TekSavvy → [DSL] Building intercom (aka NSL door buzzer)

So I've got a customer who has run into problems with his building intercom, and I'm hoping people might have some advice..

He has Rogers Home Phone. Rogers had their box plugged into his phone jack, and his phones would ring on both the intercom and calls from the Rogers box. I guess that means they found his phone line and pulled the Bell feed in the telecom room. Great, but now he adds Dry DSL.

I walk him through connecting the cordless phone straight to the Rogers box, in preparation for using the phone jack for DSL. Meanwhile, Bell installs the Dry DSL and disconnects the building intercom wire.

I feel like I could have anticipated this. I also feel like Bell could have left the intercom ringing through on the DryLoop. Or put the intercom on line 2--come to think of it, this is a possibility...

I suppose it is ultimately the building that is responsible for intercom stuff, but of course they plead total ignorance. Add to that, I believe Bell generally hides the mapping of patch panel port to unit number in most buildings. I guess a tone trace would be enough to figure out which phone wire is his. Not sure how to hook it up to the intercom?

Some basic technical pointers, and some understanding of how the responsibilities break down, would be great. Thanks!

Most intercoms are actually labelled in the basements as to which units they go to. You can either connect the intercom on the dryloop or you could tone back a second pair and use that for the intercom exclusively.

However, if you are putting the intercom on the dryloop, in most cases the pots splitter needs to be installed in the basement before the intercom and 2 pairs used up to the unit. Otherwise every time someone gets buzzed in they will drop sync.

Line in --> modem pair --> phone out --> intercom pair

if the tech used a new pair for the DSL then I'd guess he simply disconnected the original pair that is connected to the intercom. someone would have to wire one of the jacks to the original pair so that the intercom can still work.

it's possible he only wired one jack for DSL and kept the rest of the jacks on the original pair, might just be able to plug a phone into another jack and see if it rings when someone tries buzz them (or see if you lose sync on the DSL).

Are you saying that the phone service is from the Rogers box in the apartment suite? This makes it even more complicated than explained by btech805.

PhoneService---->IntercomPanel---->PhonesInTheSuite

In order for the intercom to take over the phones safely, the intercom hardware is connected between the phone service and the phones. If the original Rogers tech did a proper job, they would have used two pairs already. One pair would feed the Rogers phone service down to the intercom panel. The second would send the output from the intercom panel back to the phone jacks in the suite.

The DSL installer should have used a third pair for the dry-loop DSL. If they commandeered one of the active pairs, that would break the intercom and Rogers phone service.

It definitely wasn't fed from the Rogers box down to the intercom and then back up. I can see why that's important though..

So, filtering on the intercom, then combine with DSL line. Up to the unit, and then filters in the unit on the phone(s).

Presumably the Bell tech should have done this, or does Bell consider this is not their responsibility?

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There are a few common intercom systems.

One is that the box at the door is simply a phone dialer on an external phone line. You make a call to the tenant and on receipt of the buzz me up signal from the tenant, the box releases the door.

Similarly is a box at the door that dials the tenant's landline in the house. The landline goes through a tone receptor that will release the door. Normally calls from outside will not release the door.

This is the kind that teddy boom is dealing with.

So, when Rogers installs its phone service, it disconnects Bell on the Bell side of the door system. Rogers connects to the phone lines inside the apartment and the door system then looks like an extension to the Rogers phone MTA. So, it works.

What has happened here is that Bell came along and connected the Bell wire to the DSL dry loop phone line again! So, what needs to happen is that the DSL dry loop should be connected onto the second pair on the apartment side of the door system (they are probably detached and just sitting there right now). Then a jack for the DSL should be provided in the apt for the second pair.

The line from Rogers must be sent down to the intercom box. I can't see how it can work otherwise.

The port on the Rogers box and the output port on the intercom are both FXSs. You can't tie them together on the same pair. It would be like tying two separate Bell phone lines together. When the intercom rings, it would fry the Rogers box with ringing voltage. Just because the wall jack with the Rogers box looks normal doesn't mean that it is wired like all the others.

Did you advise your customer to unplug the Rogers box from the wall and plug their phone directly to the Rogers box? I'm afraid that this incorrect advice is the root cause of the whole mess. Right away, the intercom is disabled. How did they even answer the door for the DSL tech?

If the DSL tech sees that the only phone is plugged into the Rogers box and that all the wall jacks are unused, they will assume that they are free to connect the DSL any way they want. They aren't mind readers. How would they know that a working system was disabled immediately before their arrival? They would have then checked the wall jack and found both pairs between Rogers and the intercom box unused, ready to repurpose for dry-loop DSL.

The correct advice would have been to leave everything alone. Your customer should have told the DSL tech that they have Rogers phone service and an intercom. The DSL tech would have found both pairs active and would use a third, running new wire if needed.

