Holly, in France wrote:

Rod Hewitt wrote in message


The various mentions of DECT in the last day or so reminded
me that I am supposed to be solving a problem.

We have two separate DECT base stations, each with its
own handset and each plugged into totally separate phone lines.
Perhaps oddly, both handsets are set up to connect to the same
base station - let us call that the primary base station.
(We can use a menu to choose the other,
secondary, base station.) Anywhere between zero and, perhaps,
four times a day the handset on the secondary base station
makes a noise that says that it has lost contact with the
primary base station that it should be using.
Changing the handsets round makes no difference.

It seems that something is interrupting the ability of the '
remote' handset to communicate with the primary base
station. On the display we can see
that the handset loses its signal for a few seconds.

Having a fair amount of electronic kit (computers, wireless
network, etc.) we understand if we are to blame for this
problem - but it would be really
nice to identify what is causing it.

The times at which the problem occurs vary widely - including
the early hours when we are asleep and not in person using
anything. And it is this that is most annoying as it sometimes
wakes us up.

Any ideas or suggestions welcome.


No ideas or suggestions at all I'm afraid, just posting to say that we
are in exactly the same boat withour DECT phones. Well, not quite since
only our base station is connected to the phone line, but the way you
have yours set up I think yours is working in the same way as ours, in
that it is not using the second phone line anyway. We don't have
wireless networks (well, I do have one but I cant get it to work and it
isn't installed atm, but that's another story!) or anything else that is
likely to interfere with the phone. It behaves exactly as you describe.
The second phone is in a upstairs bedroom in the diagonally opposite
corner of the house to the first, with two thick stone walls between the
base and the handset. Initially I thought it might not work at all in
that location, but it does, about 99% of the time. Yesterday it even
worked perfectly beyond another partition when I was in the bath!
But.....sometimes it loses the signal for no apparent reason, and bleeps
as it comes on and off line, just as you say. It always regains the
signal in the other corner of the bedroom which is nearer and has a
clearer path to the base station. I think it seems to happen more in
cold weather, have you found that? It also bleeps on and off when we
have a power cut, which is quite useful sometimes, but not after a dozen
or so power cuts during the same night! Sorry, not much help, perhaps
someone else understands what is going on?



--


Holly, in France.
Holiday home in the Dordogne,
website: http://la-plaine.chez.tiscali.fr


I would guess that the device is using the public band which is
unlicensed and therefore pretty crowded. All wireless network kit uses
it as well as house bound walk around mobile phones (if you see what I
mean) and anything else that needs to transmit over short distances.

The reason that portion of the spectrum is public is not because the
powers that be wanted to leave us some free but because it's a pretty
useless bit of bandwidth for long range transmission. It is the same
area that water absorbs in therefore the attenuation is very high. In
winter the relative humidity is higher therefore your phone might have
more trouble getting a signal through.

As for the original problem with loosing signal it could be any number
of devices causing the problem. The biggest offender is normally a
microwave oven but some devices (wireless hubs in particular) will scan
the available bandwidth to select the quietest frequency and interrupt
other devices in the process.