BRITISH TELECOM PLC

[Guest]

Didn't think phreaking still was rife in the uk,

Like many others I fiddled a bit in my youth but that's about the top and bottom of it, half the fun was finding the faults.

the 2 most popular used to be, go to phone box with lcd phone, pick up and replace reciever about 8 times, wait for 4 seconds then pick reciever back up,

payphone thought it was faulty cos no money had been put in and it automatically rang the fault reporting centre to declare itself faulty.

but being a payphone it had to have credit to make a call, and the bt eng's that progged it gave it £68 of credit to do so 

press follow on call to get the dial tone back and bobs your uncle

other one was with the model above this that had the volume controls, used to put money in, make a call then as long as there was more than the min charge left in credit used to press follow on call and then 99*

payphone thought u were calling emergency services and refunded ya money..

ah, the remenicing....

Regards

Bellman

66244[/snapback]

ah, so complicated..

here the central send a 16kHz pulse tone to payphone everytime it needed more money so we just made a simple RLC circuit that shorted that 16kHz..

too bad we don't have those public payphones anymore..

[Guest]

Um caugh, caugh. 

any way boys lets have your problems. 

66250[/snapback]

I tried to have one here in coldshire and thay said it could not be connected here ..

reason they gave is that it relies on BT network.

BULL**** ! What is so special in BT network? cabling??

[norman]

Depends who you want to call.

66240[/snapback]

Ghostbusters

[bellman]

Ghostbusters

66278[/snapback]

Nah, If you can find them and no one else can help, maybe you should call the A team

[amateurandy]

OK here's a real one from the last few weeks. BT and Business Broadband................

Customer orders Business Broadband to go on a NEW phone line installed very recently and specifically to use for Broadband. This costs about £68 per month on top of the line rental.

Customer orders via the Internet to get the "free" wireless router etc. BT web site says the line will be implemented at the highest supportable speed up to 2Mb, but no promises so it may end up as 1Mb or even 512Kb - AT THE SAME PRICE I might add. Hey-ho it's not a big issue in this case as they are currently only on ISDN so even 512Kb is a huge advance as it's "always on".

48 hours after the "activation" date given by BT nothing has happened. Customer phones BT and gets told a load of incomprehensible garbage.

I (as their IT advisor) then phone BT. After about 3 different calls this is the story - HONESTLY!

The customer order 2Mb Broadband (well they would, wouldn't they).

BT engineers then tested the (brand new) line - it wasn't good enough at 2Mb.

So they tested it at 1Mb - still not up to scratch.

So they tried 512Kb, which was fine.

But the customer had ordered 2Mb, so they just cancelled the order.

AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO TELL THE CUSTOMER :!:

Even the BT staff I spoke to had to agree that this wasn't the cleverest thing to do.

And the Customer then had to reorder at 512K to get it working.

I've always worked on the basis that BT are better than most of the competition, but you have to manage them as they can't manage themselves. This is a classic of just how dumb they can be at times.

[Guest]

OK then, you can tell them from me to stop switching everyone over to featureline for no good reason, and making up stories and job sheets for the order.

[Smart Electrics]

OK then, you can tell them from me to stop switching everyone over to featureline for no good reason, and making up stories and job sheets for the order.

66310[/snapback]

Yea ive allready taken that on one Lurchy.

[sparky83]

We recently had a panel connected to redcare go into line fault. On closer inspection the line had no voltage (scratching head) but stu was still upped and sending open and closes every day. Phoned up the redcare help desk and the redcare had been working for THREE years on a telephone line that had been disconnected (at the customers request). I'm reliably informed that redcare can happily work along a dead copper pair until someone else orders a new telephone line in the vicinity and they choose to use those pairs. Beats paying line rental but I didnt know it would work!

[Guest ALSEC]

I went to a job today, panel showing line fault. Owner has 2 lines coming in and on one line there is the alarm, ADSL and sky. Alarm is connected into screw down terminals on inside of incoming BT master box and ADSL/sky connects to punch down terminals on plug in bit of BT master box. Dissed extension with ADSL/sky and no 50v on incoming BT line. However, ADSL and sky both working fine (when reconnected) but still no 50v - scratching my head at this point. Ran a small bit of cable to other phone line in house (that god he had one) 50v and communicating with no problems.

Any ideas (sorry if this is a bit off thread) - also when looking at phone lines as long as there is 50ish v I'm happy - is that the right way to look at it or are there other simple measurements that can be taken???

Thanks!

[Nova-Security]

We recently had a panel connected to redcare go into line fault.  On closer inspection the line had no voltage (scratching head) but stu was still upped and sending open and closes every day.  Phoned up the redcare help desk and the redcare had been working for THREE years on a telephone line that had been disconnected (at the customers request).  I'm reliably informed that redcare can happily work along a dead copper pair until someone else orders a new telephone line in the vicinity and they choose to use those pairs.  Beats paying line rental but I didnt know it would work!

66381[/snapback]

We have had this, and also redcare still working on one leg of the pair.