Random DTMF Tones during voice calls on Spark Wireless Broadband

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Random DTMF Tones during voice calls on Spark Wireless Broadband

daparrot

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#195786 3-May-2016 21:22

Spark have started selling Wireless Broadband with a voice connection to clients in small towns

which dont have fibre.

An interesting issue seems to happen where you get random DTMF Tones every so often during a call.

Its the party that is not using the voip over wireless broadband that hears the DTMF tone ( or beep if you want to call it that )

Its fairly random how often it happens but does seem to be when the female at the other end is talking.

Doing a quick google on it I see it's a phenomenon called "talk-off".

To put it simply, random tonal qualities in regular speech will trigger the DTMF generator in the
TA to produce a 'touch-tone'. It's been said female voices (or voices with more 'highs') do it more then male voices.

Does anyone have a suggestion how one can speak to the right person at Spark to see if they can adjust the

minimum and maximum duration thresholds for the DTMF side of things as I suspect the main support desk is just going to go Huh?

SATTV

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#1546378 3-May-2016 22:27

Interesting,

I get this when I talk to my wife on occasion.

I think it is when we use 2talk and I am on my mobile.

Now that I think about it, I get it on our 2talk line when I talk to my MIL ( slingshot LLU )

We always thought it was someones cheek touching a button by accident

I will now see if I can disable it.

Cheers

John

I know enough to be dangerous

johny99

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#1546770 4-May-2016 18:18

Can't recall what is the setting is called, sbiddle and skyplonk will know the exact setting, but change to in band audio from rfc2833 (or other way round can't remember :p) this should stop your issue however not sure spark will do this on their VoF service

raytaylor

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#1548369 8-May-2016 18:54

Its the DTMF mode - I havent seen the spark routers yet but I wouldnt think you can change it.

In a typical voip ATA you have an "RFC' mode where the tone is detected, sent as a command in the accompanying control data stream, and regenerated at the other end. That way the frequencies of the dual tone dont get garbled in the voip compression. A touch tone is actually a pair of tones together so its quite important they get to the other end with clarity. So you are possibly right - the voice stream is triggering the tone recognition in the ATA components and causing a touch tone dial command to be sent through the data stream which is being regenerated at the other end as an audible touch tone.

The other option is "In-Audio". This takes away the regeneration part and leaves the tone in the voip audio stream which can garble it. This will prevent you from using most IVM systems - such as when you call a corporate office and get asked to "Press 1 for sales, press 2 for support". The phone system at the other end wont recognise you pressing a button when you press 2, and will continue "Press 3 for accounts..." as if no button was pressed.

In-Audio is the mode we use with monitored alarms because they dont use dual tones to communicate with the monitoring controller. They use simple single tones that the RFC format cannot regenerate and the voip compression doesnt affect them too much.

My suggestion is just to get used to it, or go back to a landline as switching to In-Audio is not worth it.

Ray Taylor

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savaii

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#1551458 12-May-2016 13:10

Does disabling Voicemail on the handset make any difference?

ADSL

ubergeeknz

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Vocus

#1551484 12-May-2016 13:47

Interesting. Some of the Huawei ONTs exhibited a similar behavior at first with the onboard ATA ports, but they fixed it in a later firmware version. The workaround was to use inband DTMF but that of course caused all manner of issues.

You need to report it as a fault per normal. If enough people are having the same issue it should get the right attention. Hopefully someone on here will pick it up as well.

raytaylor

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#1551821 12-May-2016 22:22

I dont think there is a way to fix the issue - other than notching out those frequencies which will make speech worse.

Ray Taylor

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ubergeeknz

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Vocus

#1552147 13-May-2016 12:59

raytaylor:

I dont think there is a way to fix the issue - other than notching out those frequencies which will make speech worse.

There is for sure. Most equipment using RFC2833 doesn't exhibit this behaviour. DTMF has very specific characteristics which are not something which would occur during normal speech. As I say I know that the Huawei ONTS had this problem, and were fixed, I've seen similar bugs on VoIP Gateway DSPs with respect to fax detection, and again it was fixed (eventually!)

daparrot

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#1579220 23-Jun-2016 19:29

FYI, It looks like a recent change on Sparks network has resolved the

issue with random DTMF tones.

It certainly makes the conversation easier

Dairyxox

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#1616244 23-Aug-2016 11:40

We've got one of these (Spark wireless 4G connection with phone connection), and its doing the same thing.

I'm in the process of logging an issue about it with Spark now.

Dairyxox

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#1616701 24-Aug-2016 10:06

To the OP, is the issue resolved for you?

Spark are advising they are working with Huawei to deploy a firmware fix, and they have no specific time-frame for the resolution.

daparrot

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#1616749 24-Aug-2016 11:33

Dairyxox:

To the OP, is the issue resolved for you?

Spark are advising they are working with Huawei to deploy a firmware fix, and they have no specific time-frame for the resolution.

Yes it seems resolved and it seems they may have pushed an additional update to the router to fix issues when a Canon printer attached

via wifi went to sleep it woud drop its connection on awaking ( the DTMF fix happened a month or so ago and the wifi fix possibly happened at the start of this week )

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old3eyes

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#1616793 24-Aug-2016 12:27

I notice when talking to the M-in-Law on her Spark Fiber phone line that i get the odd DTMF tone..

Regards,

Old3eyes

PaulBags

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#1710353 26-Jan-2017 23:12

I appear to to have the same problem on a recent Spark fiber install (Enable). Should I just wait & see if the ONT gets an update, and how would I know if it does (short of making a lot of phone calls to test)? If I do ring who should I ring, Spark or Enable?

ubergeeknz

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Vocus

#1710445 27-Jan-2017 09:09

You need to call Spark who will raise the issue with Enable.