[asterisk-users] [UK SPECIFIC] DAHDI and a OpenVox Card

[Gordon Henderson]

On Sun, 24 May 2009, Dunc wrote:

>> However I have 2 clients with Teleworst lines and I've never been able to
>> make caller ID work on them, even though teleworst insist they are
>> providing caller ID..
>
> Well that's a shame because I specifically went for NTL so that I
> haven't got BT to contend with when my Internet is broken. The Ethernet
> presentation instead of a pair of BT wires is very appealing.

This is a thread for elsewhere, but personally, I'd rather have BT carry 
the copper into my premises, then stick a good router on the end, then 
work out which of the 130+ ISPs I have a choice to use to give me that 
Ethernet socket than be at the mercy of one single provider with known bad 
customer service and "wooly" traffic limiting. Go to the 
ThinkBroadband.com site and read the forums...

My view: BT - Good for copper and keeping the line going, good at the 
wholesale provision, bad for Internet, but that's OK - I have a choice 
over 130 ISPs to use for Internet - don't fall into the trap of thinking 
you only have BT - there are well over 100 ISPs who use the BT wholesale 
network and they're (nearly) all better than BT themselves! (And that's 
without even thinking of the LLU ISPs...)

> I'll be happy to get it up and running for now and worry about caller ID
> later though. So we'll press on :-)

> Right so I'm probably barking up the wrong red herring with the cable
> problem. I did wonder when the TDM card has 2 pins on the RJ11 socket
> what possible difference a 4 pin cable could make, but I've definitely
> had madness with phones before where wiring up seemingly unused wires
> made the extensions ring, so I'm willing to accept phone wiring is mad.

The BT (or standard UK) wiring is somewhat different from some other 
countries. The copper comes in on 2 pairs, (pins 2 and 5 in a standard 
6-way wall socket) but a BT Master socket will create a 3rd wire (on pin 
3) - the ringing wire. This sometimes confuses things. I think TW/NTL/VM 
do basically the same thing. Personally, I've never had problems going 
from a master socket into a TDM400 type card myself. My own setup takes 
pins 2 and 5 from my BT master socket into an ADSL splitter socket and 
from there into my router and PBX.

However, most phones will still ring when connected up via the 2 wires.

If buying the card from (eg) VoipON, the best way would be to buy the 
cable at the same time. Alternatively, see if you've an old analogue phone 
with a standard BT plug at the far-end with the phone end being on an rj11 
plug and use that.

Gordon