Strange behaviour of telephone

[allanb]

My (fixed-line) phone sometimes rings for no apparent reason.  It happens irregularly, maybe five or six times a month, but always at around 4 a.m., which is not my favourite time to be woken up by a telephone.  Every time, there's only one ring; no chance of getting to it and picking up the call (if it is a call).  Sometimes it does it once only; sometimes it repeats, at intervals of about ten minutes.

I have an ordinary land line and an ordinary contract with France Telecom, plus one with Teleconnect.

The phone is a Siemens Gigaset, which does contain some internal options that could make the phone ring, but I think I've checked them all.  There is a battery "low charge" signal, but it's switched off, and in any case the phone is semi-permanently on a charger. I think there is an alarm function, but we've never used it, and in any case if it was on it would do the same thing every day, which it doesn't.  There is a "birthday reminder" option but it's off and we have never used it.  I think there must be an external cause.

Is there anyone out there who's had the same problem and found a solution?

[Anton Redman]

Try replacing the hand set with the cheapest simplest supermarket phone and see what happens. If the problem persists you know it is the line

[Nell]

Years ago we had a phone in the UK that rang every time we watched a Movie on a VHS recorder. We eventually worked out that it was something to do with the signal from the recorder triggering something in the phone, not well explained as I am not exactly electronicly minded, but as the last message says, try another phone (cheap and cheerfull!)

[allanb]

I've found the solution, and it's made me feel rather foolish.  In fact I'm embarrassed to tell you about it, but I will, because you were kind enough to reply.

It's not the fixed phone at all.  It's my mobile, which cunningly gives a ringtone when the battery is very low, and finally, if you don't do anything about it, switches itself off.  The reason why it only happened at night, I suppose, is that during the day I make sure it's charged, but if I go to bed and forget to switch it off...

My children already believe that I am technologically challenged.  This will only confirm their view.

Apologies.

  

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

Of course,if you had a sensible ring tone on your mobile, like the theme from Neighbours....

[Gyn_Paul]

....it would still make the same 'help I'm running out of volts' noise !