Landline phones

[thd1932]

Our house was built in 1992. It contains three wall sockets for phones with a manufacturer's name on the socket. I will refer to this manufacturer as A. We bought the house in 1996 and later, we bought a set of three cordless landline phones from A, a master phone and two satellites, which together with a wall-mounted phone we did not replace, making a total of 4 phones. One satellite has a wire to a wall socket and another to an electrical supply, the other has a wire to an electrical supply only. On 17/5/09 I signed a contract with Virgin Media for fibre connection for TV, broadband and phones. For 12 years, until this month, we had no troubles with our phones. Then, for five days this month (May), we have been unable to receive calls. On one of those days, we were unable to send calls as well.

A Virgin Media technician came on Monday, 14 May. I asked the technician for the reason for the breakdown. He was either unable or unwilling to tell me. Twice he left the house to go to a roadside exchange about one kilometre away, but I did not ask him his reasons for making those journeys. Maybe he was reluctant to communicate because he thought that at my age, I would not understand. He did explain, however, the consequences of the work he had done. Only the master phone of the set of three phones is now usable. The two satellite phones and the original wall phone cannot now be used but remain supplied with power for their rechargeable phones. He told me that the two satellite phones of the set of three were not compatible with the master phone despise having been bought as a set and having worked for 12 years. Furthermore, he advised me to dispose of them and to buy a set of three that were compatible. He told me who they could be bought from.

I have since found from the Virgin Media Community that Virgin Media do not sell landline phones. I thank the Community for that. Looking elsewhere, we have now decided on the phones we would like. They are provided by supplier B, not A, because of our recent experience.

Have other contributors to the Virgin Media Community experienced anything similar to what I have described.?

Does anyone have an explanation for it?

Am I correct to take the advice of the technician and buy a new set of three phones?

[goslow]

Might be a bit tricky to unravel this via the VM forum, but will give it a go ...

If I have understood your post correctly, before the VM technician visit you had

• a cordless phone base station with two cordless satellite phones linked to the base station
• one corded phone plugged into a telephone wall socket
• the above worked using a total of three phone sockets around the house

After the technician visit you now only have

• a cordless phone base station
• only one working phone socket

After the technician visit, do you now connect your one working telephone still into a normal wall socket or do you now connect that into the back of the VM hub?

Are you able to list the make and models of phones you have? I am assuming they are BT phones of some description.

If they are BT, they are often described by a 'range' name and a model number (e.g. Diverse, Paragon, Inspire etc. plus a model no.)

This might help see how old the phones are and how they should connect to each other.

[Gareth_L]

Hello thd1932

Thanks for the post 

Sounds like we might need to arrange for a visit again and look into an internal rewire

That might be worth thinking about if you are still not able to get it working again as it was 

Please let me know if you need any asitsance

Gareth_L

[thd1932]

Thank you, goslow and Gareth L for your interest in my problem.

Firstly, I will attempt to answer questions asked by goslow.

Your understanding is correct until point 5. We no longer have any working phone sockets. The base of the working cordless base station is connected by a cord to the downstairs VM socket, not a phone socket.

Upstairs, I have a room (my den) that contains the VM hub to which there is no telephone connexion. The room also contains my desktop that is connected by a cord to the VM hub. There is also one of the two BT Graphite 2100 phones described below corded to electrical power only. The VM hub is connected wirelessly to my wife’s laptop, a printer and an iPad.

The only phone that is now working is the base station that I have previously referred to as the master phone is a BT6500 digital cordless phone with an answering machine. The base on which the phone sits is connected by a cord to a Virgin Media wall socket on the ground floor and also by a cord to a mains power adapter that fits in an electrical socket.

The other two phones that I have previously referred to as satellite phones are BT Graphite 2100. One of the two handsets was connected by telephone line cord to a BT wall socket. Since getting Virgin Media fibre connection that cord to the BT socket has remained, but it has not been needed I presume. Another cord leads to a mains power adapter that fits in an electrical socket. The second handset in my den, mentioned above, is called an additional handset. That handset sits on a base that only has a cord to a mains power adapter that fits in an electrical socket.

