HAI dial out issue

[joepistritto]

Hi everyone,

I have a HAI Omni LTe panel installed (it replaced an older HAI Omni that fried) and I'm trying to get it to dial out via tone dial, but it doesn't seem to work. In fact, this is an issue even with the old unit so I had always thought maybe it was a problem with my old HAI unit.

What I figured out is that when the panel takes the phone line off hook, the phone company for some reason is detecting it as a pulse dial "1"... so the "hack" I did was to reconfigured to pulse dial and had it dialed the full 800-xxx-xxxx number without the "1" in the beginning.

This is less than ideal as pulse dial is slower than tone dial.

Also, my normal phones work fine (all connected via the RJ31X controlled by the panel) when I take them off hook -- I get a dial tone and can dial via tone dial.

So, anyone have any ideas what I should look at? Since this is a new panel and both this panel and the old one exhibit the same problem, I'm less inclined to think it's the panel that's the problem.

Thanks in advance for any tips or advice!

 

[Desert_AIP]

Sounds like a phone line ground issue if it's detecting the off hook as a pulse.

 

[joepistritto]

Thanks for the suggestion!
 
How do I diagnose if it really is a ground issue and how does one resolve it?

 

[Desert_AIP]

The phone company would have to o-scope the line most likely.

 

[RAL]

The telephone wires are not referenced to ground. Rather, they are a balanced, twisted pair, which provides good noise immunity.  If one of the wires in the pair was grounded accidentally, this would cause problems on your phone line.
 
Your telephone network interface box has surge protectors which do need a ground connection, so you will see a ground wire there. 
 
My phone line was once hit by lightning somewhere down the road from our house and it partially destroyed the surge protectors in the network interface box. But you would never have known anything was wrong by looking at it.  The phone line still worked, but exhibited strange behavior.  If a phone was connected to the line, on an incoming call it would ring once and then hang up.  But if a modem was connected without any phone on the line, it worked fine. 
 
Yet, when the phone company ran diagnostics on the line, it said everything was ok. It took the telephone repair guy many hours before he figured it out and decided to replace the network interface.
 
So one thing you might want to check is your network interface box.  If you can, remove it and try the line without it in the circuit and see if it makes any difference.

 

[Desert_AIP]

RAL's explanation is better than mine.
 

 

[joepistritto]

Thanks for the help guys.
 
RAL, sorry but dumb question: what are you suggesting I remove from the network interface box? The surge protector? I thought those a supplied by the phone company and is inaccessible by customers?

 

[RAL]

My suggestion is to temporarily bypass the network interface box completely so that there are no connections to it from either side.   On some network interface boxes, the surge protectors can be removed and replaced, but it is easier to just disconnect everything and tie the house wires directly to the telco wires for a quick test.

 

[neillt]

Thanks for the help guys.
 
RAL, sorry but dumb question: what are you suggesting I remove from the network interface box? The surge protector? I thought those a supplied by the phone company and is inaccessible by customers?

 
All of the NIU's I have ever seen just have a "Security Torx" screw that closes the network side.  You can find a bit or driver for that in pretty much any large hardware store.

 

[RAL]

All of the NIU's I have ever seen just have a "Security Torx" screw that closes the network side.  You can find a bit or driver for that in pretty much any large hardware store.

 
A set like this is really handy for just about any type of fastener.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Neiko-100-Piece-Security-Bits-Storage/dp/B000O5XDOG/