Norstar help

[trebble]

Hello everyone

I'm a business owner who is using a Norstar Modular ICS ( not sure on the correct model #, if it's needed to help me, please let me know where to find it)
and a call pilot 100.

For the last few years I have done my own programming on it but I'm no expert.

Up till now we only had 2 lines into it and because we needed more and didn't want to pay an atrocious for wired lines we opted to go with a ZTE MF279T smarthub to provide more.

A smarthub is used to provide internet and phone service of a cell signal.

My three main problem's with the smarthub's are.....

1) If someone phones into the system on these hub's and dial's an extension and no one would answer and this person would hang up, the system itself will not hang up
it will keep the line busy and eventually will leave a message somewhere consisting of a busy signal.

2) A lot of times if someone dial's into the system on these hub's and tries to enter an extension, the system will say this is an invalid extension or that command is not recognized.

3) Sometimes if you dial out on these hub's and get an automated phone system and try to enter an extension your command's don't seem to be recognized for what they are.

I know of at least one other business owner who is using the same setup, just with a Toshiba or a Panasonic system and it's working very well for him so I'm not sure if it's the Nortel system,
cell service issue or something else.

My question is, is there anything in programming I could change to fix this or is there something else I could look at.

Any help is appreciated

 

[MooreTel]

1st problem sounds ,like you didn't program Supervision for those added lines.
3rd problem might be that line(s) were set to Pulse, not Tone...

 

[greggster]

I would agree with MooreTel and check if Supervision is turned on in "lines" or possibly your device itself doesn't offer disconnect supervision which is required for the Norstar to know to hang up the line after the call has ended.
But the second issue is a little more difficult. It was a fairly common problem back in the day when the Norstar voicemail was connected to gateway trunks ie. Spectrum, Comcast modems providing the dial tone. The voicemail system does not get good enough DTMF sent from the modem/gateway and ignores the digits being dialed. I am not sure if you can change settings in your Smart Hub device but if not, I don't believe you will be able to resolve your issue. I know when I had the issue in the past I could call Spectrum and they had a script they could upload to the modem that would fix the issue, not sure if you have a support person you could ask with the smart hub

 

[trebble]

1st problem sounds ,like you didn't program Supervision for those added lines.
3rd problem might be that line(s) were set to Pulse, not Tone...

Trunk mode is set to super.
Is that what you mean with supervision turned on?

I have 8 lines coming into this system now.
3 are wired
5 are with smart hubs
I have connected the hubs to ports where the lines were connected and the problems seem to be following the the hubs.
Also, all lines dial mode is set to tone not to pulse.

 

[trebble]

I would agree with MooreTel and check if Supervision is turned on in "lines" or possibly your device itself doesn't offer disconnect supervision which is required for the Norstar to know to hang up the line after the call has ended.
But the second issue is a little more difficult. It was a fairly common problem back in the day when the Norstar voicemail was connected to gateway trunks ie. Spectrum, Comcast modems providing the dial tone. The voicemail system does not get good enough DTMF sent from the modem/gateway and ignores the digits being dialed. I am not sure if you can change settings in your Smart Hub device but if not, I don't believe you will be able to resolve your issue. I know when I had the issue in the past I could call Spectrum and they had a script they could upload to the modem that would fix the issue, not sure if you have a support person you could ask with the smart hub

First of thanks for the reply

As far as changing settings is concerned, I can log onto the hubs dashboard and change things but I am not sure what to change.
Where would I start?
I have talked with ZTE but I wasn't sure which questions to ask so it wasn,t very productive.
Is it possible that if I had better cell service this issue would correct itself.
We are considering adding a cell booster to get better cell service to these things.

 

[trebble]

The voicemail system does not get good enough DTMF sent from the modem/gateway and ignores the digits being dialed. I am not sure if you can change settings in your Smart Hub device but if not, I don't believe you will be able to resolve your issue. I know when I had the issue in the past I could call Spectrum and they had a script they could upload to the modem that would fix the issue, not sure if you have a support person you could ask with the smart hub

Are you saying I would have to upload something onto the Smart hub to fix this issue.
My friends panasonic system, with all settings in the smarthub exactly the same, works wonderfully.
Is it because his system gets better DTMF or doesn't need as good a DTMF to work?

Thank you.