Telephones dead

H

highspark

Hi lads,

too cut a long story short - working on occupied commercial building, had to isolate sub-board to work and test. After isolation and re-energise phones are off. no dialling tone.

At main board there was an mcb saying server do not switch off (thought phones may be fed from this along with broadband). never touched tha-main board - just sub-board which serves the office area.

Anyhow phones have power to them but the lines are dead. on inspection there is a few BT boxes in a cupboard which look as though they control the phones. when isolated do these boxes need to be reset?

When isolated the alarms also went into a reset mode which i managed to do. Absolute nightmare as sub-board has no marking of phone lines or alarms complete joke.

I need a solution to but to the manager as its beyond my knowledge as i am not a telecoms engineer any thoughts on this?
 
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Highly doubt it unless phones where ran of lighting circuit. Only done 1 i/r test and it was at 250v across live/neutral - earth. Any ideas lads?
 
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highspark said:
Highly doubt it unless phones where ran of lighting circuit. Only done 1 i/r test and it was at 250v across live/neutral - earth. Any ideas lads?
Click to expand...

well if it worked before you turned up,then its something youve done..you could call bt out,about £95ph i think..could cost you more in lost business for the client if phones dont work on monday
 
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How unhelpful i=p/u's post was. The BT boxes you refer to could be an old style PABX, which might need a reset by an engineer although most should sort themselves out after a power failure. Can you describe these boxes, size, colour etc.
 
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Other thoughts are that the office phones might be run from virtual PBX software running on a PC. This means if that PC was running when you turned the power off, the application might need to be restarted for the lines to work again. This is very common in small offices that have an IT department that likes to sort everything out itself.
 
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Well some people do laugh when you have wrecked something or as they say youve wrecked and it only needs reset. I wish i could actualy heelp. But im sure youl help him sw1970
 
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alarm man said:
well if it worked before you turned up,then its something youve done..you could call bt out,about £95ph i think..could cost you more in lost business for the client if phones dont work on monday
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No you don't say? I've come on for some knowledge on telecoms systems and all you have to tell me is its something I've done! Well that's fairly obvious as the issue has only began since the installation was isolated. I've done one i/r test at 250v between live/neutral-earth. That's why I highly doubt I've blown the phones as you say. Thanks for the good advise above.
 
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highspark said:
No you don't say? I've come on for some knowledge on telecoms systems and all you have to tell me is its something I've done! Well that's fairly obvious as the issue has only began since the installation was isolated. I've done one i/r test at 250v between live/neutral-earth. That's why I highly doubt I've blown the phones as you say. Thanks for the good advise above.
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you could try the telecoms forums then..
 
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look for something with mains going to it,should have make model on it might look similar to this

meridian_ccu.jpg
 
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Business phone systems are usually connected to two or more direct exchange lines (DELs). There are several ways this may be achieved. The most common approach is to use a private automatic branch exchange (PABX), where the incoming lines are connected to a central control unit (CCU) and then routed between a number of extensions. The extensions themselves are able to call other extensions (“internal” or “intercom” calls), and other features such as call transfer and call barring are normally available. The system may be designed only for the with special proprietary telephones known as a key telephone system (KTS). The special telephones, “keystations”, are powered, intelligent and feature rich. KTS does not allow the connection of standard phones, answer machines, fax machines or cordless phones. For this reason, CCUs are available to which standard telephone apparatus may be connected. Hybrid systems allow both types of connection, with a mixture of standard and KTS extension ports.
When a business phone system has it’s power supply interrupted for any length of time, most older CCUs and KTS lose their programming, on re-instatement of the power supply the CCU and/or KTS stations will need resetting. On older systems this is just a momentary power-down, or it may require a digital programming code to be set. Once the system is reset, it returns the system to a “clean state” and the individual user selected functions will need to re-programmed, before the system is back to it’s operational state. Or modern systems this happens automatically on boot-up, with all the user selected functions recalled from non-volatile memory.
The server supply is almost certainly dedicated to the computer network rather than the telephones system, however, the office phones might be run from virtual PABX software running on the server or a PC. This means if that server/PC was running when you turned the power off, the programme may need re-booting for the lines to work again. This is common in offices that have there own IT department.
If, it’s a dedicated system there should be a box, containing the PABX CCU and main distribution frame MDF, the exchange and distribution network for the office telephones. This box will have a power supply routed to it from the DB.
I have been on the other end of this type of problem, as I used to install/configure/maintain private telephone exchanges in a previous job. Even if outgoing calls are barred out of normal working hours, it is not allowable to ban the calling of either 999 or the alternative European emergency number (112) from any telephone.
You should contact whoever employed you to do the work, and mention the problem now, rather than waiting for the staff to turn up for work on Monday morning and find the phone system not working. There is usually a nominated staff member who is familiar with the reset procedure and programming required.
 
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Yes box is similar to those above. Anyhow here's the status. When you ring landline it transfers you straight through to directors mobile phone as it should over the weekend. But you can't ring out from building. Director says you should be able to but the normal system will turn on at 8am tomorrow morning so only then will I know if attend are really down. Why though if there was no landline does it transfer to his mobile as it should?
 
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Highspark just looked up the nortel and on power failure they have an emergency fall back to a dedicated line(hence the mobile). They have to then be reprogrammed from an ext fitted with a
BT Meridian Norstar M7208 phone M7208 or ​

equivalent
.

from site: ​

​

[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 75%"]
  • The Compact (6X16) system is a self contained unit with 6-RJ11 jacks for the interface for the telephone lines and one male 50-pin amphenol connection is used as the interface for the stations, the amphenol is also used for the connection of external devices such as Music on Hold source, loud speaker paging and a relay contact for auxiliary ringers.
  • The system can be configured with up to six lines with No caller ID capability and sixteen stations non expandable.
  • It has one emergency transfer port used to connect 500/2500 (single line phone) sets in the event of a power failure .It has a built in internal power supply .
  • The administration or the programming can be done from any extension on the system with M7208 phone or a larger phone.
  • The software cartridge includes all administration and call processing features required to operate a Norstar Compact system.
[/TD]
[TD="width: 25%"]
norsta2000_n.jpg
​
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Features:​
  • All features of DR1​
  • Call feature enhancements​
Voicemail Capabilities:​
  • Star talk (A, B, C) release 2.0. 4 L​
  • Star talk Mini release 2.5 or 2.6 (Not recommended it’s not Y2K compliance)​
ACD application:​
  • Not supported​
Norstar Remote Utilities (Remote programming options):​
  • Norstar manager release 3.5 or higher (Release 3.7 recommended)​
  • Norstar remote utility (NRU) release 5 or higher​
Desktop application:​
  • Not supported​
 
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highspark said:
Cyber what exactly are you offering me here? Do you have a diagnosis of what happened and the solution other than getting bt out?
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No diagnosis I'm afraid, there's not enough info here to say it one way or another. Simply that if their CCU is toast, I have one here that you can have cheaply to get you out of the brown stuff! If you're local to me (Bristol), I can even install/configure for you.
 
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If the phones are dead (no dialtone) then the CCU is probably not operating. This would be the first step to figuring out what's wrong. The nortel systems aren't hard to work on, but you do need to be a bit technically minded and know a bit of the lingo in terms of what they're doing.
You'll also need to find out exactly what the CCU is, the Nortel units of that era all look much the same in terms of design, and get progressively more complicated from the 616 upwards...
 
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Hi guys, went back yesterday. Phones where fine. All back on. I think there is a time lock on the phone for weekends. Anyhow thanks for the knowledgable replies and no thanks for the unknowlegable (alarm man) cough... ;)
 
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Telephones dead
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