Anybody know the difference?

cheers,
clive

On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:36:32 +0100, Clive George wrote:

Anybody know the difference?

cheers,
clive

Yes, the Irish one have a number Tree

SteveW

On 06/07/2010 19:36, Clive George wrote:
Anybody know the difference?

RJ11 vs. BT Plug?
Ringing system?
Caller ID?
Nicer telephone operator to chat to?

--
Adrian C

On 06/07/2010 19:53, Adrian C wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:36, Clive George wrote:
Anybody know the difference?

RJ11 vs. BT Plug?
Ringing system?
Caller ID?
Nicer telephone operator to chat to?

Ok, electrical differences pertinent to using phones for one country in
another :-)

On 06/07/2010 19:51, Steve Walker wrote:
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:36:32 +0100, Clive George wrote:

Anybody know the difference?

cheers,
clive

Yes, the Irish one have a number Tree

SteveW

Sigh! g

They use a different plug/socket arrangement - smaller than the UK plug.
Adapters are available.... so if you have a UK-type system (answering
machine / phone etc) you can use it all if you have an adapter to
connect to the wall-socket....

Hope this helps
Adrian (West Cork)

On 06/07/2010 19:53, Clive George wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:53, Adrian C wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:36, Clive George wrote:
Anybody know the difference?

RJ11 vs. BT Plug?
Ringing system?
Caller ID?
Nicer telephone operator to chat to?

Ok, electrical differences pertinent to using phones for one country in
another :-)

What's now interesting to me, as I've never taken any notice when over
there (too much Guiness)

1) Do Irish phones ring like the UK phones, Brr-Brrrr or the US ones - Brrrr

2) Are the DTMF tones the same?

--
Adrian C

On 06/07/2010 20:04, Adrian C wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:53, Clive George wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:53, Adrian C wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:36, Clive George wrote:
Anybody know the difference?

RJ11 vs. BT Plug?
Ringing system?
Caller ID?
Nicer telephone operator to chat to?

Ok, electrical differences pertinent to using phones for one country in
another :-)

What's now interesting to me, as I've never taken any notice when over
there (too much Guiness)

1) Do Irish phones ring like the UK phones, Brr-Brrrr or the US ones -
Brrrr

Like the UK

2) Are the DTMF tones the same?


As far as I know - phones that we used in the UK also work over here...

Adrian

On Jul 6, 7:36*pm, Clive George wrote:
Anybody know the difference?

cheers,
clive

Ringing voltage spec is different. Otherwise afaik theyre the same


NT

Adrian Brentnall wrote:
On 06/07/2010 20:04, Adrian C wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:53, Clive George wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:53, Adrian C wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:36, Clive George wrote:
Anybody know the difference?

RJ11 vs. BT Plug?
Ringing system?
Caller ID?
Nicer telephone operator to chat to?

Ok, electrical differences pertinent to using phones for one country in
another :-)

What's now interesting to me, as I've never taken any notice when over
there (too much Guiness)

1) Do Irish phones ring like the UK phones, Brr-Brrrr or the US ones -
Brrrr

Like the UK

2) Are the DTMF tones the same?


As far as I know - phones that we used in the UK also work over here...

Adrian
DTMF tones are a worldwide standard IIRC.

Otherwise 'press 1 for sales' wouldn't work if you phoned Alaska etc.

ring tones and engaged tones differ markedly. There is no standard really.

Voltage current and impedance are MORE OR LESS standardised, in that is
its possible to build a phone that meets all national standards. There
are differences though. US phones are quiet when used here.

Plug standards are almost as many as there are countries, but there is
widespread adoption of RJ11 (I Think) on the phones themselves: that
means the local socket is covered by a suitable local plug to RJ11 cord.

On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:54:21 +0100, Adrian Brentnall wrote:

On 06/07/2010 19:51, Steve Walker wrote:
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:36:32 +0100, Clive George wrote:

Anybody know the difference?

cheers,
clive

Yes, the Irish one have a number Tree

SteveW

Sigh! g

Sorry, I just had to do that. My wife's family are all from Leitrim and
although she was born and brought up in the UK, she spent a lot of time
back home and when she gets tired, the accent comes out.