Now, everything is broken and no service department will take responsibility to fix it.

Edit: FXS not FXO

Fair enough.

However, Rogers could not have been doing it "right". The centre pair was active on all connectors: Rogers box, jacks, phones, etc. That wouldn't have been the case if they were sending signal down and back..

I mean, you never know if the customer did something different than discussed over the phone. It is possible that he found dial tone on line 2 of the Rogers box, instead of line 1. He might not have told me that detail--although I doubt it, the conversation was very specific. Of course that should still be true today, if it is the case.. At least I can learn what actually happened

You sure Rogers phone boxes aren't tolerant of ringing voltage? I mean, if he found dial tone on line 2, that means line 1 would have been seeing ringing voltage fed back routinely..

Anyway, thanks for the info. Yes, in retrospect I should have left everything alone. Better, sometimes, to deflect customer concerns and see what happens, instead of being proactive :P

Usually Rogers risers are right beside ours, if it is the type of intercom i am thinking it is, it needs a physical landline, so in this case backfeed the rogers dialtone back down stairs to the intercom and out back to the phone. Unfortunately that would require a total of three copper pairs which may or may not be available depending on how high your customer is in the building.

This is a bit academic, because we don't absolutely have to have the same phone ringing for intercom as voice, but.. I'm not sure I see why you need three pairs.

You need second pair carrying Rogers phone down to the patch panel. You need to connect that to the intercom system as the service line in. You take the line out from the intercom into a filter, filter output parallel with DSL in from Bell, and back up to the unit on the first pair.

And back to the other half of my question, how do we get this fixed?! Aka, who's responsible?

I mean.. I don't care much about the money, if it was my mistake if my involvement contributed, I'll pay. I don't care about the time going to straighten things out myself if I'd be allowed--probably not appropriate in this situation, even if I could talk my way in. Who fixes it?

The dry-loop from Bell might still have the vbatt voltage on it if it is still connected to Bell's voice switch. If you tie it to the intercom output, it will not go off-hook or ring properly.

Edit: You will be feeding the Rogers phone service back to Bell's central office too. DSL filters are not bidirectional. You can't use them to join separate voice and DSL connections.

It seems to me that you don't have a good grasp on how it is actually wired, which only further complicates things. 20 minutes with a toner and taking the jacks apart is all that needs to happen, hire someone qualified to fix it.

That being said, most bell techs are morons and will disconnect whatever they see fit. As suggested I would assume they disconnected one of the pairs already in use and didn't consider that it may be used for some other service. This is why we dont let them in to the wiring closets un-escorted.

As for who is responsible, that is a tough one. Bell most certainly will not dispatch a tech to connect a third party intercom, Rogers most likely won't either so your best bet it to hope the building property maintenance company will. That or disconnect one of the two services, call that respective company and hope that the tech is in a good mood and/or ahead of his day to spend an extra 10 mins to fix the mess.

Was there a grey or brown ish box there that said sittelite or digimax that connected to the jack on the wall & the phone modem with two telephone jumpers? Did the intercom & rogers phone service work correctly before the bell tech came? On all the jacks? Are they still working properly now?

These are important questions that need to be answered. If it all worked properly before, it's bells fault. You want bell to fix it? Tell them that their tech installed the buzzer on the same line as the dsl and every time somebody buzzes you, your internet cuts out. Because that's what will happen if they have dsl & the NSL buzzer on the same loop.

We don't need a dedicated line back to the basement to get the buzzer working with RHP on one jack, but we do need a pair that has the buzzer hooked up on it. We can get the one jack working in the whole apt with buzzer & the dial tone because of the white/grey switch we install. If we had a third pair to utilize we could get all the jacks working with buzzer and DT (because bell is "using" two). OR we could move the emta somewhere else, utilize both pairs (we need a pair to go back to the telephone room, as an example on the fifth floor at 5-1 where the interconnects are) and then get them all working again, or if your apartment is wired as single riser in series, we could just do it all inside the apartment.

With multiple risers, it starts to get complicated, and a lot of guys start getting confused with all the services on all the pairs.

Once bell fixes their mess, call rogers to fix the intercom and we'll come back and fix up the switch for you.

Make sure you tell the bell & rogers techs what is going on with everything. You may have to make compromises because not all techs can sort through all the stuff going on. BTW pm me what city your client is located. Maybe I could help.

This is not your problem. The tenant should get on the line to the building manager about the intercom and simply specify that they not use the riser in use for the internet.

The way we do NSL is we leave Bell connected and we install a switch.
When the Bell dial tone rings, the switch flips over to The bell side.
When the call terminates, it flips back to Rogers.

Rogers will fix this up, we will need to move his spare pair over to the intercom and reinstall the switch.

An automatic switch is much more sensible than backfeeding the phone service to the intercom panel. If the switch and Rogers box were still connected before the DSL tech visit, the technician would have realized that the phone pairs were in service. If it was removed, the pairs would seem dead.

