sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems RFI in Parter 18D Handsets

I have a Partner R7 with 18D phones in a building about 1/2 mile from an FM radio station on 97.5. The original install used 6 button phones, and we had a very slight bit of noise in the background from the radio station, you had to be listening very caerfully to tell it was there. Since replacing a few of the 6 buttons with 18D phones, the noise is very prominent, and the voices on the radio make it difficult to understand the caller.
We have swapped out all of the silver satin phone cords for twisted pair Cat5, with no luck. The noise seems to be coming more from the coiled handset cord than from anywhere else. If you stretch/coil this cord the amplitude increases or decreases accordingly. We have tried both the Euro phones and the Series 2, both behave in the exact same way.
My next thought is to run shielded cat5 to the phones, and see what happens. The building has been verified as being properly grounded.

We have run into that several times and we were able to put filters on the lines in front of the PBX and take care of the problem.

We used the Z300A from Avaya.

Check these out: https://www.sandman.com/rf.html

Hope this helps,

So you put Z300A on the trunk side? Did you hear the noise at your demarc as well? Or only the phones. Were they 18D Partner phones?
Has anyone tried the Sandman filters? I would imagine they would work.

If you stretch/coil this cord the amplitude increases or decreases accordingly.

That should indicate that the handset cord is acting as the antenna. It's normally a waste of time worrying about the premises wiring.

Mike gave you good advice. Sandman has probably the widest selection of remedies for RFI as well as tech notes on how to apply them.

-Hal

Yup, we already ordered a couple of the handset filters. Hard not to for the price, was just wondering about the background of his issue.

Sandman is in my opinion one of the very best in the business

When I was working at Tulane Univ, we used to get radio interference on the phones. I cant remember if it was FM or AM, I'm assuming AM, and we would put capacitors across the receiver handset screws, either across the ear or mic or both, depending on the level of interference, and it would clear the problem. Got the caps from radio shack.

Im about at the end of my rope here. Out of the three phones that exhibited the FM problem, the filters only fixed one of them. The rest still play FM clearly. I have tried connecting two filters together, but did not effect the level of FM. I even tried a sandman.com shielded handset cord. Avaya says we are on our own with this issue. Any more ideas?

Cordless headsets, such as those made by Plantronics, might be an option. Kind of awkward to use with Partner Euro telephones though.

I assume from your post you've read this.
https://www.sandman.com/rf.html

If you've installed the handset filters to no avail make sure the trouble is in the handset. Also take a straight line plain ol' telephone and plug it in and see if you have the problem. You also state of the 3 phones one is fixed with a filter, how many phones do you have altogether?