We are currently having a problem with about 6 Iwatsu phone systems where the user complains of VM messages being cut off in mid sentence. 5 out of 6 systems are using the same dial tone provider. We have requested that this provider check line volume as Iwatsu tech support says the dialtone has too low of a volume. The provider says it tests out fine. We have also turned off DTMF recognition in the VM system. Anyone else having this problem with Iwatsu VM?

Have you taken a look at the silence detect timer?

Yes, and the msg's are cut off usually in the middle of a word...

That is very odd that there are that many systems with the same issue. I did have a VS/VMI once that kept cutting off messages. Iwatsu eventually replaced it and the problem was solved. But to have six with the same problem does point you in the direction of the carrier. How often does it happen? I am assuming that it is not able to be duplicated while you are onsite.

Some of the customers have saved the msg's to play for me. Iwatsu said to look at the Auto Gain Control (AGC) in the VM programmer. They are blaming the problem completely on the carrier, who is clueless. I swapped out the the VM card in a VS with a brand new one off of the shelf. The customer is still having the same problem. The only thing that the carrier can come up with is that the DSL line was also on line #4. They put the DSL on its own pair, but now the problem is back. Personally I think it is the VM card..... We had one cust whose VML completely failed, hard drive quit. So we replaced it with a new card. The day after, they called us reporting msg's being cut off. They never had the problem before the new card. All of the customers have POTS lines.

Are these lines being fed out of a channelbank or a dual line carrier device from the telco? Confirm the SW101 on the citk card to be at 0db(no suppression/factory). Also for a test you could turn off disconnect detect on the lines in class 01, item 04 for the lines, but this may causes ports to be tied up longer. Does the callers ever get cut off in a conversation or during greetings, or is it just leaving messages

Also make sure you have offhook signalling disabled for the vm ports, class 10 item 43.

No channelbanks are involved. All switches on the circuit cards have been checked, so there is no padding. Callers never get cut off during conversations or while listening to greetings, just when they are leaving messages. Until yesterday, all systems that were having the proble were on POTS lines. Now we have one that was installed a month ago with a T1 that is reporting the same problem.

Does there appear to be any continuity among the problematic ones. Sometimes when I've had multiple problematic units there has been some kind of connection where they were all very close serial numbers, showing from the same production run. Or sometimes very close serials link back to a certain supply lot of a specific IC or something. I'm sure you would have probably spotted this already; I just thought it might be worth mentioning.

Are you still having the problems? If possible check with the DT provider to see what switch they are fed from (dms/5ess/ewsd)and if they are fed via to a slc "slick". We have had problems on other voicemails when the lines are to "clean", ie not enough sidetone, no echo; but they used dialogic or rhetorex boards and you could adjust the dsps so that you could counter this, I don't think the vmi cards have the same capabilities.

It got to the point where we would hear from 2 of the customers on a regular basis that were complaining of the problem. The first one hasn't called for about 6 weeks. The second one was upgraded to a APS w/T1 last week. No problems with the system w/T1. The problem hasn't surfaced lately & I am crossing my fingers...