atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Security, Alarms and Paging Fire panel and POTS trouble

Line cards have been changed and the pair has been moved to different cards and different shelves.

So what are the "issues" that the panel is reporting?

Loss of Dial Tone, or Communication Error?

Had a burglar alarm which was fed on the return of the fire alarm's secondary dial tone, which could not communicate. Using a Sidekick, on the stress setting, saw a HUGE difference between the Telco side and the return from the fire alarm. Luckily, they had a copper Fax line that they could move the burglar alarm to, and leave the fire alarm with both lines dedicated.

The monitoring company reports "noise on line". The building occupants report the panel giving audible noises, but it has not resulted in a fire department dispatch. I really wanted to say the trouble was in the panel, but my trouble followed my from the L2 position to L1 when I swapped the pairs.

have you only tested the pair at the NID?? or have you tested it at rj31x before the panel? Sorry if these questions sound basic..just trying to cover everything and anything. Does this come from an RT, like an access node or pair gain or is it straight copper? If so check the T1's feeding the RT for errors. I have seen where these T1's will take timing errors and some slips, voice calls will be fine, maybe an occasional click but it kills data.

I have tested the lines at the jack inside the panel, but they are just RJ45. The service originates from a fiber fed digital pair gain RT and there is about 3500ft foot of 6 month old copper feeding the building. I thought it could be an RT issue, but this address has another line that never reports trouble and the only thing the RT feeds is a medical center, a hospital, and two college campuses, each with dedicated fire alarm lines and none of them have ever generated a trouble report. The only thing I am left to wonder about is that something is tripping the 48vdc that the panel is looking for. The only thing I don't know is who had this phone number prior. Tomorrow I am going to hook a stand alone caller id unit to the line and let it site to see if that number takes any incoming calls. Because at this point that is the only scenario that could be causing the voltage to drop. Thanks for all the replies so far.

Please let us know how this turns out.

Oh boy, I can't believe I did that! I'm going to have to start spell-checking my spell checker in the future. Doh!

I'll tell you one thing, Campinfool, you've sure done a lot more than most telco techs would do. I admire your dedication to this and to your customer. I must say that in reading your progress, I can't see how the problem could possibly be in the phone line itself. These systems really aren't that sensitive, so my money is on the alarm dialer having an intermittent fault.

I went out today and replaced the 22awg jumper wire feeding the demarc with 24awg wire and changed pairs in the iw running from the demarc to the rj45 feeding the panel. Of course when I'm there the lines show no trouble. I did test my incoming ringing current test to see if that was triggering the errors, but it failed miserably. I have thrown everything in my arsenal at this thing, but the customer still tells of trouble. I'm out of ideas, the customer wants a special engineer to come back out for testing, but when he was brought in in December he told us that everything was up to standards even though the customer does not quite remember it the same way.
After 4 trips this week alone the customer told me he wants someone else to fix the trouble because I have not been able to. Good luck to the next guy cause there is nothing wrong with the service on the telco side.

I HAVE TO AGREE THIS IS NOT A TEL CO ISSUE. THAT DIALER NEEDS TO BE REPLACED