Problems ringing UK from a Neuf Box

[proff]

Hi

We have neuf box (about 6 months old) that provides us with Internet and telephone.  The telephone connected to the system is a siemens gigaset C450.  Nothing special. just a cheapy from Super U and it does not incorperate an answer phone.  Over the last few months we have found that it is becoming more and more difficult to ring a UK number.  Any French number is ok.

 

Normally what happens is we dial the number and then:

a.  We are told in French the number is not attributable (even though we have dialed from a directory.

b. We get an English voice telling us that the number is not allocated but if we would like to buy it we should do xxxxxxxxxx

c. We get a very faint engaged tone.

d. Then normally the telephone light on the box goes out and we have to reboot the box.

We aslo find that many times people ringing fron UK tell us that when they try, the number dials ok but just never rings.

We have contacted Neuf a coupleof times over this and all they do is reboot the box from their end and it works fine for 10 minutes.

Has anyone else had a similar problem or know of a possible solution?

Many thanks.

[suein56]

[quote user="proff"]We have contacted Neuf a coupleof times over this and all they do is reboot the box from their end and it works fine for 10 minutes.

Has anyone else had a similar problem or know of a possible solution?    [/quote]

Some friends of ours, who use Neuf, have had a very similar problem to you. When they rang Neuf tech support for the umpteenth time they were asked to look at their incoming telephone point to see if there was a capacitor/condenser which might be affecting their installation. They looked, they found out that they had the c-thing. They followed Neuf's instructions and removed it. And, for the past 3 weeks, they have had no more problems. Perhaps they were lucky.

Sue

[Clair]

[quote user="suein56"]Some friends of ours, who use Neuf, have had a very similar problem to you. When they rang Neuf tech support for the umpteenth time they were asked to look at their incoming telephone point to see if there was a capacitor/condenser which might be affecting their installation. They looked, they found out that they had the c-thing. They followed Neuf's instructions and removed it. And, for the past 3 weeks, they have had no more problems. Perhaps they were lucky.

Sue[/quote]

It's called a condensateur in French.

I had to remove mine and the pictures on this page will show how to identify and remove it:

http://www.dslvalley.com/dossiers/condensateur/condensateur.php

[Martin963]

With regard to le condensateur I wonder if one of the Telecoms experts knows the answer to this:

Is there likely to be more than one of these capacitors (ie could there be one per socket) or is it more like the BT system where that sort of giblet is to be found only in the "primary" socket?

In our case (and I'm not there to look at the moment) our phone line comes down to a terminal box in the cellar (no socket,   it's for FT rather than the customer) which has several screw terminals in it,  and I *think* also has (an) other component(s) inside,   as some years ago a bad crackle developed on our line and FT came out and replaced something in this cellar-box which cured the problem (memory suggests it was a blue cylindrical capacitor but I may have invented that image with the passage of years).   They suggested that the box should be kept as humid-free as possible to prevent the problem recurring.

From this cellar box several wires go off in all directions to various phone sockets in the house.    There's a second cellar-box beside the first which I believe was associated with a secondary line in use long before we bought the house.

Having had such success with a BT I-Plate in Britain which has quite simple revolutionised our ADSL in Devon,   I'm thinking that I really must have another go at our France installation,   where I've put up with only about 300 kbps ADSL on the assumption that the wiring in the house was modernish and our slow speed was due to being 6.5 kms from the exchange.

 

[Chancer]

I too have followed Clairs advice, whilst my computer is so slow it is hard to say if there is an improvement, I can now (for the time being at least) record one TV channel whilst watching another, before I always exceeded the available debit.

Why dont ADSL/broadband suppliers advise their customers to do this?

Martin.

The norme is for the incoming "master socket" only to have the capacitor, it also disconnects the other extensions when a phone is plugged into it.

It is possible that a determined bricoleur could have used them as extension sockets but they are so hard to source and cost so much that it is unlikely.

[Martin963]

Thanks J. R's.    In which case you've done a diagnosis "a distance" for me because certainly there's no break-jacking going on on our system.

Useful,   I'm grateful to you.