Why doesn't French phone ring in the US?

[richardphan]

I bought a brand new phone in France, and it's working fine in the US, EXCEPT it does not detect incoming calls: no ring at all!<p>The original phone plug had the two middle contacts wired in the RJ-11, so this phone works on 2-wire basis, not 3-wire as with the old european phones.<p>Any idea how I can fix this? ring frequency? voltage difference?<p>Thanks,<p>Richard

[bodgy]

Phones are not my speciality, but I think the French(as well as British and Hong Kong) phones have a seperate ring wire.<p>Same problem happens with some phones bought from HK for use in Australia, they work but don't ring.<p>I think you could connect the ring wire in the phone to the incoming wire (don't know whether this breaks any local rules though)<p>Website that might be able to help is the Ken Boakes website or his Ratring website. You'll have to do a Google search as I can't remember the actual site addresses.<p>colin

[Chris Smith]

I Don't know french phones, But the ringer Equivalence may be different, the frequency response may be different, [20, 30, 40 Hz?] the voltage requirements may be different, DC VS AC? + or - ? or just that it requires that third wire to be separate for the ring?

[richardphan]

Well.. even when it's plugged in France, only 2 wires are coming into the phone, so the 3rd wire lead is not applicable here.<p>I could not find any Ken Boakes and/or Ratring from Google. Any typo?<p>Know any web site that has phone-related circuits? <p>Thanks,<p>Richard

[bodgy]

Found it http://www.geocities.com/kenboak the ratring is his Yahoo group.<p>Also look out for a book in the Bernard Babini series. I think they are available in the US, they're small and in softback inexpensive anfd they have a phone circuits book.<p>colin

[frhrwa]

with any luck, your local phone company will have a ring test unit.. you can plug your phone in and test the ring cycle of the ringer... different ring cycles (20, 30, 40, 50, 66, etc) were used for party lines, the phone company put out a 20hz ring signal to one party and a different ring cycle to the other party on your same pair of wires... have you looked inside your phone to see if the coil for the ringer is hooked up? their should be a network inside of which two of the leads from the coil will go to a capacitor and the other two route back to the T & R (two leads coming in from wall) via the hookswitch... anyway, not to confuse you, best bet to have the phoneman just run a simple test and let you know what you have... good luck..

[Dean Huster]

Humor is always at the top of my list. When I first saw the subject on the OP, I immediately thought, "Well, of course a French phone won't ring in the U.S. .... unless you invoke call forwarding."