ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Telephone Talk

Also transferred from the DIY thread.

DJK:
I'm with you on that. To someone who's grown up with the modulated ring tones found in most English-speaking countries, the single-frequency ring signal on the Continent sounds really peculiar.

We used to have a variety of ring tones in Britain years ago with all the different exchange equipment in use. Click here for a short audio clip demonstrating a few of the old types. It's kind of boring now that every exchange has the same ring!

The UK busy/congestion/NU (number unobtainable) tone is based on a basic 400Hz signal, so it's close.

Dial tone in the UK is different though. The modern system uses a dual-frequency signal similar to America, but the old network used 33 or 50Hz, giving a very distinctive "purring" sound.

Irish dialtone came as a surprise to me the first time I picked up a phone over there. In fact I thought it was held up on NU tone at first!

Although we have a distinct congestion tone, many people never seemed to notice that it's slightly different to a regular busy signal. It's rare to hear it these days, but you'll run across it from time to time. NU tone has also been disappearing in favor of the SIT tones and announcement.


The closest we had to it here was the old pay tone, commonly called the "pips," which were used on post-payment coin phones to tell the caller to insert money. That was still nothing like as fast as your routing tone, though.

Another sample of the old system, in sequence: Regular busy, congestion, pay tone .

[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 10-15-2003).]

The Irish dial tone a continious tone 425-450Hz seems to be in line with the norm in most of Western Europe though. The systems in Scandinavia, France, Germany all seemed to use rougly the same dial tone.

The crossbar switches here sounded the same.. same tones, just electromechanically generated including the tri-tone wrong number tone.

I get the impression that because we used a lot of Ericsson switches that we prob. ended up with a lot of scandinavian tones. (other than the ring tone)

The only place I've heard a UK style tone was The Netherlands.

The only place you'll hear a UK/US type tone here is in some old PABXs where it was used to differentiate between an internal and an external line.

I've noticed a European flat 425Hz ringing tone seems to have appeared on our operator services over the last few years.

The ring tone that's presented when you call is actually recorded as part of the please hold announcement. It's followed by a burst of French/German style ringing and then an automated "welcome to eircom xxx speaking".


Here are the standard tones:

Dialtone

Ring Tone


Busy / Engaged Tone

Special Information Tone: (Wrong Number)

Call Progress Tone (Please Wait)

These sounded very similar on an the old Ericsson Crossbar systems (ARF) just a little more electromechanical and the Call Progress Tone didn't didn't feature at all.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 10-15-2003).]

Our tones are pretty similar, only the ring tone sounds like the busy tone, only longer and wih longer gaps.
Never heard the call forwarding here. If a number doesn't exist you get the tritone in endless loop (officially) or sometimes just busy forever.
Connector boxes for hardwired phones were about 5x10x2 cm and usually beige, old ones black. You sometimes still see them around, especially where the subscriber had more than just 1 standard phone. There were 2 types of modular jacks, a round one with 4 concentric rings, like a headphone plug only thicker and it got much thinner with every ring towards the tip. Other type, mostly used in commercial buildings had IIRC something like 10 pins in 2 horizontal rows. Pretty weird beasts.
Connector boxes had 4 spade terminals, 2 used, 1 reserved for auxiliary bell, 1 used for whatever (there was a green wire in all phone cords that was almost sleeved and unused). IIRC the terminals are a, b, W2 and E (maybe earth?). Aux. bell hooked up to a and W2, W2 has to be connected to W2 in the phone, W1 is the interbnal bell connector.

the two most common phones supplied in Ireland during the 1980s were:


Northern Telecom Harmony (Branded Telecom Eireann Harmony and made in Ireland)

And the wonderfully tacky Ireland map version of the same phone:




This was one of the standard early 80s-late 80s phones here. Apparently now a very collectable iconic design by Henning
Andreasen of Denmark.

I would still use either of them in place of the modern made in china rubbish that's on the market. Rock solid, well designed, excellent sound quality and last for 20+ years no problem.



