sundance-communications.com Forums Telephony Discussion Phone & VoIP Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems Seemingly odd T7316E behaior on a BCM400

I've just started at a new company and they have a Nortel BCM400 which I've never worked with before ... so I apologize if this question is Nortel 101 ...
They have the T7316E handsets all over the office setup in such a way that if you unplug one from the system, the DID goes dead and reports an error to incoming carriers (i.e. if you call from an AT&T cell phone, it advises you to call 611, which is AT&T cellular customer service). As soon as you plug the phone back in, the calls ring right through.
Why does this happen instead of routing the call directly to vmail, or just ringing a phantom line? Is it normal for a Nortel system to require a physical handset to be connected in order to handle the call?

I've gone through the element manager and nothing is jumping out at me to change this behavior, so any insight into this 'feature' would be a huge help.

Thanks

"DID" numbers are directed to individual TELEPHONES. If you unplug it where would expect it to go?

Perhaps I'm a little naïve with regards to Nortel gear, but I would expect it to continue down the call path designated in the system.

DID's may be directed to handsets, but they're terminated at the PBX (at least in my mind). The voicemail, and call handling configuration is not related to, or controlled by the handset ... so it seems counter intuitive that unplugging a handset from the wall would result in an origin carrier "feature not supported" message when the PBX has other options (not even a PBX generated message).

My whole objective at the moment is getting some headless DIDs as we have ~100 DIDs, and only ~50 handsets. There are a lot of people that work remotely 100% of the time, and just use their desk phones in the office for voicemail. We have lots of empty desks for new people to sit at, but all of the phones are in use ... my initial plan was to just pull the wires in the closet and re-land them on unused ports; but as soon as I pull the wires, the old numbers go dead and even the voicemail stops working.

My initial assumption was that there may be a setting in the BCM to ignore handset status that I just couldn't find ... but maybe there is an entirely different approach that I need to take for this problem?

DID's may be directed to handsets, but they're terminated at the PBX (at least in my mind). The voicemail, and call handling configuration is not related to, or controlled by the handset. THEY ARE RELATED!!

my initial plan was to just pull the wires in the closet and re-land them on unused ports; but as soon as I pull the wires, the old numbers go dead and even the voicemail stops working.

Can you imagine that, you start pulling wires and things stop working.

What's with the sarcasm here?? The wires being pulled are just the line wires to the handset ... the equivalent of unplugging the phone at the desk.

When I disconnect a handset from an asterisk, Avaya, or Altigen system ... the PBX still handles the DID as expected; regardless if they are digital or analog lines. If I unregister a VOIP extension from any of those systems .. guess what .. they still handle the call. The handset is related in routing sequence, not in execution ... the handset has no idea what happens to the call if you don't answer it .. and it doesn't care.

If I unplug all the phones at my house, or turn off my cell phone ... the phone companies still route my calls to voicemail ... the don't return carrier errors.

A handset is a peripheral device to the PBX ... like a computer mouse. Doesn't your computer willingly boot and process data without a mouse? Or does that just stop working too?

Read Mooretels answer

Sorry but thats a no brainer

Use Express Messaging line to send DID calls to voice mail.

You also need to make the Prime Set the DN of Callpilot under Target Line/s programming.


MC

Mooretel didn't provide an answer to the first post, he made a statement and asked a question; neither of which explained WHY the PBX errors out the line to the carrier when the internal handset is disconnected, or if this is normal Nortel behavior

No idea to what statement/post you are even referring.

Curlycord

Thank you ... this is exactly the solution I needed and it works perfectly.

I'm still unclear, however, what the Nortel is trying to do in the other configuration that causes the 'feature not supported' message at the origin carrier when handsets are disconnected.