Strange calls on the telephone

During two recent thunderstorms I received what I thought were crank
silent calls. I am connected to a BT line and was able to trace the
telephone number to a friend's telephone. My friend said they had not
rung me and also checked their telephone bill to see if any calls were
made to my telephone at the times the silent calls were made but found
no record of the calls being made. Can anyone explain this?

 

Thor knows who your friends are.

d

Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

 

Hello

Could you please provide some more information
Was it from same number all the times?
Is your friend also connected to a BT line?
Have you friend called you that day before the strange calls?
How many strange calls did you recieve?
How often did you recieve them?

It sounds impossible to me that the thunderstorms should have created these
calls.

The most logical reason must be that your friends phone have redialed your
number but then it should be on the phone bill.

Cheers
Rune

 

The phone line blew down next to the cemetery.

 

Problems such as this can be easily fixed by using a Hex Inverter.

 

My uncle got a call from a 911 dispatcher. They said someone called
from that #. Std proceedure is to send a cop out o make ure their
not being coerced into saying there's no prob. In this case, for
some reason the cops said they had to walk through the whole house.
My neighbor's the district magistrate and was a cop for 12 yrs. He
said that's bs.

But we still can't figure out how his # showed up on 911's CID. I do
know that Verizon's (was Bell Atlantic, now merged with GTE. All of
them suck.) system is a POS. I can sometimes dial a number and reach
someone with a *totally* different number, not just one or 2 digits
off.

 

http://www.google.com/search?q="microsoft+windows"+"911+emergency"
http://www.cioupdate.com/article.php/10493_1497311

 

I read in sci.electronics.design that Active8 <>
wrote (in <>) about 'Strange calls

One or two digits off WAS possibly a Strowger switch error, but now it's
almost always dialler error. The new systems foul up on a larger scale,
making wild cross-connections more common.

 

I read in sci.electronics.design that Tim Shoppa <[email protected]

1471 messages do give the time of calling, and the day and date if it's
not 'today'.

 

Good for Linux, but what does that have to do with my uncle's
telephone numero showing up on 911's CID?

 

WTF is this "BT", anyway? I thought brit tele, but the OP's email
addy doesn't indicate that. I thought basic tele, but we call that
POTs.

 

Are you sure it was real cops?

Good Luck,
Rich

 

LOL!

And, of course, be sure and upgrade your Spell Checker.

 

It's not a mystery, and you should not feel threatened by it.

Thunderstorms simply create a huge amount of electrical interference,
and some small part of that is triggering the effect you observe.

If you leave your computer on all the time, or you have 'wake on modem'
set, the effect may even be occurring inside your own computer, or in
your phone or broadband equipment. On the other hand, it could be
occurring at the local exchange, or in your friend's phone, or his
computer if it is switched on at the time.

You might eliminate some possibilities if you makes sure that your
friend's phone number isn't stored in your computer (or your phone if it
has a number memory) and your friend likewise removes your number from
his computer and phone.

 

Hello

Could you please tell us what telephone you friend uses?
In Denmark we pay 0.25 DKK just for pressing the first digit on the phone.
But do you also pay a start price or do you only pay if you get connection
(BT)?
Because if you don't pay a start price and if the call is not established
there will not be anything on the phone bill or is it wrong ?!?
I think we can say that the dead calls is not established because it's
totally dead in the other end.
Did you pick up the phone at the same time you heard it? If yes then next
time when there is a thunderstorm wait before you pick up the phone. Just to
see if it's a real call or just a glitch in the computer system at the
telephone company.

Could you please provide some information about when you friend has called
to you and talked to you. The real calls and also can you tell us if
your friend has put your number in the phones memory if your friends phone
has a memory.
Everytime you have recieved dead calls from your friend what phone number
has your friend called just before the dead call. Yours or someone else?
Where do you live and where does your friend live?
Where there a thunderstorm at both yours and your friends house?

I think that the problem is your friends telephone but I need the extra
information to be sure.

Cheers
Rune

 

Does you friend live close enough to experience the same close lightning
strike? Is he on the same exchange?

Ken

 

I have had strange things happen on my cell phone: people who I have called
before swear that I rang thier number and I know they didn't. It's likely
the store rebooted or played havic with the switch at the CO. It pays to
check your bill over each month.

Dan

P.S. That reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode where the old lady gets
calls from her departed husband during t-storms and later finds a downed
phone line next to his tombstone.

 

No - does it matter? - did anyone die? - seriously, given the
complexity of a telephone network, you must accept minor annoyances
from time to time due to the statistical likelihood of random events
(ie, things go wrong...a theory first postulated by a Mr Murphy)

Andrew VK3BFA

 

Rune:

My friend rents the phone line from British Telecom but pays their
bill to NTL. They to my knowledge do not have to put a first digit
before any number they phone.

It is difficult for me to identify if I have a "silent" call until I
have picked up the phone.

My friend does not use speed dial and does not keep my number in their
telephone memory. It is quite possible that I was the last number they
had called before a "silent" call took place. I have picked the phone
up at each "silent" call.

My friend and I live in a town in a valley about two miles apart from
each other. I am at the bottom of the valley whilst my friend is near
the top. The thunderstorm would have affected us both. Several mobile
networks were temporarily lost during the last storm where I had one
"silent" call.

At ths time I have had no more thunderstorms or "silent"
calls....until next time!

Thanks to everyone for their feedback on this mystery.

 

At least your strange calls are less annoying than mine. This morning I got
a call from a drunken-sounding man who chewed me out for firing the football
coach. It turned out that he was under the impression that I was the
president of the University and that the football coach had been fired.

Michael Covington
Associate Director, Artificial Intelligence Center
The University of Georgia - www.ai.uga.edu/mc