sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Automated Time Announcement

Also ,could you be using one of those wireless units that uses any electrical outlet for an additional jack, if so the induction could possibly amplify some RF

This seems like it should be fairly easy to isolate. If this announcement is every hour on the hour then you only need to open-off the line and monitor at different points at each top of the hour.

In researching, I'm coming across alot of "talking alarm clock" products devised for the visually impaired, that perform this same function (very loud, hourly voice announcement stating the time.) It sounds like one of these companies may have unintentionally inputted your mother's TN into their database. I'm still looking into how these products actually work.

It sounds like one of these companies may have unintentionally inputted your mother's TN into their database.

That doesn't make sense given the symptoms. Telephones don't ring, are on hook. Just bring a cordless near the wall phone area and you hear it through the reciever on it also. Has to be RF, really hot RF.

I'm guessing local broadcast from a device a neighbor has.

Yup, that's what I'm guessing too. Mike, did you notice if any of those companies make anything that transmits to remote receivers or AM radios?

Just for the heck of it what's on the other side of the wall behind the wall phone? Is it another unit? Ask to have a look.

-Hal

Hal,
Here's an example of a "radio controlled" talking clock. I'm interested as well as to what's located on the other side of the wall from where the phone is mounted. This is really weird~ I'll dig around.

Regarding the "electrical meter", are we referring to a recently installed, say 2 months ago, "Automated Meter Reading System?"

I copied this from an Automated Meter Reader site:

Hourly interval reading is over-written each hour, at which point the new billing data replaces the previous day’s information. Data is remotely relayed to the TWACS transponder that is mounted in the electric meter and transmitted to the utility from that collection point.


Perhaps the Auto Meter Reader's hourly transmitted "timestamp" is also being received somehow by the cordless phones and is being retransmitted thru the wallphones receiver element as an extremely loud sidetone? It still doesn't make much sense to me that this would occur while the instrument is "on-hook"...but it may be worth looking into. Here's the link where I found the above information.

Does she have and answering machine? Maybe that is playing the message and it "sounds" like it is coming from the phone.

Perhaps the Auto Meter Reader's hourly transmitted "timestamp"...

That would be digital in this day and age. Can't see a chime and female voice announcing the hour to the electric company computer. This has to be a clock of some sort.

So Bob, haven't heard from you in a while. Have you been doing some detective work based on what we have been thinking?

-Hal

Thirteen years isn't really that old by telephone line standards. It's actually pretty up-to-date. Now if your mother's place is a house that was built in 1954 and she just inherited a "left-behind" GTE harvest gold wall phone in the kitchen that was installed in 1971, that's a different story. Phone line standards have not changed for a typical residence in half a century or more.

You will be hard-pressed to find anybody working at today's telcos who have the ability to comprehend the hardware or things that were done years ago, let alone troubleshoot them. Most of these folks weren't even born when some of these installations were done. The canned solution will to be to install a new protector, change cable pairs, run a new CAT5 cable and install a jack. That will do nothing whatsoever and if this is suggested, this proves their lack of knowledge for these situations.

Most handset receiver elements are hearing aid compatible, even in older phones. A 1965 rotary dial wall phone may have had it replaced at some point along the way with a HAC unit. These elements have the ability to "radiate" the sound produced in the handset's earpiece to a nearby receiver (hearing aid) via magnetic waves. While I would like to say that this is picking up nearby audible messages (perhaps from the metering equipment), it would be quite a stretch since these phones have a physical set of contacts in the switch hook that actually short out the input to the receiver when the handset is on-hook. This was done to reduce the loud "click" heard when the line connection was broken. This pretty much renders this theory useless unless these contacts were disconnected at some point within the phone, leaving the receiver element "live".

I am in agreement with most folks here on the speculation that has been made so far. I also agree that it's likely that any information being transmitted for metering is done digitally.

There's still a possiblity that perhaps some local radio hobbyist has built some device that might be transmitting something like this. Remember that only legitimate radio operators actually maintain licenses and broadcast within the proper power and frequency ranges. This is exactly why radio broacasting is licensed and regulated. A phone call to the local FCC branch office might be in order.

Suttle makes a telco-grade radio interference filter for the entire wiring system within the residence, but I don't think that would provide the fix since this problem occurs when the phone is on-hook. It might not hurt to experiment with one just for sanity's sake. Since you are on the opposite end of the country, I don't see that as being an option unless one of us here who in her area is available for hire to try it.

I think at this point, we are all grasping at straws, but at a minimum, we are throwing a little food for thought into the stew.

There's my $2,471.93 worth.

Good point, Hal. I was grasping. What a braincramp! I'm off to find some duct tape.