In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

Not sure if this is the correct forum, but...

I found out yesterday that some elderly friends, he's 91 and she's 90 in 2 months and currently in hospital, have had problems with their telephone line for 3 years. There's no broadband involved. I'm assured that they're with BT.

Someone can ring their number and get different outcomes depending on who knows what: number temporarily unavailable, ringing tone but phone doesn't ring, unobtainable, whatever. BT engineers have been out 4 times and have said everything's ok. Clearly it isn't. I don't have chapter and verse on each and every problem, when and how long. But essentially it's totally unpredictable and therefore, arguably unusable.

The fact that the engineers have been perhaps suggests that the home wiring is ok, so presumably could be a cabinet or exchange issue. Oddly I've just put their phone number in SamKnows and it has no data for it.

Any suggestions on how to progress this.

I have exactly the same problem! BT engineers said everything was okay. The issue appeared only a couple of days ago... I'll keep calling BT guys then. Let us know when you find a solution.

I've just rung to find out who they pay the bill to... and got This number is temporarily out of order, we're sorry for any inconvenience. Tried again and again, same result.

This is a crazy situation for a couple of almost or actual nonagenarians, one of whom is in hospital.

I've no idea if they're registered with BT as elderly and/or vulnerable.

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

It's an 0161 612 xxxx number. Don't know which CP may nominally own that number.

Looks like that number range is owned by Virgin Media. So if they have moved to an Openreach provider the issue is a problem with Number Portability between Virgin and the new provider.

It sounds like an intermittent fault in the LIC (line interface circuit) in the far exchange.

When the software in the exchange tries to present the call to the line but encounters this problem, it will return the failure back to the calling exchange, which can then decide how to present the failure to you, the human. The difference you hear between BT landline and mobile is because the calling exchange (your BT exchange, and your mobile operator's exchange) choose to behave differently.

In this case, the BT exchange is being nice, and giving you verbal feedback. Though I imagine it would be less nice if a dialup modem were trying to listen to tones.

Your mobile exchange is being less nice. However, there is valuable spectrum being used here, so the voice channel (between your mobile and your mobile exchange) will be freed up as soon as the call failed. The ongoing NU tone that you hear out of the earpiece is likely to be being generated by the mobile handset itself.

It sounds like an intermittent fault in the LIC (line interface circuit) in the far exchange.

(cough) I did say that yesterday .....

If I had to be pushed, *maybe* duff exchange equipment, but tricky to prove.

Not a fix to your issue but you should check if your friends qualify for https://www.btplc.com/inclusion/HelpAndSupport/Docum...

Hi cheshire_man I'm sorry to see your friends have been suffering with this problem for such a long time. If they need any help getting it sorted we'll be happy to lend a hand.

We can be contacted on this link https://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact_email/c/4950

Thanks
Neil

Doubt this is a problem with the local exchange. A number is always owned by the allocated range holder, in this case Virgin Media. The range holder then forwards to the relevant ported provider. Seen this before with Virgin numbers ported to Openreach providers.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

It sounds like an intermittent fault in the LIC (line interface circuit) in the far exchange.

(cough) I did say that yesterday .....

If I had to be pushed, *maybe* duff exchange equipment, but tricky to prove.

Absolutely. But nobody was paying attention to that bit.

As someone who works on the stuff on the inside of exchanges, I thought it was worth reiterating.

Incidentally ... as this kind of fault crosses the boundary from Openreach back to BTW (or TSO), how do you go about progressing a fix for the subscriber?