From: friedl@mtndew.Tustin.CA.US (Stephen Friedl)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Why Can't I Break Dialtone?
Date: 18 Aug 92 22:52:40 GMT
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 638, Message 1 of 12

Hi folks,

     What would cause a central office to reject Touch Tones?  I have
sporadic problems with TT not breaking dialtone on several of my lines
 -- very hard to reproduce -- and I am tired of the very LOUD
hang-up-the-damn-phone noisemaker.  It is amazing how a little 1.5"
speaker can make a noise that carries all the way through the house.

     It was only recently that I realized that this was a result of
the TT not breaking dialtone, but I figured that my modem was just out
of alignment or something.  There was no reproducable pattern on when
it would fail and when it wouldn't.  I have since upgraded the Telebit
T2500 to a Telebit WorldBlazer and the problem remains.

     Finally it happened to *me* a couple of times.  I picked up my
fax line and dialed the number, and it never broke dialtone.  After I
hung up and tried again, it worked fine.

     So far I have seen this problem on at least four different
devices (two modems, a phone, and a fax machine) and three different
CO lines, but I cannot reproduce it often enough to complain to
Pac*Bell.  I bet I get this maybe one in 200 dials on my modem line,
and it's only happened twice in my voice or fax lines.

     Anybody got any ideas on this?


Stephen J Friedl | Software Consultant | Tustin, CA |     +1 714 544-6561
3b2-kind-of-guy  | I speak for me ONLY |   KA8CMY   | uunet!mtndew!friedl


[Moderator's Note: Your CO has a bad piece of equipment which it is
offering to you and other callers who go off hook. Probably all the
subscribers in your CO get it from time to time. When they can't cut
dial tone they hang up, then go off hook and try again. In the
meantime, in the instant after they released the line, the troubled
equipment is freed up for another call and another seizure occurs
almost instantly. Now some other poor devil has the broken equipment
and the caller who originally had it gets a different (and working)
one instead. The second caller has the same problem, hangs up and
starts over, and frees the common equipment for yet someone else.
Eventually it is your turn ... Several years ago I made a lot of calls
in the early morning hours and eight or nine out of ten calls went
nowhere after dialing. Repair told me when it happened again to keep
that line up on hold while calling them; someone then went in the
frames looking for me. When they found me, they found the switch which
was bad. Because it nearly always happened to me at night and rarely
or never during the day, we made the reasonable assumption that the
troubled equipment was the first or second of its kind to be selected
if available. After all, at night one is likely to get the first of
anything in the CO common equipment; during the day it is unlikely one
would always or nearly always get the first selection. They looked at
the first selector in a group of several offered to people going off
hook; sure enough it was broken. During the busy parts of the day,
many various subscribers 'shared' this between them, depending on who
happened to go off hook when the first of these switches in a group of
several happened to be available (albiet not working right).  The
night plant foreman thanked me and as a reward, gave me his direct
number saying, "Don't bother fooling around with those young ladies
who answer 611; they don't know sh--." Problems in the common equip-
ment in the CO are hard to find and difficult to get a repair clerk to
open a trouble ticket on.  After all, what would you know about it?  PAT]