Issue on my landline that is impossible for BT to solve - help!

[GreekPig]

Hello all.

I have what I suppose is a technical issue that BT cannot apparently solve. I'm hoping that someone might give me a way forward on this community.

Our landline is not used much, but I do phone my friend on it on a daily basis. My friend is also a BT landline customer.

I have a problem that when I phone my friend, more often than not I get a message telling me that his number has not been recognised. On trying to call him a few days ago I got through on the 4th call. Sometimes you're straight through, sometimes you have to try multiple times.

All BT seem to be capable of is to send out an Open Reach engineer.

I have had multiple engineers out to check my line. A fault has never been found in relation to this issue.

I have also had my friend's line checked by an Open Reach engineer. Again no fault found.

I have had everything checked, including master socket, filter, phones. I have tried putting only a touch tone phone on the line (where it send the tone down the line on the press of each button). Nothing has corrected this issue to date.

I went to BT from Virgin about January 2020 I think, and this has always been an issue since then. I never had an issue when I was with Virgin.

My friend has no other issues sending and receiving calls, and nor do I.

When BT were going nowhere with this issue I placed a complaint with BT, and in response to this I was liaising with someone from BT and I felt that we were making progress, but when she failed to make contact with me while I was on holiday she terminated the service ticket so I was back to square one. I could not contact her, and BT support couldn't reopen the call. I was effectively back to square one.

A tale of woe really.

I'm still left with this issue, and my personal feelings on it is that this needs to be investigated by someone from Open Reach who has an understanding of the internals of the network and can trace the route of the call that I am making, but this is in my ignorance. However, if such people exist in Open  Reach you cannot apparently get your support issue escalated to them when going to BT for support. You just get an engineer to your door, which in this case is inappropriate. Said engineer doesn't find a fault on the line and that's your lot.

If anyone can suggest any way forward with my issue, that would be much appreciated.

Many thanks.

[imjolly]

did you port your number from virgin?

are you on digital voice or just normal phone connection?

[iniltous]

When you normally call this number , do you have the number stored in your phone and in effect press a button to call, or do you enter the numbers individually yourself , one after another ?, have you tried a different phone to the one you usually use, and did that have the same issue ( or did you simply manually dial the number , using the same handset as the one with the number stored ) obviously if you haven’t tried a completely different phone you haven’t eliminated the phone as the culprit.

Openreach do not look after the ‘exchange’ equipment, that is a different part of ‘BT’, but as you are finding out , the default position  , is to pass faults to Openreach , even when the issue is probably nothing to do with OR.

If you have tried at least two different phones , and the same problems occur, then it may well be a failing piece of exchange equipment…assuming you are unsuccessful in getting your issue passed to BT-TSO, BT Technology, or BT Wholesale ( or whatever the correct department is called these days ) , and  another Openreach engineer turn up , you could ask them to get your circuit moved onto a different line card in the exchange ( the OR engineer should have the ability to get your number swapped to a new ‘EN’ and then physically rejumper your line to that ‘new’ line card equipment ) …no guarantee this is the issue , but it is something to ask to be at least tried.

As your issue is outgoing calls rather than incoming, it’s unlikely to be anything to do with moving from VM , even if the issue appeared at the same time.

[GreekPig]

Hello.

Thank you for your responses. Much appreciated.

For the last year my friend has been using a mobile, so I've been able to call him on that, but he has dispensed with this and so I'm back to phoning his landline and the problem that I originally had when moving to BT has not gone away.

I usually have a DECT phone on the line, but I did remove all equipment from the line (broadband router, Truecall unit, DECT phone) and used a touch tone phone, and this did the same.

As far as I can think, the master socket (and so filters) have been replaced, all of the equipment in the house has been swapped out, and even the whole line to the pole was swapped (actually because the broad band would go down when it rained when we first went to BT as the line hadn't been used for 25 years and it was old).

I know that engineers have performed some work in the exchange due to this problem, but I don't know if your suggestion has been tried already.

One thing is that the number I am phoning has a slight anomaly out of the norm in that it is a 5 digit number rather than a 6 digit number discounting the area code. I don't know whether that could be significant, but as mentioned I can phone any other number so far without a problem, there is no issue I know of with incoming calls, and my friend also has no issues with incoming and outgoing calls, which made me think it was a network issue as opposed to a line issue. I'm not sure whether it would help, but I could possibly find someone within the same area code and with a 5 digit number to call to see if the issue occurs then?

It's not a massive issue, but just very annoying!

I'll try to find some time today to phone BT to see how far I get with your suggestion.

Thanks again.

Paul.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@GreekPig 

I am not aware of five digit numbers, what provider does your friend use? And which exchange location.

There were originally five digit codes on a handful of exchanges, but they were given new dialling codes, so perhaps you are still using the old code?

[GreekPig]

Hi Keith.

It's Cullompton in Devon. 01884 followed by 5 digits.

Thanks,

Paul.

[GreekPig]

Oh - my friend is using BT as a provider.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@GreekPig 

From area code website.

01884 area code information

Area code:	01884
Location:	Tiverton
Ceremonial county:	Devon
Call costs:	Normal landline rate
Local number length:	6 or 5 digits*
Number format:	01884 xxxxxx or 01884 xxxxx
International number format:	+44 1884 xxxxxx or +44 1884 xxxxx
Number shortages predicted:	No
Last code change:	April 1995 (previously 0884)

* Five-digit numbers 01884 32000 to 35999 and 38000 to 38999 are used in and around Cullompton, alongside newer six-digit numbers.

This looks like some routing routing missing from the BT core network, but only on certain routes. Identifying which routes that are failing, could be difficult, and would require call tracing.

I am not sure who could be able to do that, but maybe a moderator could pass it to the correct part of BT?

[licquorice · Accepted solution]

You could try adding a spurious extra digit to the end of the number when dialling, there may be something that is waiting for the 11th digit before it will route the call. The extra digit will just get discarded.

[GreekPig]

You're all geniuses!

I've added a "0" onto the number programmed in the phones here and tried it 3 times.

So far it's worked 3 out of 3 times.

I'll phone a few more times later and let you know, but adding a "0" to the number works so far!

Does this prove that the issue is with the network?

Thanks ever so much for this.