This topic

"Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

vince31 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 14:53:22 GMT

When my daughter tries to phone our landline (recently converted to Digital Voice) her mobile phone (on GiffGaff) wont connect, just shows "Invalid Number" when dialled manually (full area code included) or from her contacts list where the full number is correct; nothing happens at our end either. If I use my own mobile to phone our landline it works perfectly, so does my wife's mobile (we are both on BT mobile).

Any fixes for this?

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

jac_95 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 14:57:16 GMT

Hi vince31,

Thanks for the post and welcome to the Community.

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Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

annacornwall — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:20:38 GMT

The same is happening to me. Did you find a solution? I've spent an hour on the phone to BT but it's currently not resolved

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

vince31 — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 12:35:41 GMT

No, still no solution.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

JohnC2 — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 14:19:58 GMT

Hi @vince31, sorry you're not receiving all your calls since moving to digital voice. Have you contacted our faults team to report this fault?

Cheers

John

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

DavidM — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 10:44:05 GMT

Hi @vince31 and @annacornwall .

Thanks for posting. have you both reported a fault for this?

Cheers

David

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

Maria65 — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 14:22:30 GMT

I'm also having the same problem of people not being able to call me.

I think BT have not set up digital calls with a lot of networks not being able to connect to us. When I spoke to them they said there were no problems on my line, though I think they must be aware of the problem. I will be calling BT to ask when they are going to resolve this problem and take me off digital until they do.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

-Richie- — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 14:33:33 GMT

@vince31wrote:
When my daughter tries to phone our landline (recently converted to Digital Voice) her mobile phone (on GiffGaff) wont connect, just shows "Invalid Number" when dialled manually (full area code included) or from her contacts list where the full number is correct; nothing happens at our end either. If I use my own mobile to phone our landline it works perfectly, so does my wife's mobile (we are both on BT mobile).
Any fixes for this?

Sounds like a porting issues, which is why external networks (GiffGaff) can't connect but internal networks (BT/EE or Plusnet) can contact you.
If it was broke it would be broke for all.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

annacornwall — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 16:48:19 GMT

Yes it was reported as a fault and it took about two weeks resolve this with endless phone calls and online chats. The solution in the end was to change my number.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

vince31 — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 17:44:44 GMT

@DavidM I've reported the fault to BT FTTP/DV team and they are puzzled by it, the guy on the phone tried to phone our landline and got the Invalid Number message too, but then the phone works fine for incoming calls from BT mobiles. My son in America cant phone us on our Landline and neither can my brother in New Zealand. The team are sending out an engineer tomorrow to check all the connections and settings but from their tests so far at the BT end he has little confidence its an issue at my end, but we'll see what happens when the engineer gets here. When I mentioned my landline number is just over 20 yrs old he said that was a very old number and that could actually be the cause of the problem. Lets see what the engineer finds tomorrow first.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

DanielS — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 18:38:36 GMT

Thanks for getting back to us @vince31.

It'll be good to find out what the engineer finds tomorrow.

DanielS

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

vince31 — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 10:06:11 GMT

@DanielS the engineer has been this morning, done a full home check and found absolutely nothing wrong at my end. He used his own mobile to call my landline and he got "Invalid number" with no connection and my phone doesn't ring, then I used my BT mobile to phone my own landline in front of him and it all worked just fine, the landline rang straight away. So, nothing wrong at my end, he thinks it might be an account setting issue somewhere, but just guessing. I mentioned some people have fixed this by having their number changed and his eyes lit up and he said that would probably work, but we both agreed that wasn't fixing the bigger problem that it doesn't work, it will just fix my own landline that's all (assuming it will fix it).

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

-Richie- — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 11:15:36 GMT

Vince you have a porting/routing issue which will need BT to resolve.
You'll find anyone on BT/EE or Plusnet can contact you, other external networks might but not all.

A new number would fix it instantly or you can wait and see if the number porting/routing issue can be resolved.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

vince31 — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 16:23:26 GMT

Hi and thanks for the info @-Richie-
Surely this is a much bigger problem than just my own personal instance. There must be hundreds or even thousands of old numbers in use that will need this issue resolved.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

licquorice — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 16:44:12 GMT

No, it will just an issue with your particular port that didn't complete properly rather than a systemic problem.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

-Richie- — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 21:33:49 GMT

@vince31wrote:
Surely this is a much bigger problem than just my own personal instance. There must be hundreds or even thousands of old numbers in use that will need this issue resolved.

No it's not a common issue, when customers are migrated from the PSTN to DV network, part of that order includes porting/migrating it, updating records with a database so that other networks know where to route the call, if that fails it results in issues with inbound calls, outbound calls or both not connecting, sometimes you'll see some networks get through where others don't.

It's not something you can fix, BT have processes in place to resolve.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

vince31 — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 14:20:09 GMT

Just an update on this issue (some Digital Voice incoming calls don't get through):

BT support team gone through all initial phone line and broadband checks.

BT engineer visited my home and found no issues at all at my end, confirmed everything connected ok but the issue was still there because he couldn't phone our landline number using his own mobile, yet I could get through just seconds later (in front of him) from my own BT mobile.

BT support team (FTTP team) rechecked all connectivity and then initiated a reconnection or rebuild activity (cant remember the process name they used) where everything was removed as if the number was being disconnected and the phone line reconnection rebuilt from scratch. This process hung at some point, but they sorted it and completed it, but it still doesn't work.

BT support sent me a new BT Smart Hub 2 (latest hardware) which I connected up and re-registered the DV handsets with the hub OK. The broadband is working fine as before , but the DV fault is still there just exactly the same as confirmed by my daughter failing to get through on her non BT mobile.

BT Support phoned me today, they say they can now see my router and right down to the individual DV handsets and confirm it all looks good (couldn't do this before with the original router) and then ran through several porting checks at their end and have now passed it up to a more "Tech" team who will phone me back for further fault finding later in the week.

Re: "Invalid number" displayed when others try to phone me

vince31 — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:18:25 GMT

OK, its fixed.

A week or so after replacing my router with the latest hardware model its suddenly started to work all by itself, but no-one seems to know why. After my router was replaced my DV phone still didn't work for incoming calls from non BT mobiles etc, my daughter on GiffGaff tried it every day for me but she was unable to get through, "Invalid Number". BT support had raised a complaint ticket for me and after all their initial diagnosis they had passed the issue up to a more tech DV team who said they would get back to me within 72 hrs to go through everything again. BT support phoned me up a couple of days ago to apologise for the fact that the Tech team had not being in touch within the 72 hours as promised, she said that they had a backlog of issues to get through and they hadn't been able to even look at my problem yet. So when I told them my daughter had just phoned me an hour ago on the DV landline and got through OK and it had suddenly now started to work they were completely stumped and had no answer or explanation as to why it was now working all by itself, they hadn't done anything. I got other family members who'd previously had problems with our landline to try again now and they too can now get through fine.

So I still have my old original number and it all seems to be working now and the complaint is shut down with BT Support. Sorry I cant help others that have reported the same issue, that's because no-one knows why its suddenly fixed.