Cordless Phones

I’m having a problem involving my cordless phone that I’m hoping someone here can help me understand.

A while back I tried to use one of the phones in my house and found it didn’t have a dial tone. It was live but it sounded like an open circuit, like another phone was off the hook but I wasn’t getting that annoying “off hook” sound the phone company gives you when you don’t hang up.

I went down to the basement, grabbed a phone there and plugged it directly into my network interconnect jack. Dial tone. I decided the connection to the jack must have been loose, plugged the jumper back in (the wire that connects my house circuit to the interconnect jack) and went back upstairs.

Still no dial tone on the phones there.

I went back downstairs, got another length of phone cord and replaced the jumper. This time I had a dial tone so I decided I must have had a bad jumper.

A few days later the same thing happened again. And again a few days after that. I discovered that I could usually correct the problem by unplugging the network interconnect, leaving it unplugged for about five minutes, then plugging it in again.

Sometimes my phones were out for a long time before I noticed. I had several people tell me they had been trying to call me and kept getting busy signals. Always corresponding to the times my phones were acting up.

Getting tired of this, and since I have an internal wiring plan, I called the phone company to get their suggestion. The first thing customer service asked me was “Do you have a cordless phone?”

“Well… yes.”

“Next time it happens, try picking up the cordless and hanging it up again.”

Well, the next time the problem occured I tried this and the dial tone immediately came back. Ah-ha!

I went out, bought a new cordless and replaced my old one with it.

Everything was fine for a few weeks, but now the problem has started again. I have found I can avoid the problem by leaving the cordless unplugged (I have five phones in the house and only one cordless) but it kind of defeats the purpose of having the cordless.

I have heard that there can be problems with cordless phones that are left off their cradle resulting in “phantom dialing”, but I almost always leave mine in the cradle when I am not using it (and it was in the cradle for most if not all of the times I discovered the problem).

Looking in my phone book I notice item 4 under “Checking Problems” is “Do you have a cordless phone? If so, unplug it then try your other phones. The cordless phone could be the problem.”

OK, finally, my questions.

First, what is going on? (I could sort of understand if the handset was not in the cradle but that isn’t the case here. And, if the phone is “off hook”, why do I not get the annoying “off hook” sound when I pick up another phone? And why doesn’t picking up and then hanging up another phone fix the problem?)

Second, is this a generic problem with cordless phones? The mention in the problem solving guide implies that it is.

Third, is there anything I can do about this? (Short of giving up and getting a regular phone.)
Ideas? SWAGS?


tanstaafl

“I’ve found out! I know who the real enemy is!”
“Who?”
“The Phone Company!”
The President’s Analyst

My WAG: Interference from other gadgets/appliances or someone else’s cordless phone. Have you tried setting your cordless to other frequencies?

Just a thought but some cordless phones have a security feature so that no one else can make a call with your base from a different handset. Each time you put the handset on the base it synchonizes both with a new security code. The base won’t make call unless the handset sends it the proper code first. If the codes get out of sync for any reason it has to be reset by placing the handset on the base. BTW that security feature does not prevent anyone from eavesdropping on your calls with a compatible handset or scanner, that requires encrypted voice data.

Another semi-WAG… My father-in-law had a problem with his cordless phone, which was eventually diagnosed as overcharging. He was instructed NOT to leave it in the cradle all the time. He was overcooking the batteries.

AskNott

"Measure twice, cut once. Dang! Measure again, cut again.

mrblue92: The phone supposedly searches for an open channel automatically each time it is turned on, so I don’t think that’s it. There’s a “channel switch” button on the handset but I’m not sure if it will do anything when the phone isn’t in use, given the above.

Padeye: Good idea but I can fix the problem without putting the handset in the cradle. I 1) press call button, get open circuit, 2) press call button again, hang up, 3) press call button yet again, get dial tone. I never return the handset to the cradle.

AskNott: Now that’s interesting… I had remembered from a Consumer Reports article years ago that the “phantom dialing” problem with cordless phones was caused by handsets with low batteries which were not in the cradle. That was one of the reasons I always leave mine in the cradle. I’ll try leaving it out this weekend and see what happens.

I’m still curious as to why this is a common enough problem to mention in the phone book but the phone owner’s manual says nothing about it.


“Sometimes I think the web is just a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society.” — Dilbert

I have two questions here:

  1. Is the phone one of those designed by a retard engineer where when you put it back in the cradle, it actually hits the ‘on’ switch?

  2. Is it a cheap-ass cordless phone?

We had a phone that satisfied both these criteria purchased at K-Mart for $25.00, and let me tell you, you get what you pay for. The annoying ‘phone off the hook’ sound you refer to only does that for a few minutes, then the line goes dead with the open circuit sound you describe. It’s also quite possible if your phone is that same lame-ass we had (I think it was a Panasonic) that it is being turned on by the cradle mechanism itself, but because the cradle and phone body muffle the sound from the earpiece, you can’t hear the ‘phone off the hook noise’ unless you are standing close by.