atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Comdial Telephones & Systems Comdial phone system problems

Hello all,
First off, please forgive me for my ignorance when it comes to phone systems.
I am the network admin for a small school district. We are having huge problems with our Comdial phone system dropping calls. I'm not sure of the phone system model, but we have Impact headsets. However, I can probably get any information needed. The phone company refers to it as the PBX. We switched from Pots lines to a PRI. We have 4 schools, and they are all connected via fiber. We wanted to utilize that fiber and have all of the systems talk to each other for intercom purposes, and all of the schools use the PRI for outside calls. There is a voicemail computer at the "main" phone system which the AA transfers all calls.
The company that set all of this up has no idea what is causing the problem. Let me describe the problem:
A person can call our number, and the AA answers. We have the system set up so that you can enter your party's extension at any time. Sometimes you can enter an extension and it transfers the call. Sometimes you get hold music before entering anything at all. A lot of the time, the call is dropped after entering the extension.
The configuration has been checked, and quadruple checked. The phone system firmware/OS has been updated. Lots of things have been updated.
AT&T has done extensive testing on the PRI and finds no problems.
This has been going on for months. I'm at my wit's end. I know there are a LOT of variables involved, but I am hoping that someone here might have a hunch for us to go on. Thanks for reading!

Wow you do have quite a few issues going on. The first thing you're going to have to do is find the model of the Comdial systems at each location. That will give us an idea of where to start the troubleshooting process. Post back what you have and we'll see if we can't get you some relief. Welcome to the forums.

Awesome, I will get that info as soon as possible. Thanks for the reply and the welcome!

I don't see any official model numbers on the cabinets. I decided to take some pictures of the main cabinets, hoping they might help.

Voicemail - we originally had only 4 lines, which easily got tied up and folks were getting busy signals a lot. We bumped that up to 12 lines, and the busy signal problem has been resolved.


Inside the main cabinet



Network card in main cabinet



Side of Main Cabinet



Inside Expansion Cabinet



Side of Expansion Cabinet

The telephone man updated the software on the main system yesterday and is going to update the software on the other systems today. We have not noticed any improvement in performance since the upgrade.

Issues started after PRI install?

Yes. One thing I should mention is that our phone guy tried to call one of his support numbers - when he pressed 2 (or whatever number it was) for the menu option he wanted, the call dropped just like when someone calls in to our phone system. He was calling out and it happened. That leads me to believe something is wrong with the PRI - noise on one of the lines or something? Maybe the dropped calls are random because you don't always get the same channel of the PRI. However, AT&T did do that extensive test and said nothing was wrong. Just brainstorming...

ATT ALWAYS says it's not their problem. It's built into their entire psych.

Do you know if the PRI is provided by a soft switch versus a tradition telephone central office?

I suspect you are correct, it is an ATT issue. Unfortunately it may be difficult for your vendor to prove.

I'm not sure about the PRI. A while back, we had an issue where the phones (outside calls only) would go down at about 3:30 pm every day. Turns out there were issues with the connection between our town and the next so errors were being generated on our PRI. After so many errors, the line would shut itself off. That was fixed, and ATT says there are no problems now...

Have your tech pull the status logs in Hyperterminal. It will show if the PRI is having issues.

BTW you have a 2 cabinet FXII with a 12 port Corporate Office voice mail. Also you have a SRVS-3 board...ask the tech if they installed the on board synch chip for T1/PRI clocking.