sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems Confrence Calls have low volume

New MICS w/ pots lines

anybody know of a fix for this?

Our system is the same way. I customer is complaining about it.


Is there some kind of gain adjustment?

There have been several post regarding low volume when using the Norstar Coference feature. It is recommended that the customer add the conference feature to their POTS line and utilize the CO conference bridge with the LINK feature in the Norstar.

Yep, your problem is not specific to just Nortel systems. All phone systems using POTS lines are going to have varying levels of this same problem. There's just no simple fix.

You see, there is always a certain amount of loss in delivering dial tone from the CO to the customer's site. Unfortunately, this loss can vary from line-to-line, so a single system fix isn't always going to help. When you take two lines with a certain amount of loss on them and tie them together, you are essentially doubling the loss causing the parties at the far ends to hardly hear each other.

Obviously, ISDN is the way to go these days if you are looking for a true "lossless" connection, but not everyone has the budget for that. The second best way to go is usually by converting the POTS lines to Centrex, or at a minimum adding the "3-way" calling feature. By having this, the conference call is actually placed in the CO switch and not at the customer premises. That cuts the loss by 50% and since you end up being just a "party", your loss is no more than the other callers. Basically, everyone ends up about as equal as they can be with regard to volume.

Centrex in our area is actually LESS expensive than traditional lines, so usually the customer is happy to do it. Also, when using Centrex or 3-way, the conference call only ties up the original single line, unlike tying two lines together with a system conference. That alone, even if Centrex or 3-way costs more, the capacity of lines not being affected usually outweighs the additional expense.

Both Centrex and 3-way calling utilize your system's "Link" button (Flash or Recall on most other systems). Aside from the slight difference in operation, it's a no-brainer to use it. I know this doesn't specifically answer your question, but hopefully it gives you an option. It's the only sure-fire solution we have found.

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How come there's always enough time to go back and fix it a second time?

I had this problem as well. We used the M7XXX phones for 3 way calling with the M7XXX as the center and the other parties could not hear each other very well.

We tried out the Nortel conference phone that looks like a 3 side boomerang (forgot the model) and it helped a lot. The callers on both ends did not have to shout any longer but it still could have been a little better.