Noise on phone line

I was calling up sky and while they put me on hold. I noticed the
'siren' sound you get when you get when the phone is left of the hook
for a while. It was really faint and I could just about hear it. After
getting annoyed with sky I hung up and decided to do a silent line
test. And there it was again. I could hear it a lot more clearly
without sky's great music. I do get the occasional silent call but
don't ever have the problem of picking up the phone and hearing
another persons call, but cant say someone does not hear mine. There
is also a very slight hum. Is this just a case of crosstalk?
Is this something that would be valid to get an engineer out for
without them claiming there is no fault. The hum can be heard all the
time but this the first time for the siren sound.

naza wrote:
> I was calling up sky and while they put me on hold. I noticed the
> 'siren' sound you get when you get when the phone is left of the hook
> for a while. It was really faint and I could just about hear it. After
> getting annoyed with sky I hung up and decided to do a silent line
> test. And there it was again. I could hear it a lot more clearly
> without sky's great music. I do get the occasional silent call but
> don't ever have the problem of picking up the phone and hearing
> another persons call, but cant say someone does not hear mine. There
> is also a very slight hum. Is this just a case of crosstalk?
> Is this something that would be valid to get an engineer out for
> without them claiming there is no fault. The hum can be heard all the
> time but this the first time for the siren sound.

Test from the "test socket" inside the master socket and if it remains,
consider reporting it as a fault to your telephone provider.

> Test from the "test socket" inside the master socket and if it remains,
> consider reporting it as a fault to your telephone provider.

A number of possible causes, worth recording it if you have
a reasonably sensitive tape recorder. Many faults disappear
as soon as an engineer appears, resulting in no fault
found. At this time of year water is a common source of
problems. Any noise can potentially degrade your ADSL
speed.

On 08/03/2008 18:09, naza wrote:

> I was calling up sky and while they put me on hold. I noticed the
> 'siren' sound you get when you get when the phone is left of the hook
> for a while.

"the howler"

> It was really faint and I could just about hear it.
> Is this just a case of crosstalk?

the howler starts quiet and gets louder, very loud infact, probably your
line is picking it up from an adjacent line left off-hook (less likely
to be the other end picking it up in this case as a call centre will
almost certainly be on ISDN)

"naza" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:a1105d32-982b-4e74-9457-(E-Mail Removed)...
>I was calling up sky and while they put me on hold. I noticed the
> 'siren' sound you get when you get when the phone is left of the hook
> for a while. It was really faint and I could just about hear it. After
> getting annoyed with sky I hung up and decided to do a silent line
> test. And there it was again. I could hear it a lot more clearly
> without sky's great music. I do get the occasional silent call but
> don't ever have the problem of picking up the phone and hearing
> another persons call, but cant say someone does not hear mine. There
> is also a very slight hum. Is this just a case of crosstalk?
> Is this something that would be valid to get an engineer out for
> without them claiming there is no fault. The hum can be heard all the
> time but this the first time for the siren sound.

The sole purpose of howler is to alert the subscriber that they
have left their handset off-hook when they do not have the handset
to their ear so it has to be considerably louder than normal speech
with a corresponding greater risk of crosstalk.
The slight hum on the line indicates a small amount of earth leakage
from one or both copper legs which can pre-dispose your line
to pick up crosstalk, the question is, can you just live with it?
If not and your line is WLR, then you will have a problem of
getting your supplier to take the matter seriously
If it is still a straight forward BT billed line, then you might
get it fixed but make sure you eliminate all your own equipment
and wiring (see Paul's post) and make sure you can demonstrate
to any engineer that calls, that the hum is present with no extension
wiring connected. This will reduce the possibility of being
presented with a 3 figure bill.

--
Graham

%Profound_observation%

Graham. used his keyboard to write :
> If not and your line is WLR, then you will have a problem of
> getting your supplier to take the matter seriously
> If it is still a straight forward BT billed line, then you might
> get it fixed

.....and the difference is what exactly?

