Digital Voice Issue

[capsticksbarn]

Have recently been converted from copper landline to Digital Voice. Fttp to SH2 to DV adapter to BT Premium phone.

When I ring my home from external source, I hear 3 rings before my home phone actually rings. This means that although I have the Premium phone set to 10 rings before the Answer Machine cuts in, we hear only seven rings before the ANS cuts in. This was not the case when on copper. The issue is that those missing 3 rings cuts the manual answering time which is extremely annoying.

Is this and issue with how DV is implemented?

Thanks

[imjolly]

Does it work if you leave out DV adapter and connect phone direct to SH2? 

[Keith_Beddoe]

The ringing tone is generated by the network, it does not mean that the phone at the receiving end is actually ringing. 

With a normal copper PSTN connection, there would be virtually no delay between the two, as the exchange line card would send out ringing current right away,

With a VOIP service, there would be a number of elements that would introduce delay between the ringing tone and the actual phone ringing at the receiving end. So if you  hear 10 lots of ringing tone, its quite possible that not all of them will result in the phone ringing.

[capsticksbarn]

Thanks for the explanation. So to be clear: the source would hear more rings than the recipient (me). In this case 3 rings. Could this not imply to the caller that the call may not be answered and therefore hang-up? (as has happened more than once). Is this not a slight design flaw? It seems a backward step to me.

[Keith_Beddoe]

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@capsticksbarn wrote:

Thanks for the explanation. So to be clear: the source would hear more rings than the recipient (me). In this case 3 rings. Could this not imply to the caller that the call may not be answered and therefore hang-up? (as has happened more than once). Is this not a slight design flaw? It seems a backward step to me.

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Many years ago, BT had a residential VOIP service called BT Broadband Talk, which gave users an extra phone number they could use.

This had the same issue with the ringing delay, and sometimes even the ringing tone itself was different, for some reason.

Th delay was present on the supplied hub phones, and on any phone plugged into the home hub socket. It was not really an issue, as the BT supplied hub phones did not have an answer machine facility.

In your case, I suspect that the answerphone feature is implemented in the network software, and will count the number of ring tones heard by the caller, and not the actual times the phone rings at the distant end.

If you have a wired phone, you could try plugging it into the phone socket on the back of the Smart Hub 2, and see if you still get the delay. That would prove whether its the DECT base station within the home hub which is causing the lost rings, or whether it is actually a network related issue.

[capsticksbarn]

Thanks for the suggestion. Sounds good. Unfortunately I have not had a wired phone for some considerable time. As you may know, my Premium phone is wireless with a base station connected via the DV adapter. So, nice idea, and I wish I could test as you suggest, but I can't. So, I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Thanks again for your swift responses.

Regards

Mike

[Keith_Beddoe]

Actually the DV phones use DECT, which is not quite the same as normal Wifi. Any communication between the DECT base station which is inside the home hub, and the handset, it going to be subject to delays. If you are using a DECT repeater (DV extender) then this is likely to introduce more delay.

What phone did you use when you had a copper landline, which you mentioned on your first post? 

[capsticksbarn]

The same one - a BT Premium  wireless phone.

Incidently, I think all the software (answer phone, call lists, contacts etc.) are contained within the base station (the software is call Truecall - originally Call Guardian?) , and not within the network.

[imjolly]

Did you not get a free DV phone when you got DV?

[capsticksbarn]

No. Was not offered one. Had to buy the adapter.

Have to say that I would have kept the Premium anyway since I have a master and two extensions. So, to replicate with DV phones I would have needed to buy 2 more DV phones even if the first was free - an expense I couldn't justify.