british answering machine

[lorry]

 WE HAVE A BRITISH  PHONE COME FAX  &  ANSWERING MACHINE IS IT POSSIBLE TO GET A CONNECTION HERE IN FRANCE

FOR IT TO WORK ????

 

[Will]

Most British telephone equipment will work in France. All you need to do is to change the lead for one that plugs into the French socket, or use a suitable adapter. However we have heard reports of British-bought equipment that will not ring in France, or that will not work at all, so we can't say that your machine will definietely work. If you already have it, why not try it? There's nothing to lose.

[Nick Trollope]

Most (UK) faxes use a 3-wire ringer, so they will not ring (and hence answer) when used via an adaptor on a French telephone line. I did post a solution some time ago, but I can't find it. Maybe Will can!

[Will]

Would this be the answer you are referring to, Nick? http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/573038/ShowPost.aspx.

What you say makes a lot of sense, Nick. We had a Sharp fax machine that worked perfectly in both Britain and France, just had to put the BT plug into a French adapter (my source for BT-FT adaptors has discontinued them, I bought the last two, so don't know where to get them now). If you have a detachable line cord, you can just replace it with a French one (of the right type). But we also had a Binatone multi-station cordless phone and answer machine that refused to work at all in France, so it's not exactly an exact science.

[Deimos]

Personal experience. 

My Panasonic answering machine (without integrated telephone) worked OK

except that it stopped the telephone on the same multiway adapter (cascaded

thingy) from ringing.  Other phones on

same line (e.g. downstairs) rang OK. 

The telephone that did not ring was connected directly to the FT line

through one of the “cascaded” type plugs (i.e. where the answerphone telephone

plug also includes a socket that the phone plugs into – and not connected into

the back of the answerphone).

Ian

[Will]

Ian, that's really interesting. What is it about cascading in French phone sockets? You're obviously supposed to do it as so many French plugs have an in and out just for that purpose. But strange things often happen. Does somebody more techy than me have an answer (I worked as a technical author in telecoms back in the days of telex, but this is beyond me).

We have two separate lines, one for phones, the other for fax and dial-up internet (don't say change to broadband or ISDN, neither are possible at present). There are two sockets on the fax/internet line, installed by the FT contractor when that second line was put in. But the only way I can get everything to work 100% is if I plug everything into one socket in the order (starting from the wall socket) fax, desktop modem, laptop connection. If I do it in any other order, or use the second socket for anything other than the laptop, things go wrong - the fax won't ring or the 'line in use' light won't flash, the laptop won't connect, the desktop connects but at very slow speed - I could go on. In the right order though, everything works perfectly. We had a couple of  FT engineers to check the line recently (when our neighbour's phone refused to work) and they were mystified too. Any answers?

Sorry to go slightly off topic, but Ian's post reminded me of this strange phenomenon.