sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Cable Co emta and my payphone

So, I recently had to have the cable company tech come to the house to replace our gateway, which had failed. This gateway is an all in one box containing the modem, router, and phone adapter. They brought a new gateway out, hitched it up and all seemed well. It has dual band wifi, the weird phone noises went away and all seemed right with the world... Until I went to make a call with my payphone. It WILL not dial out with the new gateway. The phone is off hook for a considerable length of time before it dials the number. This wasn't an issue before, but now the timer in the new gateway is so short, that just after I dial the number on the payphone, the gateway sends a CPC then reorder tone. The call never has a chance to go through. I'm currently on hold with *big name cable co* and I will let everyone know how it progresses. Let's see if they have a tech that actually knows something. I do not have high hopes.

Update: Cable co *tech support* is USELESS. Nothing we all didn't already know, but you would think someone would know what a CPC was, and what the various timers in an analog terminal adapter are there for. Of course it's locked out and I can't make any changes, but they swear that they can't make any changes either. I had to move the payphone over to my OOMA line, and now it works again. I kind of liked having a normal dial tone when you took the payphone off hook instead of the dopey musical one from OOMA. For under 4 bucks a month for 5000 minutes, I deal with the hokey DT.

See if you can sneak the OOMA SIP username and information and just hook up a nice Cisco 186 ATA. You can customize all those settings on it.

Also, not sure what you were expecting with the cable company "customer service."

That ooma is locked up pretty tight. I'm not even sure if it's sip, though I can't imagine it would be anything else. From what little information I've gathered, it logs in through some sort of VPN into their network and it's encrypted. I doubt a standard ATA would work. What I would like is my own eMTA that I can change some of the timer values that works with the cable co. I have my doubts that they would allow 3rd party equipment, and it would likely be locked out too. I just find it hard to believe that no one employed by the largest cable company has a friggen clue. Or at least that it's so difficult to find someone who does.

The people who would have even the remotest idea of what you're asking for would be miles up the call center chain. Just keep asking for the next level of support, I guess.

If you are using a "smart" payphone (meaning it has a computer in it) and it is taking a long time to start to outdial, you may have two issues with which to deal.

First, most "smart" payphones used dial tone detection before dialing out. This was one means of trying to thwart "chain" calling when a call was completed, but the CO did not return a CPC. The phone was supposed to wait for dial tone before out dialing. There would be a timer associated with the programming to shorten the wait for dial tone time.

Second, and this is most probable, the dial tone level is too low coming from the cable box. This, too, should be adjustable within the phone, but, if not, you can ask the cable tech to increase the line level. They CAN do that, even if it's only a 1/2 to 1 db.

Rcaman

I can put a buttset on the line, and hear the payphone dialing out. While I agree, there may be some programming that could be changed within the payphone, it does work fine with ooma's oddball dial tone. The problem seems, that the payphone is off hook when you lift the receiver, as evidenced by an in use lamp I have on my key sets. (There is an "in use" relay from sandman directly after the eMTA, wired only to light the hold lamps in my 1A2 sets should someone be using a non 1A2 phone in the house. It is NOT wired to any A-leads and removing the relay has no effect on the payphone.) So... from the time you lift the handset on the payphone, till you dial and it accepts the coin, the line is in an off hook state. It then returns on hook for an instant, then goes off hook again to dial. The "instant" is only enough to regain DT, and no so quick as to act like a flash or a pulse dialed one. Maybe it is acting like a flash...... Anyway, then it dials the number, then I get a CPC, then reorder tone. I know its a CPC because the in use lamp goes out for a split second. It is not the payphone hanging up, because I put my buttset across the line in talk mode and I still get the CPC. I'm kind of clueless as to the issue, unless the eMTA doesn't like that flash, although it never bothered the old one.

I think that's exactly it- the EMTA takes that as a flash which the switch uses for things like switching to another call (call waiting), forwarding, etc. Does your buttset have a flash button? What happens when you have dialtone then flash?

-Hal

I just did a couple of tests with the buttset and thats not it. I tried doing a flash then making a call with the buttset. Went through fine. Tried listening in on the payphone in monitor mode. DT when payphone goes off hook, returns to on hook as last digit is dialed, stays on hook for about a full second, then goes off hook, I hear DT, I hear the digits dialed, Sounds like the right digits to me, then CPC and reorder. Third test I took the payphone AND buttset off hook at the same time, put in my quarter and dialed the number. Line could never go on hook because of the buttset being off hook. Heard payphone go off hook and dial digits. Dial tone right up till first digit. All digits dialed then about a half second pause. Then CPC and reorder. I'm wondering if the payphone is dialing too quickly for the eMTA to recognize all the digits. It seems to spit them out pretty fast.

In case there is any confusion, the payphone has the user enter the digits, the dtmf tones are deliberately wrong, after the first digit is entered the phone goes on hook, after the last digit is entered, it then goes off hook and auto-dials the correct digits. The wrong sounding digits only go to the users ear, not into the line.