Phone failures

May 25, 2005 6:25 PM

I've had three electronic items in my apartment bite the dust within 24 hours. What is the deal?

(1) Monday my Panasonic cordless stopped communicating with the base (KX-TG2000B office phone). It no longer works. I tried reregistering the handset and it fails to "connect" with the base unit. Never had this problem. The base [hardwire] handset dials out fine though.
(2) Within the same few hours, our GE cordless ("Atlinks" 27928GE5-C) would no longer communicate with the base (couldn't even page the handset), but was usable again 5 hours later.
(3) The next day, my V.92 internal voicemodem, purchased last month, stopped working. It went off-hook permanently and was unresponsive to commands. Had to get a new one.

This may not be a power surge because: I was here the whole time and noticed no lights brightening or dimming. The UPS (used only for power to the computer) didn't trip. We haven't had a storm anywhere near here. I can't rule out something bad on the phone line.

This may not be 2.4 GHz interference because: The voicemodem is fried too! There's not a whole lot of gadgets at this apartment complex anyway, and I only receive one other WiFi box besides mine (I disconnected mine as a test and the phones still didn't work).

This may not be a dead line because: I repeatedly checked the phone line at different outlets and it worked perfectly fine the whole time.

So what is going on here? Might it be a surge? Through the telco lines? How? I tried Googling for experiences and help on this but found nothing. Any telco repairmen here? I am in an apartment complex and serviced by Sprint local; could bad wiring (or induction) possibly be affecting the lines?

posted by rolypolyman to science & nature (9 comments total)

Can you call the phone and/or electric and/or utility companies to see if there's been any service, outages, or surges in your area lately?

Have you asked your neighbors if they've been having similar experiences? Maybe it has something to do with the wiring in the building.

I really have no idea, but that's where I would guess to start.
posted by Dr. Wu at 6:43 PM on May 25, 2005

It's a coincidence.
posted by interrobang at 7:04 PM on May 25, 2005

Have your local utility check your voltage. I understand (although IANAelectrician) that while most of the time the voltage that goes into your house is within the 120-volt range that is standard in the U.S., in places the incoming voltage can go as high as 126 volts or higher - high enough to routinely blow out your standard 120-volt light bulbs (in which case you need to buy harder-to-find 130-volt bulbs), and I suppose if it's high enough, it could fry the actual appliances as well.

My source for the general voltage question is the June, 2005 issue of The Family Handyman magazine, if anyone is wondering. They don't seem to have a website.
posted by yhbc at 7:39 PM on May 25, 2005

I agree with interrobang, it is probably coincidence.

It is not your AC.
posted by Chuckles at 8:45 PM on May 25, 2005

You know, your telco lines could be the culprit. Voltage does come over the telco lines, and if the voltage is high on them, it could cause really wonky things to happen in some of your phone equipment circuits, i.e. causing capacitors to discharge unexpectedly inside the phone which could explain the intermittent failure of your home phone, as well as the complete failure of your other phones. The transmission circuits for the mobile handsets are a lot more delicate than the base stations; although I'll be willing to bet that if you took your handset and tried to synch it up with a base station at a store that the handset would work.
posted by SpecialK at 9:59 PM on May 25, 2005

Lightning strike nearby?
posted by Bighappyfunhouse at 9:59 PM on May 25, 2005

I disagree with SpecialK. The telephone line inputs are likely to be electrically isolated from the rest of the circuitry in the base station; a power surge might fry the input stage and result in no dial tone, but probably would not disrupt communication between the base station and handset.

It sounds coincidental. Unless you have neighbors who like to play with EM pulse guns.
posted by Galvatron at 10:23 PM on May 25, 2005

Were you trying on wool sweaters all day?
posted by ori at 10:53 PM on May 25, 2005

It could be the power lines. You won't necessarily notice the problem. At my old job we went through 4 HP 735i workstations in short order. Sun workstations on the same circuit were unaffected. This seemed to point at lousy reliability on HPs part. Eventually HP got tired of sending over new boards trying to determine which part was causing the failure. They sent over an engineer with a line monitor. The line monitor would listen for irregularities on the line. A few times a day there were drop outs followed by a higher voltage for brief periods of time. These events were only a few cycles long (so maybe 50 or 100 milliseconds, faster than your eye will see).

It turned out that the HP power supply wasn't as well designed as the ones on the Sun workstations and that at certain times of the day an inductive load was kicking in.

Oh, and we had very pricey surge protectors in front of all the computers. This even was faster than the protectors could respond.
posted by substrate at 6:39 AM on May 26, 2005