Adrian (West Cork)

Lucky B - we were looking at moving your way, then it all went on hold when
I became ill, by the time I was fully recovered a couple of years later,
the economy had collapsed and it all went out of the window.

SteveW

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Clive George
saying something like:

Ok, electrical differences pertinent to using phones for one country in
another :-)

UK phones work ok here, just need to swap the cord for an RJ11 one,
easily available at many shops. You'll find the majority of handset
bases have either RJ11 or a mini-RJ at the desktop end, so an easy swap.

On 06/07/2010 23:03, Steve Walker wrote:
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:54:21 +0100, Adrian Brentnall wrote:

On 06/07/2010 19:51, Steve Walker wrote:
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:36:32 +0100, Clive George wrote:

Anybody know the difference?

cheers,
clive

Yes, the Irish one have a number Tree

SteveW

Sigh!g

Sorry, I just had to do that. My wife's family are all from Leitrim and
although she was born and brought up in the UK, she spent a lot of time
back home and when she gets tired, the accent comes out.

OK - you're excused g


Adrian (West Cork)

Lucky B - we were looking at moving your way, then it all went on hold when
I became ill, by the time I was fully recovered a couple of years later,
the economy had collapsed and it all went out of the window.

Which economy? - UK or IRL.....??

There's a feeling of recovery out here - and a general acceptance that
the 'Good Times' (up to 2006 or so) couldn't have continued at that
pace. I make stained glass and fused glass (= luxury items) and this
year I'm seeing more work in the 'bespoke' end of the business -
relatively high-value items - so there's hope.

Adrian

On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:04:58 +0100, Adrian C wrote:

2) Are the DTMF tones the same?

Pretty sure the DTMF tone pairs are international. Be a bit tricky
navigating one of those pesky press 1 for... menu systems if they
where different. B-)

On/off hook line voltages and currents are pretty much the same but
signal levels might be different.

Ringing, both voltage range and frequency, varies. The cadence isn't
overly relevant in an ordinary phone but might be for something
"looking for" ringing to auto answer. Similary busy tones vary.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In article o.uk,
"Dave Liquorice" writes:
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:04:58 +0100, Adrian C wrote:

2) Are the DTMF tones the same?

Pretty sure the DTMF tone pairs are international. Be a bit tricky
navigating one of those pesky press 1 for... menu systems if they
where different. B-)

On/off hook line voltages and currents are pretty much the same but
signal levels might be different.

Ringing, both voltage range and frequency, varies. The cadence isn't
overly relevant in an ordinary phone but might be for something
"looking for" ringing to auto answer. Similary busy tones vary.

This was brought home to me programming a Supira VoIP ATA, a sort
of mini PBX which interfaces to both an exchange line, and one or
more telephones. It has about 700 configuration options, of which
probably about half are related to matching the various different
country standards for the telephone interface.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:03:48 +0100, Adrian Brentnall wrote:

On 06/07/2010 23:03, Steve Walker wrote:
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:54:21 +0100, Adrian Brentnall wrote:

On 06/07/2010 19:51, Steve Walker wrote:
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:36:32 +0100, Clive George wrote:

Anybody know the difference?

cheers,
clive

Yes, the Irish one have a number Tree

SteveW

Sigh!g

Sorry, I just had to do that. My wife's family are all from Leitrim and
although she was born and brought up in the UK, she spent a lot of time
back home and when she gets tired, the accent comes out.

OK - you're excused g


Adrian (West Cork)

Lucky B - we were looking at moving your way, then it all went on hold when
I became ill, by the time I was fully recovered a couple of years later,
the economy had collapsed and it all went out of the window.

Which economy? - UK or IRL.....??

Both. The collapse of the UK economy left us with debts to clear (through a
complicated set of timings, illnesses and ending of contracts) and less
equity in the house. My line of work is in instrumentation and controls
engineering, which had limited demand in Ireland compared to the UK even
before the crash and at the moment, there has at least been the alternative
here of moving out of petrochem and industrial work into nuclear.

