From time to time we receive calls from customers reporting reception quirks when they make some calls: (e.g. “I can hear my party but they cannot hear me”.) Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the problem is not with the Appliance, but can be solved by observing one or more of the following guidelines.

Start by choosing a reputable Internet Service Provider (ISP), one that provides consistently good data throughput and reliable service. If you’re not sure, consult with someone you know who is an authority on these matters.

The Phone line

Ensure you have a clean phone line, i.e. one without any noises on it. One basic check you can make on the quality of your phone line is to lift the handset and press the first digit of any local phone number; then press the handset against your ear as hard as you can manage and listen. All you should hear is “black” silence. If you hear a hum, buzzing or any other types of noises, you should call in your phone company and let them know you have a noisy line; and check afterwards to ensure it's been fixed.

Wherever possible ensure your appliance is not sharing a phone line with other devices (fax machine, Personal Computer, another telephone extensions etc). Usually this prevents the modem in your unit from operating at its optimal speed; this in turn reduces the data throughput and that compromises performance.

The Phone instrument

Ensure that the actual phone instrument you attach to your Appliance is in good working order. We’ve seen situations where one of the phone keys works intermittently and therefore gets in the way of calling some destinations.

For example, if the digit “3” on your phone doesn’t work, it would be impossible to call Miami area code 305. If you tried to call a 305 number in such circumstances, the Appliance would probably sit there blinking and blinking, because the information it needs to carry out its task is incomplete.

Use FCC-approved telephone handsets with a Ringer Equivalence Number (REN) of 1.0 or less (look at the back of your phone and check its REN. You want to keep this number as low as possible, ideally about .2).

The higher this number is the more load it places on your phone line and this may impede modem performance, resulting in substandard call quality.

Before you contact us...

Occasionally too there are calls from customers querying why their dial-up Internet Phone Appliance isn't performing some task today that it did yesterday. Truth is that most times nothing is wrong with the unit. It is that some electricity glitch in its environment might have upset its sophisticated internal software.

The good news is that you have the fix literally right at your fingertips:

Simply unplug the unit's power adapter from the wall, wait 30 seconds and plug it in again. That should do the trick. In the unlikely event that it doesn't, don't hesitate to contact us.   

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