The Millenium Bug, 2015-style

[Wowbagger]

We have 2 phone lines coming into our house and two phones on each. The phones are all Panasonic A144ES. Yesterday morning when we received our usual "I'm still breathing" call from Phyllis, all our phones went into meltdown. We couldn't get them to receive a call, or make one. After some effort, and I don't know what he did, Dez has made 3 of the 4 work again. However, there is still one stubborn git of a phone which doesn't. I can pick it up and get a dialling tone, but when I try to phone out it gives the type of signal that indicates that the other phone on that line is in use. When we get a call on that line, that particular phone remains silent.

This is a total mystery to me. Does the panel have any bright ideas?

[Diver300]

Have a corded phone, of any age, handy for just such eventualities.

Also, unless you run the base from a battery-backed power supply, only having cordless phones means you can't make or receive calls if the mains power fails.

[hellymedic]

Suspect Dez will already have removed and replaced batteries as well as deregistering and reregistering each handset with its base station.

I don't know if your landlines are caller ID and SMS enabled; maybe sending SMS messages to 0000 might do some tricks.

Teh Kim might have some better ideas.

[Wowbagger]

They seem to be working now. Removing the base station from the mains in hte last case did the trick. Very weird that they should have all gone together though. I suspect espionage from MI6.

[jsabine]

Isn't it MI5 wot deals with domestic trouble-makers?

[Wowbagger]

God, not them as well... 

[ian]

I think we have similar phones. They Do That. Sometimes. The usual turn-it-off-and-back-on sates the requirements of whatever Demon is in charge of wireless telephony this week. It would be useful to know which Demon, since I need a DECT repeater to get a damn signal in my office as I keep doing the comedy cut-outs, and DECT repeaters seem to be about as dark and mysterious as a device can be. I assume they just work. Then I laugh and laugh until nurse comes.

It's one of those things that I thought would be straightforward, but an hour of Googling later I'm no brighter and stuck with it might work. I've no idea if my phone is GAP compatible, what GAP is, and if our Panasonic phones are such a thing. Then again, Panasonic don't seem to know either.