 48 hours.

It is a nuisance having a lame phone. For example, I made an on-line purchase this afternoon and initially tried to pay via PayPal. I had to withdraw because PayPal wanted me to enter a one-time authorisation code via the phone keypad in response to their un-rung phone call. I had to return to checkout and enter my debit card details instead. Still, I am relieved that we have progressed as far as we have. The Virgin staff member was constructive and understanding throughout our call.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

P.S.: I know that 631A is the plug, not the adaptor's free socket. Still, it is the right family of connectors!

Edited By Swarf, Mostly! on 23/06/2022 16:31:10

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Do you know what the combined REN (Ringer equivalence number) or the impedance of the combined phones in the property are? The standard allowance for BT landlines was 4, which equates to an impedance of 1000 Ohms. Can you selectively remove phones from the network until you get a ringing working?

[OldironParticipant @oldiron]

When I got Virgin cable Broadband the package included VOIP phone line. This saved me paying the ripoff £21pm BT line rental charge. I disconnected the incoming BT line from the master socket. I then connected the closest BT socket to the router to the VOIP socket on the router with the supplied adaptor & cable. The phones (4) all ring as they should even though the master phone unit with the answerphone is in the middle of the circuit. I also have my house alarm connected to the VOIP line via on one of the spare old BT connector boxes.

regards

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Posted by Mark Rand on 23/06/2022 17:56:52:

Do you know what the combined REN (Ringer equivalence number) or the impedance of the combined phones in the property are? The standard allowance for BT landlines was 4, which equates to an impedance of 1000 Ohms. Can you selectively remove phones from the network until you get a ringing working?

Mark,

As I wrote in my earlier post this afternoon, the original installation here comprised four telephones. Only two of them have clear inscriptions as to their RENs, i.e. 1 each. The first is a BT phone with buit-in answer-phone facilities. The second instrument is a compact phone, made in Taiwan for BT. The other two are also BT phones but I cannot find any labelling as to their respective RENs, I assume that it's one each. All four phones were ringing OK on incoming calls on Monday, the day before changeover. They all ceased to ring on incoming calls on Tuesday morning, that's on our domestic wiring tree, connected via pigtail with a 631A to the original Virgin landline 'master socket'.

Since installing the Fibrephone adaptor into the router, we have only had the first phone (listed above) connected to the adaptor. It does not ring on incoming calls.

I hope to eventually have all four phones working on the domestic wiring tree, via the pigtail + 631A but connected to the router via the adaptor and a 6 metre extension cable. The access point to the wiring tree is at the opposite end of the living room and on the opposite side of the fireplace to the router position – neither are easily movable.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Posted by Nick Clarke 3 on 12/06/2022 21:19:56:

Posted by Swarf, Mostly! on 12/06/2022 20:12:46:

Nick:

How many 'house phones' do you have? Do they all ring OK?

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

4 and yes

Good afternoon, Nick,

The Virgin literature we received with the fibre-phone adaptor refers to Hub 3, Hub 4 and Hub 5. Please advise which one you have.

The current state of play here is that one particular phone does ring on incoming calls, regardless of where in our domestic network it is plugged in and with the other three phones plugged in. All the other three phones fail to ring. The one that rings is a BT 'Decor 2200' – it does not have a label giving its REN. All our phones were working OK on our domestic network before changeover to fibrephone.

None of the other phones ring on incoming calls when plugged in alone to the fibre-phone adaptor.

The Decor 2200 may have been working all along but it usually lives in one of the sockets I'd disconneected to 'simplify' the configuration for post-changeover testing.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Edited By Swarf, Mostly! on 27/06/2022 12:25:31

[David JuppParticipant @davidjupp51506]

My guess would be that the ring signal wire isn't being powered – usually handled by the master socket. Sounds like one of the phones has a built in ringer capacitor (so will ring), and the others don't.

That doesn't explain what has gone wrong with the wiring. Could the ringer wire (usually orange/white) have been disturbed when making connection to the router? Phone extension cable is typically solid core – quite easy to damage, and the IDC connectors often used aren't always the most reliable.

EDIT – just looked back, you say your 'master' socket wasn't master by function – so I wonder how the ring wire was powered previously? 

Edited By David Jupp on 27/06/2022 13:16:21

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Posted by David Jupp on 27/06/2022 13:08:00:

My guess would be that the ring signal wire isn't being powered – usually handled by the master socket. Sounds like one of the phones has a built in ringer capacitor (so will ring), and the others don't.

That doesn't explain what has gone wrong with the wiring. Could the ringer wire (usually orange/white) have been disturbed when making connection to the router? Phone extension cable is typically solid core – quite easy to damage, and the IDC connectors often used aren't always the most reliable.

Good afternoon, David,

Thank you for your post.

Are you familiar with the Virgin fibre-phone system to which we're being changed over?

