AT&T VoIP

Finally, the only solution to stop this from happening was to bar international calls from our office phones. While it is not a big part of our business, we do occasionally need to make calls to Canada or other countries, and when we do I have to log into the Collaborate control center and turn off the bar for whichever phone is going to be used for an international call, then remember to turn it back on later. Because, you know, as a small business person I have nothing better to do... In short, this isn't a full phone system since we can't even make international calls. This is a sad joke and I have regretted it every days since we gave up our old copper wire system at AT&T's insistence. I plan to find a completely different (non AT&T) service as soon as our contract is up.

That afternoon, a U-verse technician came and restored the internet service to the office but when he did, the phones were disabled again. We could call out but no incoming calls were permitted. We called AT&T again and were told this was due to a system outage in the Southeast Region. Friday was spent all day trying to restore phone service at our business. We told them to cancel the VoIP services because it clearly does not work well and restore our system to POTS. After speaking with several different operators who were all reading from the same chart, we were told the order would take 3-5 days to process even though they left the office with NO PHONE LINES. Monday, we started calling again and were told the same thing... 3-5 days.

An area technician stopped by at the request of a friend and attempted to restore service but was unable to because AT&T had our lines showing as disconnected when we stopped the VoIP install that never worked anyway. Tuesday, AT&T called and said someone will be by on Thursday, March 2nd, to return the phones to POTS. AT&T should have never allowed the POTS to be taken down and converted to VoIP knowing that they had a mass system outage. When they did take it down, they did nothing to assist our office in restoring phone service. They left a business that typically has 3 phones lines crippled with no phone service for over a week. Today is February 28th, I can only hope that they do in fact show up on Thursday and restore service.

We called Collections and they confirmed there is a zero balance on the account. They are unable to resolve the issue of being unable to call out. First they insisted it was the modem and sent out a technician. The technician listened to the message and said it was a Billing & Collections issue. Billing & Collections insists there is no problem, but has been unable to take off the block. So far, since October 12, we have been on the phone with AT&T for over 8 hours and had the technician here for just under 2. Not a great start for U-verse service. Incidentally, we did not go with TV service. It was supposed to be included in the original package, but someone at AT&T cancelled the entire order, requiring us to reinstate it, at which time we limited AT&T to just phone and internet--otherwise, this story may have been even worse!

Since making this change from DSL to u-Verse several months ago, we have had several u-Verse technicians and several Telco technicians out to solve the white noise on the remaining POTS line. When I am on the POTS line for extended periods, I develop a headache. This white noise is present whether we originate or pick up a terminated call to the POTS line. Some days I have call forwarded the POTS line to the u-Verse line just to guaranty all terminating calls to us are free from the white noise only observed on the POTS and never on the u-Verse line.

Last week we developed a worse noise problem on the POTS line and called the AT&T Telco technician in. He observed the noise went away when we disconnected the u-Verse voice line from the HomePortal 3801HGV. So he had us call the AT&T u-Verse technician in (who asked for help from his supervisor who also came out) who measured a ground issue on our POTS line and told us it was an AT&T Telco issue.

Although they did replace the 2-Wire HomePortal 3801HGV with another 2-Wire (now labelled Pace) HomePortal 3801HGV without considering the Belkin BBU (Battery Back Up) as a contributor to the white noise. The Telco technicians refused to come back out until the u-Verse technicians took care of the noise induced by the u-Verse modem. The u-Verse technicians refused to come back out until the Telco technicians resolved the ground issue.

Eventually after responding to an AT&T email asking about our satisfaction with service, I received a response by phone whereby I reiterated the above. Believe it or not, the AT&T person following up on my dissatisfaction with my service rescheduled each technician, but each department independently cancelled their own appointments. Eventually the AT&T customer service person found a person in the Telco group to at least resolve the ground issue on the Telco pair to satisfy the u-Verse technicians. So last Wednesday, the ground issue was resolved, but the white noise persisted.

The Telco technicians (now working as a pair) and not the original Telco technician continued on last Wednesday's service call to resolve the issue by addressing the grounding issue they discovered between pedestals toward the central office, though not between our home and the first pedestal; apparently all the temporary cabling to address earlier problems we have had never were permanently addressed by the wiring group.