There's a feeling of recovery out here - and a general acceptance that
the 'Good Times' (up to 2006 or so) couldn't have continued at that
pace. I make stained glass and fused glass (= luxury items) and this
year I'm seeing more work in the 'bespoke' end of the business -
relatively high-value items - so there's hope.

Adrian

Give it a couple of years to pick up and for us to sort out our finances
and we'll be ready again.

SteveW

"Adrian C" wrote in message
...
On 06/07/2010 19:53, Clive George wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:53, Adrian C wrote:
On 06/07/2010 19:36, Clive George wrote:
Anybody know the difference?

RJ11 vs. BT Plug?
Ringing system?
Caller ID?
Nicer telephone operator to chat to?

Ok, electrical differences pertinent to using phones for one country in
another :-)

What's now interesting to me, as I've never taken any notice when over
there (too much Guiness)

1) Do Irish phones ring like the UK phones, Brr-Brrrr or the US ones -
Brrrr

2) Are the DTMF tones the same?

--
Adrian C


No difference both ZCO complex impedance phones.
But like UK there is a big diff in quality ...

As far as I know - phones that we used in the UK also work over here...

Adrian
DTMF tones are a worldwide standard IIRC.


correct DTMF is an ITU standard ...

Voltage current and impedance are MORE OR LESS standardised, in that is
its possible to build a phone that meets all national standards. There are
differences though. US phones are quiet when used here.


Actually that is the difficult bit ... there are many impedances in use,
from straight 600 ohm (US) to far more typical European complex impedance.
For example ...

UK circuits expect to see 370 ohm is series with a 620 ohm resistor across
which is a 0.0312uF capacitor

Switzerland expects 220 ohm in series with 820 ohm across which is a 115nF
capacitor

Almost each European country is different ... some have no analogue phones
and are digital only.

If impedance is not matched - it may work, but due to mismatch there will be
signal losses, and often they either won't ring or ringing cadence is
incorrect. It can also seriously degrade REN (i.e. No of phones that will
ring if on the line 3-5 is normal REN rating)

It is also illegal to operate a non approved phone on a line ... for example
UK t&c's which you sign up to state only approved devices will be
connected.
I know you can physically plug in what you want ... just mentioning the
point ........ if impedance is way out it will fail BT auto line test.




Good article on http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/teleinterface.html

Rick Hughes wrote:


As far as I know - phones that we used in the UK also work over here...

Adrian
DTMF tones are a worldwide standard IIRC.


correct DTMF is an ITU standard ...

Voltage current and impedance are MORE OR LESS standardised, in that
is its possible to build a phone that meets all national standards.
There are differences though. US phones are quiet when used here.


Actually that is the difficult bit ... there are many impedances in use,
from straight 600 ohm (US) to far more typical European complex impedance.
For example ...

UK circuits expect to see 370 ohm is series with a 620 ohm resistor
across which is a 0.0312uF capacitor


Its much worse than that. Ther are non linear and inductive elements in
the 'UK standard telephone'

Or were.

When BT went private, the spec was basically 'this is what our current
carbon microphone line powered bell telephone looks like, electrically.
Any other telephone must look exactly like it or it cant be guaranteed
to work, and wont get approvals and cant be sold'.

A friend of mine spent weeks with transformers and diodes and resistors
and capacitors trying to design an answering machine/smart phone that
would meet the specs.





Switzerland expects 220 ohm in series with 820 ohm across which is a
115nF capacitor

Almost each European country is different ... some have no analogue
phones and are digital only.

If impedance is not matched - it may work, but due to mismatch there
will be signal losses, and often they either won't ring or ringing
cadence is incorrect. It can also seriously degrade REN (i.e. No of
phones that will ring if on the line 3-5 is normal REN rating)

It is also illegal to operate a non approved phone on a line ... for
example UK t&c's which you sign up to state only approved devices will
be connected.
I know you can physically plug in what you want ... just mentioning the
point ........ if impedance is way out it will fail BT auto line test.




Good article on http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/teleinterface.html


yep.

Slightly OT, but why does the UK stick to their phone sockets and plugs.
Are they used anywhere else in the world?

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

Timothy Murphy wrote:
Slightly OT, but why does the UK stick to their phone sockets and plugs.

Because of BT

Are they used anywhere else in the world?


