Date: Tue, 25 Aug 92 19:51:35 EDT
From: ddl@das.harvard.edu (Dan Lanciani)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: More Phone Line Woes
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 663, Message 4 of 8

[Some time ago, I described here a problem with my phone service.
Since then I've been running the twisty little maze of the repair
service.  As I don't seem to be getting anywhere, I am almost ready to
write to the PUC.  I would expect the bulk of such a letter to be a
description of what has happened so far and a first pass appears
below.  Any comments are welcome.]

For at least the past eight months, New England Telephone has been
unable to resolve a problem with their service in spite of my repeated
requests.  The details of the problem are as follows:

Every night, starting at approximately midnight (but occasionally as
early as 10pm) persons to whom I speak experience dropouts (gaps) in
the audio from my line.  These gaps are of varying lengths (some are
long enough to delete entire phrases) and at varying intervals from
seconds to many minutes.  These gaps are not accompanied by clicks or
static -- they are simply a complete loss of audio.  I hear nothing
unusual from my end of the connection.  The problem occurs regardless
of whether I place or receive the call.  In addition, the problem
occurs on my mother's phone (different number, same address) so it is
not line-specific.  The problem never occurs during the day.

I have tried a different phone connected at the demarkation point with
identical results.  In order to best illustrate the problem, a friend
and I each taped the same phone conversation from our respective
sides.  The tapes clearly show that speech which was present at my
line is completely muted at the other end.  I have experienced the
problem on calls from my home in Gloucester to Somerville, Cambridge,
Reading, and Chicago.  As these are the only exchanges that I
typically call at night, I do not know how widespread the problem is.

Below I chronicle my most recent of several attempts to have this
problem resolved.  I omit conversations with first-level repair
persons who made the expected suggestions that the problem was with my
home phone and/or wiring.

During the week of July 20 I reported the problem to the repair
service and spoke with a supervisor (Mrs. Grant).  She said that my
line would be "moved to a different switch" as a precautionary measure
although they could find nothing wrong.  My line was disabled from
afternoon until mid morning the next day (presumably to make the
change) but the problem remained.  At the end of the week I spoke to a
different supervisor (Judy) about the problem.  I played the tapes for
her and she suggested that it was probably a problem with the trunks
that could be quite difficult to track down.  She assured me that they
were working on it.

Two weeks later, on August 7, I called repair and spoke to Judy again.
She expressed surprise that the problem had not been resolved and said
they would work on it.

As of August 14 the problem remained and I spoke to Judy again.  She
suggested that it would be useful to have the problem reported by a
party with whom I was speaking when the problem occurred.  I had my
friend report the problem the next time it occurred (which was, of
course, the next time we spoke at night).  Unfortunately, the repair
service told him that the problem must be with my end and they would
send someone to check my home wiring.  However, no one arrived.

On August 21 I attempted to reach Judy again but she was away from her
desk.  A different supervisor was able to have Catherine from the
central office call me back.  Catherine indicated that they had not
looked at the problem at all yet because they did not have an adequate
description.  I described the problem and played the tape for
Catherine and then her supervisor came on the line.  He suggested that
I check the wiring in my home.  When I explained that I had connected
a different phone at the demarkation point with identical results, he
said that they would "go into the line group" that night and get back
to me first thing Monday morning.

By Monday (August 24) afternoon, neither Catherine nor her supervisor
had called back and I again contacted Judy.  Judy said that others
were experiencing problems and Catherine would call me back.
Catherine called back and said that they had not checked anything on
Friday but that they could set up to monitor my line this night.
However, I would have to be on the phone in order for them to test.  I
asked why they could not simply establish a test call of their own and
monitor the line.  Catherine said that I was the only person having
trouble and therefore they had to use my line.  Moreover, they could
not put up a call on my line: I had to be present and talking for them
to test.  I pointed out that this seemed wrong as my mother's line
showed identical symptoms to mine.  I asked whether they couldn't just
put on a test tone and monitor that.  But she said she had been told
to tell me this and could do nothing about it.

Monday night I arranged to be on the line with a friend from
approximately 11:45 PM until 4:30 AM in order to give ample opportunity
to locate the problem.  The problem occurred and there were several
splendid examples of entire phrases being dropped.

On August 25 I contacted Judy to find out how the test went.  She had
Catherine call me back.  Catherine said that the monitor listened for
as long as she could but it is "very difficult on a 5ESS switch
because they must start over each time you hang up and call."  I
pointed out that this was why I maintained the same call from 11:45 PM
until 4:30 AM.  She suggested that perhaps I had had the other party
call me back; I said no.  She could not explain further.  She did say
that the monitor detected some static but no dropouts.  

I asked if the monitor was simply listening to my line and, if so, how
she could hope to detect the dropouts since they showed up only on the
other end.  She said that there was no way for them to monitor the
other end because it was in a different office.  I asked what was the
purpose of the test if it couldn't detect the problem.  She did not
explain.  She did say that they had both moved my line to another
switch and changed some software.  I mentioned that they had moved my
line before but she said that this time they "really" moved it.
(Curiously, this move did not produce the long service interruption of
the previous one.)  I asked what software they had changed.  She said
that it was far too intricate to explain.  I suggested that she try
anyway because, if this did solve the problem, I would want to be able
to request something similar the next time the problem appeared.  She
said she could not go into it.  I contacted Judy again to complain
that I was not satisfied with the way things were progressing.

[End of what would go to the PUC ...]

Several questions come to mind:

Is it really impossible for NET to test a routing path without
involving my line?

Even if they have to involve my line, is it true that I must be on the
phone talking?  Can't NET make a connection at the office and put up a
call themselves?

What is the purpose of listening only to my line?  I suspect they
wanted to show that the dropouts were coming from my phone/wiring.


Dan Lanciani     ddl@harvard.*