Our earlier problems were a result of other utility company contractors digging up telephone lines and / or our lines at a pedestal being disturbed as technicians addressed other lines. By the way, we are in a very well established, buried cable location in a 50+ year old residential area in the middle of town. Finding the grounding issue did not resolve the white noise, they then replaced some inside wiring and isolating all of our telephones, that coincidentally are AT&T two line telephones; we have no wireless phones or any phones not of AT&T origin.

The two Telco technicians complained that ATT no longer sends a ground wire from their own network interface box's ground to the customer's service ground rod that certainly would allow the Telco installation on the Telco side to meet the National Electrical Code recommendations for telecommunication installations that among other electrical protection reasons, helps to protect home computers, telecommunication devices, televisions, etc. from electrical strikes. Now six hours later that day plus several months prior, we still had the white noise.

Now the technicians dove into the Pace HomePortal 3801HGV2-Wire modem and Belkin BBU (Belkin calls a UPS), and did a temporary replacement of the Belkin BBU UPS to help isolate the white noise issue. What they discovered was that the Belkin UPS does not have a "grounding" (not ground) wire to provide the plug with independent hot, neutral and ground lugs into our wall sockets.

In other words, the BBU UPS violated the Telcordia Bellcore standards and had no frame grounding wire to isolate any noise produced from the Belkin UPS inverter (maybe just a rectifier) or the upstream Pace HomePortal 3801HGV 2-Wire modem from getting back onto the neutral before the neutral met up with the grounding circuit at the ground rod beneath our circuit box. All this resulted in the Belkin BBU UPS inverter or rectifier noise or passed on noise from the Pace HomePortal 3801HGV 2-Wire modem going from the socket all around our house before grounding at the circuit breakers ground rod.

Thus everything in our house, including phone lines and computers have been exposed to this back fed noise generated by the Belkin and or the Pace HomePortal 3801HGV 2-Wire without a grounding wire since Belkin did not have a grounding wire to drain the noise directly to the service ground without going through the entire house hot and / or neutral wiring. Interesting when we disconnected the Belkin's two wire plug from the wall, all the noise went away just as it had when we just disconnected the voice line from the 2-Wire modem. With the BBU UPS still on the Pace HomePortal 3801HGV 2-Wire modem, but disconnected from power at the wall socket, we retained both internet and no noise on the POTS and of course no noise on the u-Verse voice.

Conceivably, the Pace HomePortal 3801HGV 2-Wire modem may be by itself and / or its association with the Belkin BBU UPS the generator or additive generator of the noise, but because there is no "electrical bonding" between the Pace HomePortal 3801HGV 2-Wire modem and the Belkin and the Belkin has no "grounding" from its frame directly to the circuit breaker's ground rod at our service entrance via our wall outlets ground, the noise is being directly sent to the hot and / or neutral to seek ground and is contaminating any device connected to the common hot and / or neutral on the same circuit.

We are now waiting on AT&T's u-Verse technicians to resolve the issue, hoping they will displace the Belkin BBU UPS with the Pace HomePortal 3801HGV 2-Wire provided hopefully 3 prong (hot, neutral and grounding) plug and substitute a real BBU UPS meeting the Telcordia Bellcore "grounding" or "frame grounding" wiring specification like the more common UPS' you find for all other telecommunication, electronic and computational systems. And hopefully, the technicians will provide bonding between the Pace HomePortal 3801HGV 2-Wire and the UPS PLUS complete their Telco NID installation by installing a ground between the ground on the Telco side of the NID and our service entry ground rod as should have been done 50+ years ago.

As of this editing, we have heard back only from the AT&T Customer Service person several times, still apologizing for the u-Verse technicians cancelling each of the appointments she schedules for them to resolve their issue since they stated they could only return after the Telco technicians resolved the ground issue. The u-Verse technicians seem to be treating their AT&T Customer Service person as they did when they refused to answer or return the calls of the Telco technicians from my house. We are now waiting after a week of the Telco technicians holding up their part of the bargain.

We are a third world country regarding telecommunications. Even places like Turkey make our systems seem like the Stone Age. If I had a choice, I would have Verizon Fios, but Verizon's DSL at my summer residence really sucks. They don't want to invest a dime in the infrastructure there. How can the USA survive in a competitive global economy with subpar services while these companies rack up huge profits and huge bonuses for the top execs who are screwing their customers?