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How do I explain this....

I have a Norstar Compact ICS 4x8 with 2 lines. I installed it myself for our Church, and it has been running fine for almost a year.

Today, our Pastor called me from his cell to let me know that there was a problem. Although people could call into the building and both parties could communicate fine, outbound calls are a different story.

If we call out, we can hear the person on the other end, but all they hear is what sounds like a horn blowing from our end; a loud tone that varies in pitch when the person on the other end hangs up.

I power cycled the switch to no avail. Other than that, I am not sure what else I can do. I was planning on plugging in an analog phone directly at the terminal box just to eliminate the switch as the problem, but it didn't seem logical as the problem occurs on both lines.

I am at a loss - any ideas?

TIA!

Len

I have not heard of that problem with the system, but I only work with a few each year. Plugging in a single line phone ahead of the system is a great idea, would rule out your dial tone provider. Also, you could try to move, say line 1, to line 3 and see if the problem follows (this would take some programming to at least 1 phone). If I think of anything else I will be happy to let you know.
Have a great weekend.

Stephanie

I haven't ran across this trouble either and I have scores of these systems out there. The previous troubleshooting advice is excellent. If you find that the trouble doesn't seem to occur on the Telco side of the system, you could try to isolate it to a particular station, or possibly, trunk cartridge.
It actually sounds like a Telco CO line card gone flakey under load, but I don't have a clue how to prove that, short of installing another system.

It may be a load problem in the cable facilities feeding your location. I have seen this before when a load coil is removed from a copper pair due to splicing activity or cable rearrangement, you get the loud squeal heard by the distant party. Testing with a butt set at the network interface will prove this. I have never seen this problem in a Norstar system.

this is just a guess and something you should check.
Check to see if the alarm is hooked up to that outbound line.
It probably is not hooked up properly and is not seizing the line.

Some things you said contridict this but it is just something to check. I have had incorrectly hooked up alarm jacks do some pretty wierd stuff, inbound and outbound