BT Graphite 2500 compatibility

[Van2021]

Hi,

I have BT Graphite 2500 which is working fine before I switch to Virgin Media landline. There is no dial tone and the screen is showing ‘No Line’, I have reset the phone to its default, try phone line with 2 pins and 4 pins, but it’s still not working. Test the BT phone in friend’s place, it’s working fine, test the phone line with a different phone, the phone line is working fine as well. The only different is that my BT Graphite 2500 used to connect to OpenReach socket and worked fine, but now it’s connecting to the phone socket in Virgin Media router and not working. It seems to me that the phone line from Virgin Media router doesn’t work with my BT Graphite 2500 only, is this a compatibility issue? Or anything else? How do I resolve this?

Thanks!

[goslow]

The pin combo of 2 and 4 won't feature anywhere when connecting up your phone.

The RJ11 TEL1 socket on the back of the hub uses the centre two pins (3 and 4) and the BT plug uses pins 2 and 5.

Are you using the VM-supplied adapter going into the back of the hub (which converts the BT socket to RJ11 plug) as per bottom LHS pic below?

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/home-phone-line-faults

[goslow]

(Edit): Mis-read OP ref 2 and 4 pins. Can see you meant number of pins on the leads rather than pin numbers.

Are you using the same phone lead which works with a normal BT socket in conjunction with the VM-supplied adapter straight into the TEL1 socket on the hub?

[Van2021]

Yes, I did. I tried different RJ11 cables with 2pin and 4pins, but my BT Graphite 2500 is still showing ‘No Line’. I know the line is working, as it works when using a different phone. Any other suggestion?

[Travis_M]

Hi @Van2021

Thanks for posting on our community forum!

With the phoneline working with any other phone, have you tried contacting the manufacturer themselves to see what they can suggest as this seems to be a device specific issue related to that handset in particular? 

Regards

[goslow]

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@Van2021 wrote:

Yes, I did. I tried different RJ11 cables with 2pin and 4pins, but my BT Graphite 2500 is still showing ‘No Line’. I know the line is working, as it works when using a different phone. Any other suggestion?

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The preferred (simplest) route to go is the normal phone lead (BT plug on the end) and the VM adapter (BT socket to RJ11 adapter) into the back of the hub.

If you have tried to eliminate the VM adapter (by using a lead with RJ11 plug to RJ11 plug to link phone base to hub) you have to double check how the pins on the RJ11 plugs are wired up because different leads can have different internal wiring. If you use RJ11 to RJ11 I think you would have to make sure the centre two pins (pins numbers 3 and 4) on the RJ11 plugs are wired to each other at each end. You might be able to check this just by looking at the colours of the internal cables going to each end of the plug or test with a multimeter.

There have been a few mentions on past topics where the VM adapter has proved to be faulty. These are mass-produced, cheap parts and build quality may not be that great. If you are using the VM adapter, have a look at the adapter and the BT socket end to check the BT plug contacts on the phone are aligning with the sprung levers in the socket (no breaks or damage, bent pins, badly moulded plastic etc. inside the adapter socket.

Only other thought is to check for a specific setting on the phone. As far as I can see from the manual, your Graphite 2500 phone does not actually have this setting but you can double check to see on the actual unit. The setting to check would be to make sure the phone is set to tone dialling and not pulse dialling. This might be via a switch on the base station or maybe via a soft setting in the phone menu.

There is only a passing reference to it at the end of the manual, but nothing more, so the phone may not actually have the setting and may be always set to tone by default but you could do a quick double check to make sure the option to incorrectly switch on pulse dialling is not available.

If none of the above is any use, there is a dedicated product helpline for the model listed in the manual at the footer of each page

https://www.bt.com/content/dam/bt/help/legacy-ug/phones/BT%20Graphite%202500%20user%20guide.pdf

they may be able to offer further suggestions to try.