I have in mind buying the Panasonic KX-TGF320 corded and cordless telephone kit with a Panasonic KX-FGFA30EM, additional cordless phone for the Panasonic KX-TGF320. How can I be sure that the same disaster could not happen to these three phones? Is there a BT v VM war going on? How is it that only incoming calls were stopped and not outgoing calls?

I repeat my original questions below for your convenience.

Have other contributors to the Virgin Media Community experienced anything similar to what I have described.?

Does anyone have an explanation for it?

Am I correct to take the advice of the technician and buy a new set of three phones?

[Spambhoy]

Based on the question I have just asked the community, I’m now worried that the pending change to fibre will ensue the same problems for us. “WE” the customer will now have to cover the costs of a new set of 3 because of the problems you describe. Segway into that my query, if we are still paying a substantial home telephone cost, what are we paying for ? It’s not a replacement set of handsets !

[goslow]

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@thd1932 wrote:

Thank you, goslow and Gareth L for your interest in my problem.

<snip>

---

Thanks for clarifying @thd1932. Hopefully the following answers some of your questions.

From what you have described, it sounds like the VM technician has disconnected your internal phone extensions and left you with just the VM master socket in operation. This might happen if the technican has decided that there is some kind of fault on your internal phone wiring which, in turn, might be causing a fault on the line. If that was the case though, the technician should have explained that to you.

Was the BT6500 bought at the same time as the two Graphite 2100 phones with the idea that they should all work together as one cordless system?

Both those phone models have a feature called GAP (Generic Access Profile) which means different types of phone model should be able to register to the same single base station. They should be able to work together via this GAP feature although not all of the features of the linked phones may work fully as they are different models.

One possibility is that your satellite Graphite 2100 phone was actually registered/linked to the Graphite 2100 base station (rather than the BT6500). If the Graphite 2100 were bought as a twin pack then the satellite would be registered to the Graphite base out of the box and would have connected via the extension phone socket. Once that phone socket stopped working, then both the Graphite 2100 phones would no longer function as they had no connection to the phone line any more. Either that or the Graphite 2100 phones have become deregistered from the BT6500 base station.

So, to get you working again you might have 3 choices

1 - Try to find out why your internal telephone sockets were disconnected (accidentally or intentionally by the technician) and get them reinstated/repaired (as long as this doesn't recreate the original phone line fault you had), or

2 - See if the Graphite 2100 phones can be (re)registered to the BT6500 base station which would bring back all the cordless phones into use, or

3 - Replace all the phones with a suitable quantity of new cordless ones. Plug the new phone base station into the one working phone socket and run satellite cordless phones elsewhere as required.

Wait for the VM forum team to pick this up again.

@Gareth_L mentioned VM revisiting to look at re-enabling the internal wiring.

VM may want to charge you £99 for this if your internal wiring was at fault. If, however, the VM technician has simply failed to reconnect the wiring after fixing the fault then I don't really think you should have to pay for that.

In any event, I don't think you should have been left with significantly less phone functionality that you had before without a suitable explanation as to the reason why.

[goslow]

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@Spambhoy wrote:

Based on the question I have just asked the community, I’m now worried that the pending change to fibre will ensue the same problems for us. “WE” the customer will now have to cover the costs of a new set of 3 because of the problems you describe. Segway into that my query, if we are still paying a substantial home telephone cost, what are we paying for ? It’s not a replacement set of handsets !

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VM can (and should, according to the link below)

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/home-phone/virginphone#whatishappening

connect existing extension sockets to the phone line via the VM hub.

Various past posts on the forum suggest that sometimes this doesn't happen in a reliable way.

Problems may arise if the extension wiring involves a previous BT master socket or the phone socket/wiring is a long way away from the hub location.

[Spambhoy]

Thanks for the link, it’s now a screenshot for the sake of reference when the change takes place. There would appear to be some disparity with the “skill sets” of the technicians ?

[Gareth_L · Accepted solution]

Hello thd1932

I am more than happy to help get the sockets reconnected if you are still wanting to go down that route 

Gareth_L

[thd1932]

Thank you for your message Gareth L, and the offer to rewire. Does this mean you are an employee of VM, or are you independent? In other words, will I be charged?

            To rewire or not to rewire

            That is the question.

Why should I rewire if no one in the VM community can tell me what could cause telephone calls to be transmitted, yet incoming calls blocked without my permission.?