"Jono" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed). ..
> Graham. used his keyboard to write :
>> If not and your line is WLR, then you will have a problem of
>> getting your supplier to take the matter seriously
>> If it is still a straight forward BT billed line, then you might
>> get it fixed
>
> ....and the difference is what exactly?


In theory, none.
In practice, it seems be easier to get BT to pass faults to OR
than for WLR suppliers. YMMV.
--
Graham

%Profound_observation%

Graham. pretended :
>
> "Jono" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed). ..
>> Graham. used his keyboard to write :
>>> If not and your line is WLR, then you will have a problem of
>>> getting your supplier to take the matter seriously
>>> If it is still a straight forward BT billed line, then you might
>>> get it fixed
>>
>> ....and the difference is what exactly?
>
>
> In theory, none.
> In practice, it seems be easier to get BT to pass faults to OR
> than for WLR suppliers. YMMV.

Well, if you were my customer, your mileage /would/ vary.

Every WLR supplier out there has the same tools to test lines &
progress faults. There is no reason for any of them to not pass faults
on to OR.

What happes an awful lot, though, is the line test tool, "Eco Repair"
will 99/100 times say "Line Test Complete, no fault found"....so it
becomes hard to trust.

Phone line is with BT & voice service, normally don't have any hassle
with them coming out, engineer normally comes next day in the morning.
Just in case your wondering BT have come out more than a few times to
fixed a dead line or some other major problem. This is probably the
least disruptive one. Thanks for your help.

In <fr1m40$aua$(E-Mail Removed)> "Graham." <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

>The slight hum on the line indicates a small amount of earth leakage
>from one or both copper legs which can pre-dispose your line
>to pick up crosstalk, the question is, can you just live with it?
>If not and your line is WLR, then you will have a problem of
>getting your supplier to take the matter seriously
>If it is still a straight forward BT billed line, then you might
>get it fixed but make sure you eliminate all your own equipment
>and wiring (see Paul's post) and make sure you can demonstrate
>to any engineer that calls, that the hum is present with no extension
>wiring connected. This will reduce the possibility of being
>presented with a 3 figure bill.

I have a possibly similar problem.

During phone calls, I often hear a ringing tone (brr brr... brr brr) in
the bakground, obvioulsy from a call to some other subscriber, and it
ceases when he picks his phone up - but that could be after a minute or so
:-( .

So I eventually got onto 151, and went through all the hassle of getting
to speak to a human, having the line tested without apparent error, "is
the fault still present when you plug direct into the master socket", etc.

Answers, of course, "this is a crosstalk problem, not expected to show up
on a Line Test", and "no I haven't because there is nothing in my system
that could generate ring tone, so it MUST be coming from outside".

And eventually I got them to call out a genuine BT engineer who, like all
such engineers, was very helpful. Now the line from the exchenge to me is
in two segments - one from the exchange to a box-by-the-roadside 1/4 mile
away, and one from thence to the pole in my street. The engineer said the
first segment was more likely, so switched that segment to a different
pair.

That evening it became apparent that the fault was still there, so I had
another go at 151 and went through the whole rigmarole again (this time
with a voice evidently somewhere in India, to whose supervisor I had to
excalate the call because they could now say "but out records indicate
that the engineer has fixed the fault"). But yes, eventually I got a real
BT engineer who said "OK, lets change the second segment".

And that made a difference, insofar as I now get ring tone crosstalk from
a _different_ subscriber who usually picks up his phone after one or two
rings, which is much less annoying but still a fault nevertheless.
Moreover, going through the rigmarole again might get me back to hearing
yet another subscriber who never answered his phone :-( . But the domestic
authorities are now demanding that I get it fixed ...


So how could earth leakage actually cause it, and would that be a leakage
on my side or their side of the master socket?

And is there any way I could test for it (a) on my side and (b) on their
side?

And is there any other experiment I could do short of plugging a phone
direct into the master socket and finding an excuse to make a phone call
long enough for the crosstalk to show up (which, according to Murphy's
law, would not happen anyway during that particular call, however long)?

And is ring tone crosstalk a common phenomenon and have others here heard
it?

--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: (E-Mail Removed) Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5