Problem answering calls on home phone extensions

Posts: 29 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Posts: 29

Hi.

I have a problem that has me perplexed.

I have had Vonage in my home connected to my home wiring for over two years. I have been, for the most part, very happy with the service.

About six months ago we purchased two cheap 2.4Ghz GE cordless phones to connect to different phone jacks in the home. I also have a corded phone and a cordless Panasonic phone/answering machine in the house too.

Anyway, I'm able to make calls from all phone lines just fine. The problem is answering calls. On the cheap GE cordless phones, when I attempt to pickup an inbound call, all I get is an earful of static. I can only answer the calls on my corded phone or on my Panasonic.

I was going to try a few different things to test but I really don't know what might be causing this. One thing I will try later is to unplug the Panasonic and see if that makes a difference. Note that the Panasonic is one of the models with Talking Caller ID (great feature!).

If anyone has any ideas it would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

-DG

Posts: 4751 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4751

If your computer network has wireless, then you could be getting interference between the wireless router and the 2.4 GHz phones.

Posts: 29 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Posts: 29

Didn't really consider that. Yes, I do have a wireless network in my home too (Linksys WRT54G) and I occasionally drop my wireless connection when the phone is answered. However, I tried a test tonight (called home from my cell phone) and I was able to answer just fine on the GE 2.4Ghz phones.

Since it now appears to be an intermittent problem, maybe it does have something to do with my wireless network. I really don't know...

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

I would go purchase a set of 5.8 Ghz phones and test them with your setup. If it fixes the problem, great, if not, keep the receipt and take them back. This way you're not out any money just for testing.

Posts: 4751 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4751

Or if you have an old, wired phone lying around, plug it in and use it exclusively for awhile.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 18, 2007 Posts: 4

Of course, before spending the money, you can go into your wireless router settings and see if it's using the standard channel of 6. Change this to either 1 or 11. What this would do is change how the wireless network utilizes the spread to the lower end (1) or higher end (11) of the spectrum.

Cordless phones may have up to 30 channels because they are able to "squeeze" more channels in the same space because they use a narrow bandwidth than their "broadband" cousin the wireless network. Also, some cordless phones no matter what the user has selected always answers between channels 10-22 or the equivalent to channels 5-8 on wireless network channels. You can't change the phone but you can change how your network utilizes this spectrum! I have two wireless networks and 2 different phones all on the same 2.4GHz spectrum without interference in a 1600 sqft house.

The 2.4GHz spectrum is the same for all appliances, but its how they use that spectrum that matters and sometimes there is overlap. Think of overlap as a collision and in any networking configuration, collisions are bad and causes hiccups and dropped carriers. Cordless phones use between 56-108kps spread and need less "room" to send and receive data on one channel versus wireless networks which use between 11Mbps on a "b" network and 54Mbps on a "g" network, the larger packets require more "room" on the spectrum thus leaving less channels available.

Another way of looking at this is a wireless network channel uses the equivalent of 3-5 phone channels and during heavy traffic 5-8 phone channels. If your wireless network is set to a middle channel (ie channel 6) and most cordless phones use channels 10-22, your chances of a "collision" is much greater.

But all phones are different in how they use the spectrum, but it's worth a try. I had to change my wireless networks to channels 1 and 10 because I too have a couple of 2.4 GHz phones and I love them too much to just get rid of them.

I hope this makes some sense. With that said, it's very easy to buy into new technology, it's just more difficult to incorporate the new with the old without going bankrupt!

Just remember to keep it simple. Cool

-Matt

Posts: 29 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Posts: 29

Matt,

Thanks for the info. I was running my wireless router on channel 3. I have since changed to it channel 1.

I did, however, replace my cheap GE 2.4ghz phones with a Uniden 5.8ghz mult-handset model. I have not had a problem since.

I suppose it was the 2.4ghz band after all.

Regards,

Dave