There isn't a master socket in the traditional sense. Before I go further, please forgive me if I don't use the correct designations for plug vs socket with these telephone connectors. The basic source of the telephone system is an RJ11 socket in the rear panel of the hub (aka 'router' ). Virgin have sent out an adaptor comprising an RJ11 plug, two inches of four-core cable and a 431A socket. This adaptor plugs into the RJ11 socket on the hub. The phone that rings does so when plugged directly into that adaptor or, after reconnecting the domestic network, into any of the other sockets. The phones that don't ring, don't ring anywhere on our domestic system or when plugged, alone, into that adaptor.

Our whole system was working properly a week ago, the day prior to the changeover.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

my memory may be at fault but one key difference between a Master and a slave socket was the Master had I think a 2microfarad capacitor that allowed the ringing signal to pass but to block the dc that signalled on/off hook – the old BT phone sounds as though it predates the use of master slave and has a capacitor so the bell rings – all the newer ones are missing this capacitor – the bell is brought out to one of the pins on the plug but without a master socket anywhere the ring signal is not connected to that pin – solution buy a master socket and replace any of the slave sockets with it – all bells should now be wired in parallel and subject to the REN limit will all ring.

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Posted by David Jupp on 27/06/2022 13:08:00:

SNIP!

EDIT – just looked back, you say your 'master' socket wasn't master by function – so I wonder how the ring wire was powered previously?

Edited By David Jupp on 27/06/2022 13:16:21

Good afternoon, again, David,

Thank you for your interest and for your posts.

Regarding the 'master' socket in our original Virgin landline installation:

It isn't a 'master line-box'. It looks like any other surface mounting single 631A or 431A phone socket.

I've always accepted the regulation that subscribers/customers are not permitted to tamper with the phone supplier's wiring.

I would certainly never tamper in the extreme way that regulation was intended to prevent – if, for example, mains voltage gets on to the phone network, there may be no local evidence of a problem yet some poor BT/Open Reach/Virgin linesman sat on the edge of a cable pit may be the one who suffers the consequences.

My practice, in three residences in turn now, has been to install a socket adjacent to the company's 'master' socket and to wire my extension tree from there. Most of 'my' wiring is 6-core phone cable, some buried in the wall plaster and some routed beneath the upstairs floor-boards. Its configuration is part 'daisy-chain' and some branches. I've installed a 631A plug on a short flexible pigtail out of the side of my basic box and connect to the company's system by plugging that pigtail into their master box. This configuration permits simple and complete disconnection of my wiring from theirs in the event that troubleshooting is required. I believe that Nick has the same set-up. Maybe I should take and post a photo.

In the current situation, the old landline master socket (and my base box) are at the opposite end of the living room from the position of the hub (router). Neither is at all simple to move. So when appropriate, I have bridged from the Virgin adaptor to my pigtail using a six metre 4-core flexible extension cable. (And, at different times, a 6-core flexible extension cable, no difference in system behaviour.)

We have four phones, two labelled REN=1, the other two unlabelled. I beleive that the unlabelled phones are also nominally REN=1 each. My hunch is that our hub is a bit deficient in the ring department and the actual ring load is pulling down the delivered ring drive signal to the point where only a single phone that happens to have a very low real REN will ring. The phone that does actually ring isn't doing so as stridently as it did before the chengeover.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Edited By Swarf, Mostly! on 27/06/2022 14:15:25

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Posted by Frances IoM on 27/06/2022 13:56:12:
my memory may be at fault but one key difference between a Master and a slave socket was the Master had I think a 2microfarad capacitor that allowed the ringing signal to pass but to block the dc that signalled on/off hook – the old BT phone sounds as though it predates the use of master slave and has a capacitor so the bell rings – all the newer ones are missing this capacitor – the bell is brought out to one of the pins on the plug but without a master socket anywhere the ring signal is not connected to that pin – solution buy a master socket and replace any of the slave sockets with it – all bells should now be wired in parallel and subject to the REN limit will all ring.

Frances,

Thank you for your post. I'll ponder thereon.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

[Peter Cook 6Participant @petercook6]

It sounds as if the line is not delivering enough voltage (70-90v RMS AC) to cause the phones to ring. The Decor phone may be more sensitive and operate at at a lower voltage than the other 3.

I don't know where the ring voltage is generated by Virgin. On BT lines it originates at the exchange. I have a VOIP adapter (ATA) in which the ring voltage, frequency and cadence can be adjusted. If I set the ring voltage too low, the phones won't ring.

I suspect your Virgin hub into which you plug the adapter is either faulty, or needs the programming adjusting.