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 10-16-2003).]

I couldn't have run into that many Irish busy tones, as I never noticed before that they're slower than the British version.

The cadence appears to be 0.5 sec. on, 0.5 off, the same as standard U.S. busy signals.

British busy is 0.375 sec. on , 0.375 off, placing it halfway in speed between the American busy and reorder.

(Though both sound rather different to U.S. tones due to the single 400 or 425Hz tone.)

Paul,

Well modems seem to have no problems identifying it.

Most modems are even fine with the call progress tone if it ever does crop up (Rare unless you're calling a mobile).

Actually they're proposing to introduce a new tone to identify off network mobile calls to be inserted before the first ring.

It's become a problem since number portability came into effect. The mobile phone companies have taken to putting in announcements like "The person you are calling is no longer an O2 customer please wait while we connect you" when you call an 086 (o2's original prefix) number that's now on Vodafone or Meteor.

A lot of customers found the announcements repeditive, time consuming and annoying and others even hung up as it sounded like the customer had been cut off for non-payment or something.

They feel the need to tell you this as you might get charged higher rates if you call a number "off network".

I think the congestion tone here is basically the Call Progress Tone. Rather than actually telling you that the system is tied up it will just make you wait until it puts the call through. I've come across it when there's been a network glitch or some sort. E.g. one weekend two of eircom's major switching centres had a software glitch (they'd centrally uploaded the wrong software to the network! [or one of their "switching partners" did] and calls were being handled by other switches which all started to run slow as they were obviously under heavy pressure. So lots of "bebebebebe" before you were connected. The system seemed to accept call attempts just made people wait until it was good and ready to complete them.


----

Also on the being dumped off the system if you don't dial with in X time we've a weird siutation here:

1) on a normal line you'll get a dial tone, then after about 50 seconds an engaged tone, designed to cause any automated equipment to hang up. After a further 50 seconds the line goes silent for 30 seconds then the DC feed is cut.. you'll hear a relay cutting the power and then complete silence until the phone's replaced.

2) if the line has voicemail: (as 70% do)
you pick up.. dialtone for 35 seconds after this period you'll be prompted like this "mailbox name" please enter your password. (Voicemail can also be accessed by dialling 171)

3) If there's DSL on the line the line card is programmed not to cut the power to the line even if it's left off-hook so it will provide a dial tone as normal then just go to a never ending busy tone if you don't hang up.

-----

The old crossbar lines behaved very similarly. Dialtone (50 seconds) busy tone (1 min) then cut the line off until it is reset by replacing the reciever.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 10-17-2003).]

Guys,
Just a small question regarding Cordless phones.
My next door nieghbour bought a cheap Cordless yesterday and it's coming through on my TV set.
I informed her of this and she is sending it back on Monday.
But, my question is, what sort of frequency do the handsets of these systems work on?.
Also, I was under the impression that these sorts of phones were very LOW power devices, with the output measured in micro-Watts, but I'm beginning to wonder.
Can someone please help?.

Trumpy,

They usually do work on very low power, however it sounds very like that cordless phone is not approved for use in NZ and shouldn't be on the market at all. She should bring it back and kick up a stink. If they refuse to do anything about it threaten them with bringing it to the attention of the telecommunications regulator as its using unlicenced radio spectum etc.

She should get a DECT (Digital Enhanced (used to be European) Cordless Telephony) phone they retail over here for as little as € 60 and provide much better battery life, signal that's comparable to a fixed wired phone and are much more secure. She would also have the possibility of adding handsets to her base station (from any manufacturer) and setting up a 6 extension phone system (wirelessly)

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 10-18-2003).]

djk,
I had my Scanner do a few loops while she was using the said phone.
And I came out with the fx (73.350 fundamental), with Harmonics at 2x, 3x, 4x,8x, 16x).
This was searched by a AOR 8900 desk-top Scanner.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 10-18-2003).]