I have a weird issue I've never seen before. First off, I am not a phone system guy. I have worked on some LG Ericson and Vodavi systems, but by no means am I an expert. I will not be performing any suggestions about my problem, but passing them on to a more qualified person. Having said that, I am an intercom guy and deal with Rauland, Valcom, Dukane and Bogen systems on a daily basis. Anyways, here's the problem.
Not too long ago, phone systems started getting upgraded around here (school system). Normally, to access the paging system, the user would hit "page" and would get the dial tone from the intercom, and dial #01* for instance, to make a zone page. Now, after these upgrades, they get the dial tone but it seems its not getting the #. Sometimes, after waiting 5 seconds or so it will work fine. Sometimes dialing ##01* will work. I can connect my butt-set directly to the paging system all day long with no issues, and since its only an issue with schools that have upgraded their phone systems all clues point that direction.

Any clues?
Intercoms being affected are Rauland Telecenter ICS and Telecenter V

The phone system is a Nortel Mg1000, I think.

Are you using a TRUNK port from the phone system to connect to the Rauland? It probably isn't recognizing the DTMF from time to time. Maybe the volume is to low or if the Nortel is a IP system it is injected white noise and interfering with it.
Just throwing some ideas at ya.

Phone system issue. Let there phone vender deal with it.

Seconded!

The new phone system is not programed to correctly work with your paging system.

Call the phone company back out and tell them to fix it, but be prepared to supply the codes they will need.

While I agree that this is an issue that needs to be addressed by the the vendor of the phone system, it is important to remember that many systems (at least the ones that I work with lately) don't arbitrarily pass * or # in the outward dialing string on an outbound trunk call.

Your mention that it works fine after a five-second timeout pretty much sums this up. Most phone systems allow for CO line ports (trunks) to be configured to ignore standard dialing patterns for this reason. Have them see if they can configure this (these) trunk(s) to be unconditioned.

You might want to double-check the make/model of the phone systems involved here. I don't think that there's anything newly-manufactured with the Nortel brand name out there.

This sounds like more of an issue with the Vertical MBX that Stafford County is buying now.

The Nortel needs to have timers tweaked. The End of Dial and end to end signalling timers particularly. The # sign initiates EES.