If you can. hook a multimeter across the phone lines, in parallel with a phone, and call your own number – or use a ringback test – to see if you can measure the ring voltage

[Les Jones 1Participant @lesjones1]

I was also thinking the problem may be due to the lack of the capacitor that is fitted in the master socket between connections 2 & 3. .Older phones rely on the ring signal being being coupled to terminal 3. Modern phones only seem to need connections 2 and 5 to work. Provided your existing wiring includes a link between connection 3 of all the sockets only one master socket is required. So either add a 1.8 uF capacitor between connections 2 and 3 of one of the sockets OR replace any one of the sockets with a master socket. Regarding REN numbers. I think many modern phones put much less a load on the ringing circuit than a REN number of 1.
I have recently change to BT FTTP and the phone port on the Smart hub 2 works with two of our existing phones and a DECT base. (Non of our phones required the bell wire connection to pin 3 of the socket.)

Les.

Edited By Les Jones 1 on 27/06/2022 14:38:20

Edited By Les Jones 1 on 27/06/2022 14:38:56

[Les Jones 1Participant @lesjones1]

Here are some notes I made for the changeover to FTTP

Here is the information on the two ring signals.

For phone service from exchange via copper wires.

Ring sequence.
Voltages with respect to A line. (Plug pin 5)

Static state of B line -50 volts (Plug pin 2)

Incoming call line goes to about +50 volts with ring tone superimposed on it

Ring frequency about 25 hz (About 53 volts rms.)

T = 0 DC level goes from – 50 to +50 volts
T = 1.60 seconds Start of first ring tone burst.
T = 2.0 seconds end of first ring tone burst
T = 2.2 seconds start of second ring tone burst.
T = 2.66 seconds end of second ring tone burst.
T = 4.7 seconds Start of next pair of bursts.

Gap between pairs of bursts about 2.1 seconds.

For phone port on BT Smart Hub 2.

Ring frequency about 25 hz (About 54 volts rms.)

T = 0 DC level goes from +48 to -48 volts
T = 1.50 seconds Start of first ring tone burst.
T = 1.9 seconds end of first ring tone burst
T = 2.1 seconds start of second ring tone burst.
T = 2.5 seconds end of second ring tone burst.
T = 4.5 seconds Start of next pair of bursts.

Gap between pairs of bursts about 2.0 seconds.

Les.

I now have the phone port on the Smart Hub 2 working with two phones and a DECT phone base.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Swarf, Mostly! on 27/06/2022 14:07:38:

Posted by David Jupp on 27/06/2022 13:08:00:

…

…

We have four phones, two labelled REN=1, the other two unlabelled. I beleive that the unlabelled phones are also nominally REN=1 each. My hunch is that our hub is a bit deficient in the ring department and the actual ring load is pulling down the delivered ring drive signal to the point where only a single phone that happens to have a very low real REN will ring. The phone that does actually ring isn't doing so as stridently as it did before the chengeover.

…

I think that's right: distinctly possible that ordinary domestic acoustic to digital adaptors aren't made to cope with customers who have installed elaborate daisy chains of handsets in multiple rooms,! They might assume a maximum of two or three, partly because the fuss-free installation of DECT wireless phones makes unlikely the average customer will want to install wires. DECT supports as many handsets as you like and only the base station counts as a load, which is 1 REN or less.

I think you need to look at big house or commercial building technology, sort of place that has several extensions, but doesn't need a PABX. Quick look on Amazon found only one suitable 10 REN device, but I expect BT and other providers do them as well

.

Overloading the adaptor is the most likely cause, but I think there's more than one type of REN. Some older phones respond to a ring signal by swinging a resonant mechanical clapper, whereas newer types usually just sound a buzzer. The former type is much fussier about the ring signal it gets, both in terms of frequency and the amount of oomph needed to ring the bell.

30 years ago ancient phones were a big problem in terms of REN, and the Post Office were red-hot careful about not letting customers overload their delicate exchanges! Remember Blue Spotting? The REN problem faded because electronic phones don't need lots of energy to sound off, but it can still bite. My ex-GPO technician friend knew all about this stuff but he moved away. Any ex-GPO types on the forum who can advise?

Dave

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Dect systems are limited to 6 phones – which limit I reached and could do with a 7th.

[Peter Cook 6Participant @petercook6]

Random thought about ring capacitors. Some of the old ADSL filters (the ones fitted between phones and the line) contained their own ring capacitor. Newer ones (as far as I know) don't – on the assumption that modern phones only use two wires.

If you have an old ADSL filter in the junk box, try putting it between one of the phones that don't work and the Virgin adapter.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Frances IoM on 27/06/2022 16:19:34:
Dect systems are limited to 6 phones – which limit I reached and could do with a 7th.

Only necessary to spend more money: 'the Snom M900 multicell DECT base station supports up to 4,000 base stations and up to 16,000 DECT handsets'

Finding high-end equipment can be difficult for domestic customers who are assumed to be technically illiterate. We're usually only sold off-the-shelf gear that's kept basic so the seller doesn't get incoherent support calls from innocents completely out of their depth! Businesses are better placed, having lots of options such as in-house specialists, consultancy budgets, and contracting.

Perhaps the easiest solution is to buy another base station and run it in parallel. The main disadvantage is the handsets couldn't intercom between base-stations.

Dave

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