Only as landfill.

In article , "Timothy Murphy"
wrote:

Slightly OT, but why does the UK stick to their phone sockets and plugs.

Originally, with the switch-over to subscriber provided phones, it was
to prevent the simple use of non-approved US phones that sounded very
quiet on the UK's +7/-16dB network. It was intended to avoid fault
calls when the subs. couldn't hear the remote end when using a US and
most other country sourced phones.
--
John W
I you want to mail me, replace the obvious with co.uk twice

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Timothy Murphy wrote:

Slightly OT, but why does the UK stick to their phone sockets and plugs.
Are they used anywhere else in the world?

Some *****er* at BT decided not to use RJ-11 and RJ-45, god knows why. My
old boss (who used to work for BT) said he used to know him. BT also used
to cut off the little tag from RJ-11 connectors that plugged into phones
they sold, so it made it hard to remove the cable from the phone. My old
boss said they (BT, I spose) were concerned the connector might fall out.
Like the 500 million in use in North America fall out on a regular basis.

Your boss is wrong, it was a safety requirement (BABT IIRC) to stop kids
extracting the plug and getting a shock when the phone rang.
It was a requirement (still is?) to have to use a tool to extract the plug.
Cutting the pin meant you needed a small "blade" to depress it.

There is no real protection on an RJ12/11 plug and the ringing voltage is
not pleasant.

In article ,
"Rick Hughes" writes:

It is also illegal to operate a non approved phone on a line ... for example
UK t&c's which you sign up to state only approved devices will be
connected.
I know you can physically plug in what you want ... just mentioning the
point ........ if impedance is way out it will fail BT auto line test.

In the EU, approval testing is all done to ETSI specs nowadays.
Individual country specs went about 20 years ago.

Back in the days of BT approvals (even before BABT), I did
a number of trips to Baynard House to get modems BT approved.
It was mostly about the safety of the product and any possible
interference with the rest of the network, and they didn't
really care if the appliance worked or not. If you go back a
bit further (before my involvement), they used to care about
products actually working, but I think they eventually decided
that was the consumers problem, not theirs.

Some parts such as working out what the REN rating was were
remarkably crude.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
"dennis@home" writes:


"Tim Streater" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Timothy Murphy wrote:

Slightly OT, but why does the UK stick to their phone sockets and plugs.
Are they used anywhere else in the world?

Some *****er* at BT decided not to use RJ-11 and RJ-45, god knows why. My
old boss (who used to work for BT) said he used to know him. BT also used
to cut off the little tag from RJ-11 connectors that plugged into phones
they sold, so it made it hard to remove the cable from the phone. My old
boss said they (BT, I spose) were concerned the connector might fall out.
Like the 500 million in use in North America fall out on a regular basis.

Your boss is wrong, it was a safety requirement (BABT IIRC) to stop kids
extracting the plug and getting a shock when the phone rang.
It was a requirement (still is?) to have to use a tool to extract the plug.
Cutting the pin meant you needed a small "blade" to depress it.

There is no real protection on an RJ12/11 plug and the ringing voltage is
not pleasant.

Some of this is correct. A phone line was classed as Low Voltage
(which is same as mains) and not Extra Low Voltage, so the sockets
had to be shuttered. (There's no regulatory issue with unplugging it.)

The reason for not using RJ11 (6P2C) is that it only has 2 conductors,
and UK phones required 4. If they'd used a 6PxC connector with a
non-standard pin-out, that would have been even more of a disaster.
They effectively needed a new RJ profile, which couldn't plug into 6PxC
sockets, which is exactly what they did.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
Tim Streater writes:
In article ,
(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:

The reason for not using RJ11 (6P2C) is that it only has 2 conductors,
and UK phones required 4. If they'd used a 6PxC connector with a
non-standard pin-out, that would have been even more of a disaster.
They effectively needed a new RJ profile, which couldn't plug into 6PxC
sockets, which is exactly what they did.

I'm not sure I follow you; can you give me more detail? An RJ11 with 4
wires should do the trick, surely?

