Call blocker not working after BT Infinity upgrade

[Groundgripper]

I originally posted this on a thread on Jet Blast about call blockers, but it seems degenerated into a discussion about caller ID systems, so I thought I'd put it here to see if anyone has any ideas..

I purchased a CPR Call Blocker a couple of months ago and it worked fine, stopping, I reckon, at least five calls each day.

Then I had BT Openreach (or rather one of their contractors) in to get me on to their new Infinity fiber broadband.

Which works fine.

BUT...

...my call blocker doesn't. Ever since the new broadband was installed, if connected as instructed, it blocks me from making calls and lets everyone and anyone call me, but at greatly reduced volume. When I try to make a call the lights on the blocker come on but all I hear is feedback and a dial tone which continues as and after I dial any number. This is the situation whether the phone is on an extension or plugged directly into the main socket behind the removable front plate of the main wall socket (which gets rid of any effects on extension lines, etc.).

BT aren't interested as they say their line is working OK and anything my side of the main box is my problem, not theirs; the call blocker people say that it must be BT as it worked until BT changed the line. Both true I suspect, but that leaves me with nowhere to go. BT have offered to send an engineer along - at a cost of £129:ooh:.

Has anyone come across this problem before? I can only imagine that the BT contractor wired something up differently either in my wall socket or in the cabinet down the road which allows the phone to work but messes up the call blocker.



GG

[llondel]

Can you try it on a neighbour's line? If it works OK elsewhere then it's a line issue. If it doesn't then it's the box at fault.

Of course, it may be that the BT line meets its spec but the box is relying on some undocumented feature that no longer exists on your line. There used to be a lot of that in telecoms, things were done a particular way 'because it works'. Even if BT can be shown to be in violation of their specs you can still be out of luck (been there done that, broke the exchange so they had to fix it...), and if they conform to the spec then you're definitely out of luck.

What changes (if any) were made to your in-house wiring? Have you tried unplugging any other phones on the system, or trying a different phone with the box? It could be something like the line polarity has changed (the pair of wires got swapped somewhere, not normally a problem) and something with a fault that didn't show up one way is now causing an issue.

[dazdaz1]

Saw one of of these 'blockers' on a shopping channel. For it to work, one had to have 'caller display' (extra cost) enabled on the BT line.

[Mike-Bracknell]

Saw one of of these 'blockers' on a shopping channel. For it to work, one had to have 'caller display' (extra cost) enabled on the BT line.

This is more than likely the issue - BT have removed a service on your line as part of the upgrade.

[Groundgripper]

I've got caller display (had it for some years) which is why the call blocker worked OK before Infinity was installed. I should have said that the phone works fine without the call blocker in the line either directly from the main box or from an extension.

Someone did suggest that the line polarity might have become reversed, but I wouldn't have the faintest idea which wires to swap over! (And I couldn't do it from inside the main box anyway, that's a definite no-no but might be possible from an extension connection in the main box which I am allowed to play with).

GG

[Groundgripper]

Problem solved - sort of, but to my entire satisfaction.

Llondel, you were right. Thanks.:ok:

After reading bits on the internet and thinking, I swapped the Line A and Line B wires over on the extension socket in the main box and the call blocker now works perfectly on the extension in my study. As it still doesn't work on the master socket, I can only assume the BT contractor connected up the lines reversed when he installed it.

The good news is that I prefer the base phone on the extension in any case, so I won't bother to even try to take it further with BT; I couldn't stand another morning trying to work my way through their impenetrable maze of phone calls, automated response systems and sub-continent call centres.:ugh::ugh::ugh:

Result!!:ok::ok:

GG