Telecom experts

[brianusa]

For some reason calls from the UK are being 'blocked' according to those who can't get through from the UK. No matter who their provider is they say the same thing, that the voice recording is apparently an American accented female. Comcast is our provider in the US but they can find no fault. Never happened before, any ideas?

 

Brian

[kevinlms]

For some reason calls from the UK are being 'blocked' according to those who can't get through from the UK. No matter who their provider is they say the same thing, that the voice recording is apparently an American accented female. Comcast is our provider in the US but they can find no fault. Never happened before, any ideas?

 

Brian

Are any UK callers getting through? Find someone you know and call them and get them to attempt to call back. If no response call back after 10 minutes to find out what response. It sounds like there is an outage to Comcast.

 

What does the recording actually say, that is very important. Most carriers have a range of recordings, which mean something to technical staff.

[brianusa]

Thanks for the responses. We have no problem dialing to the UK; relatives in NI and the Southampton area apparently have the same trouble to dial to the US. From what I can gather, the recording just says this is a blocked number. One of the biggest problems these days, is that you are at the mercy of pushing numbers and hope to get a voice. When eventually you do, you get the standard explanations followed by 'Is there anything else? Have a nice day!

 

I appreciate your concern.

 

Brian.

Edited June 16, 2017 by brianusa

[kevinlms]

Thanks for the responses. We have no problem dialing to the UK; relatives in NI and the Southampton area apparently have the same trouble to dial to the US. From what I can gather, the recording just says this is a blocked number. One of the biggest problems these days, is that you are at the mercy of pushing numbers and hope to get a voice. When eventually you do, you get the standard explanations followed by 'Is there anything else? Have a nice day!

 

I appreciate your concern.

 

Brian.

The callers from the UK, should be reporting the fault to their providers, not you to yours. As it is them having the problem, as initiating the call(s). It certainly sounds like a network problem, often caused by an update in a computer somewhere.

 

How it works, is a block of numbers somewhere and this list is incomplete or similar and so the system, doesn't recognise your number as being valid, so it defaults to an error message. The nature of the message is important. The major carrier here, has a whole page of 'test messages', some are quite comical, but they do have their own phone number.

 

I'm a phone man, but never in an exchange. I have come across similar problems, where a new exchange has been activated with its own prefix 1234 xxxx etc. Now if an exchange, sometimes far distant, hasn't been reprogrammed with the information that this new range exists, eventually some poor caller will find out the hard way, that the system doesn't know of its existence.

 

So not quite the same as your problem, but can only be found, by reporting it and preferably by as many originating callers as possible.

 

Hope that helps.

Edited June 17, 2017 by kevinlms

[duncan]

Could it be Mr Trump (trumph?) adding the UK to his list of undesirable countries ?  

 

Hope not as I have many American friends. Mrs May will be fervently hoping not, as she is dependant on Mr Trump giving her a favourable trading agreement !