An RJ11 has two wires. There isn't an RJ11 with 4 wires.
There's a 6P4C connecter, but it's not an RJ11. In telephony,
the 6P4C is usually an RJ14, and carries two 2-wire phone circuits
(and it's compatible with RJ11 for accessing just the first circuit).
Again, if we'd used the 6P4C, we'd have something which looked
like a regular RJ14, plugged into RJ14 and RJ11 sockets, but didn't
work.

If you're saying that *then existing*
UK phones needed 4 wires, that doesn't help!

That's what I'm saying. They didn't all need 4 wires, but the
circuit defines 4 wires. In some cases 3, or all 4 are used.
Most phones nowadays only need 2 wires because they don't have
real bells and use loop disconnect dialing, and don't have earth
recall, but this wasn't the case when the connector was developed.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
Tim Streater writes:
In article ,
(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:

In article ,
Tim Streater writes:
In article ,
(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:

The reason for not using RJ11 (6P2C) is that it only has 2 conductors,
and UK phones required 4. If they'd used a 6PxC connector with a
non-standard pin-out, that would have been even more of a disaster.
They effectively needed a new RJ profile, which couldn't plug into 6PxC
sockets, which is exactly what they did.

I'm not sure I follow you; can you give me more detail? An RJ11 with 4
wires should do the trick, surely?

An RJ11 has two wires. There isn't an RJ11 with 4 wires.
There's a 6P4C connecter, but it's not an RJ11. In telephony,
the 6P4C is usually an RJ14, and carries two 2-wire phone circuits
(and it's compatible with RJ11 for accessing just the first circuit).
Again, if we'd used the 6P4C, we'd have something which looked
like a regular RJ14, plugged into RJ14 and RJ11 sockets, but didn't
work.

If you're saying that *then existing*
UK phones needed 4 wires, that doesn't help!

That's what I'm saying. They didn't all need 4 wires, but the
circuit defines 4 wires. In some cases 3, or all 4 are used.
Most phones nowadays only need 2 wires because they don't have
real bells and use loop disconnect dialing, and don't have earth
recall, but this wasn't the case when the connector was developed.

Ok, thanks. Since asking the above I've poked around a bit so its
clearer now. Shame though.

Mind you, this shows up a bit the divide between the telephony and
networking worlds. In 25 years of computer networking, no one in a
variety of different organisations I dealt with has ever called it any
thing other than an RJ11, whether it had 2, 4, or 6 wires.

and even more so with RJ45, which only has 1 pair (and is also partly
compatible with RJ11 and RJ14 for the first circuit) and is completely
useless for ethernet, when they really mean 8C8P or more specifically,
T568A or T568B ;-)

Mostly it doesn't much matter, but it does matter when you want to
understand why BT couldn't have used the RJ11 back when they developed
their own connector.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
Tim Streater writes:
In article ,
(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:

The reason for not using RJ11 (6P2C) is that it only has 2 conductors,
and UK phones required 4. If they'd used a 6PxC connector with a
non-standard pin-out, that would have been even more of a disaster.
They effectively needed a new RJ profile, which couldn't plug into 6PxC
sockets, which is exactly what they did.
I'm not sure I follow you; can you give me more detail? An RJ11 with 4
wires should do the trick, surely?

An RJ11 has two wires. There isn't an RJ11 with 4 wires.
There's a 6P4C connecter, but it's not an RJ11. In telephony,
the 6P4C is usually an RJ14, and carries two 2-wire phone circuits
(and it's compatible with RJ11 for accessing just the first circuit).
Again, if we'd used the 6P4C, we'd have something which looked
like a regular RJ14, plugged into RJ14 and RJ11 sockets, but didn't
work.

If you're saying that *then existing*
UK phones needed 4 wires, that doesn't help!

That's what I'm saying. They didn't all need 4 wires, but the
circuit defines 4 wires. In some cases 3, or all 4 are used.
Most phones nowadays only need 2 wires because they don't have
real bells and use loop disconnect dialing, and don't have earth
recall, but this wasn't the case when the connector was developed.


ITYM "Most phones nowadays [...] use DTMF dialing."

On 06/07/2010 19:36, Clive George wrote:
Anybody know the difference?

Thanks all for the answers - some interesting stuff in there, and has
usefully allayed any fears I may have had.