We had an electrical storm last week and the power shut down. Since then the router and phones have been behaving oddly. When the router is off, the phones ring normally. When the router is on, the phones give a single or double chirrup instead of the usual ringing tones.
I have had the phone lines in the house checked by BT and they say they are ok.
Does anyone have any idea what the problem is and how to solve it? I have tried another router but with the same result.
BobA
Hi,
The router shouldn't (in theory) be interfereing with your telephone service as broadband (and fiber) are split through the use of filters or at your master plate if you have Infinity, but at the same time it does sound like a REN (Ringer Equivalence Number) issue where more phones are connected to the telephone network in your house than supported.
In basic terms, to make phones ring in your house, the telephone exchange needs to push an electrical current down the line. The current is only high enough to make a low number of phones ring. If you exceed the REN, you may only hear one ring before ringing stops as the rest of the phones consume any remaining electrical current and everything falls silent. For example, many (all?) phones and wireless phone base stations have a label on the bottom indicating the REN. The ultra basic BT Duet 20 which I have next to me shows a REN of "1". Wikipedia suggests the maximum is 4 for standard telephone networks in a home. Having many wireless phones doesn't count toward REN as the wireless phones batteries provide the power instead, only the base station will count in this scenario regardless of how many wireless phones you have.
To rule out the possibility of REN being exceeded, did you by any chance connect a wired phone to a telephone socket in your home when power went out (assuming you have wireless phones, which require mains power)?
If this isn't the case, something with some degree of electrical load may have hit your exchange, and a damaging current may have passed down your telephone line (obviously not a massive current, but one damaging enough).
Routers are more electrically sensitive than telephones. We had a similar issue where one of our Sky boxes would no longer open the telephone line after a storm. Physically the unit was fine, and the telephones were fine but the modem wouldn't open the line and dial in to Sky. After the box was replaced the new unit worked fine and dialed out without problems. Standard modem, but it still uses the same wires as your ADSL or VDSL/Infinity service would.
Know a friend who has a spare router you can try?
Kind regards,
- Lee
Note: Edited for clarity.