Telephone problem with German and macedonia

I sure don't see where the problem could be caused by anything that the calling party could be doing, it would be terminating telco equipment that could be at fault. Is the call connecting, but not ringing his phone, does he have problems with other incoming calls, does it happen all the time or just someimes when they call?

A few questions to help clarify the situation:

- Are all calls unsuccessful, or only some? If only some calls are unsuccessful, look for any patterns that distinguish completed from failed calls -- time of day, day of week, place of origin within Macedonia, destination within Germany, mobile/landline to mobile/landline, etc.

- Is it possible to try a different carrier from Macedonia?

- What do the folks on the Macedonian end report? Does the line just go dead, or does it go to fast-busy, or error tones, or perhaps even a recorded announcement? Does it happen immediately, or is there some sequence of action?

Those sorts of questions should point you towards the cause of the problem. It could be a technical fault, or it could be some sort of legal or billing dispute. Without more information, it's hard to say.

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Your description of the 'problem' is _dreadful_, to put it charitably.

It is not clear _where_ this problem is occurring. 1) from the subject line "with German", in Germany?? 2) from the body 'his us phone' -- somewhere in he U.S.A.

If he's using a 'us' phone on the phone system in Germany, I have no clues.

If he's got a regular POTS line in the U.S., then the probable cause is that the caller is dialing the _wrong_number_.

There are a couple of 'strange things' that can happen on a POTS line, that will give 'no ring' symptoms, *BUT* that will happen on -all- calls. not just certain overseas ones.

As far as the phone knows, everything about the call comes from the local switch. That switch applies the same ring signal to the line pair, regardless of were the call is coming from. hence, it will work, or fail, consistently. "consistently" is tricky term. it doesn't necessarily mean 'for every call', but, rather, 'for every call' where conditions prior to the call are the same. e.g. line not used for many hours before no-ring call, outgoing all made shortly before no-ring call, another incoming call answered/not answered shortly before no-ring all.

*UNLESS* something else on the line is changing. e.g. plugging in an extra phone, turning on/off an answering machine, et. you don't mention anything else like that, so as a first cut, we assume there isn't any such.

Hi Dan,

Check to see if your local US company has an option to "not ring on calls that don't have CallerID information". Make sure that is turned off. That causes the problem you describe.

David

He wouldn't have anonymous call rejection on the line unless he had ordered it and was paying for it.

There are probably several transmission-related conditions that might make a caller think his call completed when it did not. I once had a particularly vexing "one-way audio" problem between my PBX in the US and another in Canada. The symptom was that the callED party could hear the callER but audio in the other direction was blocked. This would only happen from time to time, but when it started it persisted for most of a day! After several months of sporadic complaints we found a tier 3 technician who believed us and was interested in solving the issue. One day we got the condition to occur and left the failed connection up and put a radio near the handset at our end. The technician then followed the call through several switches and transmission facilities in his network. The call left his network and got passed to MCI for it's trip into Canada. He found that was where one side of the audio went dead. Turned out that an interface card in a DS-1 between XO and MCI was defective! One or the other carrier replace the bad card and the problem was gone!

So... To conclude a long story, this issue could very well be some technical failure. Or, maybe the caller is simply dialing a wrong number???

Good luck shooting this one!

A few questions to help clarify the situation:

- Are all calls unsuccessful, or only some? If only some calls are unsuccessful, look for any patterns that distinguish completed from failed calls -- time of day, day of week, place of origin within Macedonia, destination within Germany, mobile/landline to mobile/landline, etc.

- Is it possible to try a different carrier from Macedonia?

- What do the folks on the Macedonian end report? Does the line just go dead, or does it go to fast-busy, or error tones, or perhaps even a recorded announcement? Does it happen immediately, or is there some sequence of action?

Those sorts of questions should point you towards the cause of the problem. It could be a technical fault, or it could be some sort of legal or billing dispute. Without more information, it's hard to say.

--

Thanks for all your replies folks. I was able to speak to the professor today and got some answers.

My current suspicion is that it is the phone.

Call completion for US numbers is 100%. No problem in this area.

Calling US to macedonia - they always hear the phone ringing, No lapse in commuications.

The significant part: --

When macedonia calls, the phone does not ring here. They hear the ring out in macedonia, and the answering machine on the profs desk when it picks up. The answering machine is not on a VMAX server --- its a digital recorder built into the phone.

I have advised that he switch phones just to see what happens. No news yet.

My guess is that somehow, a com signal from the localities involved does not carry the proper signal for the phone to ring. My home phone is from the UK. In the US, caller id info is sent, followed by a private signal so the data is not displayed. The phone does not recognize this, and always displays the caller ID. In the UK, if you have a private number, you just do not send the caller ID info. I am not quite sure that this is how it actually is, it may be the way I understood it.

Will post back when results come in. Thanks to all who helped.

--dan

Switched phones this afternoon -- We have 100% call completion for all calling zones.

Older phone would not recognize incoming calls. Newer one does so perfectly.

many thanks to all your answers and helpful questions.

--dan

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