If you are really lucky, the DSL tech might have moved the intercom output to pair 2 after installing DSL on pair 1. In that case, a Rogers technician should be able to simply reconnect the switch, enabling a single jack on the switch's output.

I've never actually seen the install, just talked with the customer, but there does seem to be a Rogers installed box/jack though. Originally, all jacks worked with Rogers home phone and intercom.

Now, line 1 only has DSL on it--working fine. Intercom might come up on line 2, but I can't see getting him to test that.. and it seems unlikely anyway.
(err.. well, maybe worth investigating.. but other news first)

This is in Richmond Hill, if the address is useful, let me know.

Anyway.. upshot is, I've asked the customer to call Rogers and explain as follows:
Had DSL install --> phone not working --> connected phone straight to Rogers box --> phone works, but no intercom
Which isn't exactly what happened, of course, but should get the point across

Thanks guys!

Typically Bell eliminates all of our Rogers equipment (it's kind of their lines) if they leave our switch installed, it will always flip over to the Rogers side and disconnect the bell line.

The switch, might also be a part of the jack.

It's possible to wire the switch in AFTER the DSL modem. So when it disconnects the bell feed, it disconnects after the DSL. I wouldn't trust this though.

We can hardwire without a switch.
We send the DT down on the spare into the intercom and back up out of the intercom. However, Rogers would prefer we don't go into the Bell room.if we don't need to, so the S the primary way to install home phone service with an intercom.

If your building is multi riser NSL. (As in each jack runs on it own pairs up from the Bell closet) we need to hardwire, using both pairs.
However in a DSL situation we would merely disable all jacks except one and use a switch so the DSL can be on the secondary.

Odds are, this will be a supervisor referral. These tricky set ups are best dealt with by our best. Especially if it is multi riser NSL.

Sorry for the quick response... was being dragged out of the house.

The reason I say it's not your problem is that the intercom system is required to be separate from the phone system by law. If they're using the same lines then it's a landlord tenant board issue not a telecom one.

That's an interesting one! I know a lot of building are converting over to the dial a phone number system, but I had no idea it was mandated. Is it an Ontario thing? Toronto?

I assumed, for no good reason really, that you were speaking of an Ontario customer. Reading it back it could really be any province lol.

Anyway, Ontario lists intercoms as a "service and facility", like electricity/elevators/etc. so once it's provided it must be maintained by the landlord (not Bhell) or the tenant can actually apply for a rent reduction. That said, there are other requirements depending on the height/type of building/etc. It gets a bit complicated since the requirements are part of the fire and/or building code but certain types of buildings (like those with a lobby with controlled entry & above 6m) are required to have a working intercom period. Those requirements might be national since a good chunk of the building code is a copy/similar to the national building code.

Yay for random tidbits picked up while documenting 100+ health/safety violations at my building.

Intercom systems are the property of the building, however... In the Rogers world we will assume some responsibility.
We will not pull new 25 pair to fix a riser issue, we will not replace, repair or otherwise work on the system.

We will ensure it is wired to work though.

Rogers expects that us techs follow out installation procedures (Switch device or a hard wire connection).

So your right to say it's the buildings property, however if it's a matter of making sure it's connected to our dial tone, Rogers assumes that responsibility.

If it doesn't work after that, (after its wired properly) then that is the buildings problem.

This is usually the steps we will take too, but i have never seen a work order at Bell redispatched to fix an intercom, but if and when we are there the general process is to wire a wet loop through the intercom, dry loops no.

If you showed up, the primary was still connected but not in service, would you remove it from the NSL wafers?

If you saw Rogers in the unit tied into the jack, would you (if you know how) make sure our stuff is reinstalled?

Some our switches are now built into the jack itself, if you guys came across this, would you disconnect our jack and replace it with yours?

There's lots of variables, we also could have hard wired the RHP, in which case we use both pairs, leaving nothing for the Bell tech to use (Aside from building spare).
In this case, I wouldn't blame the tech for purposely or accidentally disconnecting either pair to get his DT upstairs.

As a side note, pending on what the 25 pair looks like in the building, if it's multi or single riser and many other variables. Rogers may not be able to make all 3 items work. (Phone, intercom and DSL).

The solution is to get Cable Internet.

.... see what we did there?...

I've had these apartments. No spare pair, so no DSL or no intercom. Customers choice.

I cant imagine anyone disconnecting the Rogers service, however sometimes the boxes end up hidden behind couches, etc. And when we're installing a dryloop and see a home phone, we normally assume a voip provider is involved somehow/someway. In this case though, it could very well have ended up that there was no way all three services could work, which we would normally install the modem at the riser jack, but if the client specifically requested the modem somewhere then the tech may have taken the spare pair in thr ISW, again, either knowingly or unknowingly.