atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems Critical trunk issue. Ground start issues

I sure hope someone can give me some direction here. Customer has a Merlin Magix with 5 ground start trunks. Everything was working up until a month ago when Century Link has some trouble issues. Supposedly they were fixed. Now the customer is again having issues. I requested a tag and locate and they did that, but I am still having problems.

Line 1 works fine. And it will work on any of the 5 CO ports on the system regardless of where I plug in.

Line 2 & 4 will only receive calls in. You can't get dial tone from them if they are plugged into the PBX. You can pull dial tone using a butt set.

Lines 3 & 5 work in and out, except inbound calls on line 3 will ring line 5 and you can get some cross talk on the lines, regardless of whether they are in the system.

I thought that CL might have the ground crossed on the two lines 2 & 4, but that doesnt appear to be the case.

I know the Magix can be very sensitive about line voltage. If I reverse the pairs on Lines 2 & 4, I get nothing. If they are connected correctly, I can access the line and turn on the green light, but still no dial tone. So its not a polarity issue.

We even went as far as running brand new feed cables from the system to the D-marc. Still the same results. I can't believe its anything with the Magix, because line 1 will work fine on any port. I think there is a voltage issue on these lines that isn't showing up when we use our butt sets because they are more forgiving than the PBX..Any thoughts?? customer is basically down and I need to convince Century Link that the problem is theirs.

I even went as far as swapping 800 cards. All 5 lines are programmed for ground start.

Have you checked the stats of line #1 and comparied them to 2,3,4,and 5?

Mike elaborate on that a bit?

The stats on the CO lines.

IMO, you have proven that the problem isn't with your Magix by using L#1 as a test line on the other line ports of the Magix.
Now you must determine what the difference is between L#1 compaired to 2,3,4,and 5 on the CO side.

I'll sent you over a test sheet that we use.

Take a voltage reading with your meter, both on hook and off. Compare with what the Magix requires.

Mike has you going in the right direction. I'd make sure line 1 is still ground start. If it is then like Mike said the problems are with the lines.

yeah..its ground start. I will continue testing so I can prove to them it is their issue.

Also, measure voltage of line as a pick it up on the Magix, see what it drops to.

With all the emphasis on Voltage Measurements, I think you do not want to overlook LOOP CURRENT measurement as well. I feel that is probably your issue. I used to have quite a few issues with CL's forerunner, Q, regarding LOOP CURRENT, but that hasn't been an issue lately.

With any given Geographic Area, all things are possible. So, where I haven't been having issues here in the south part of the Denver Metro area, things could be quite different elsewhere.

Well, after I waited all day for the next Qwest..errr Century Link tech to show up. We were in the middle of the mountains 3 hours from Denver. I was finally able to demonstrate it was not our equipment. So they dug a little deeper and found a bunch of corrosion in one of the terminal boxes..

Viola! it has been magically fixed since then!!

Now I get to go back and actually have them convert them to LS so the customer can get ready to install a new IP Office.