[PLUG-TALK] Known-good Touch Tone test service numbers?

Denis Heidtmann denis.heidtmann at gmail.com
Tue Feb 2 01:37:31 UTC 2021


Would it help if you called your cell phone from the phone to be tested?
Would you have any way to see if the tones come through in any reasonable
way?

On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 4:17 PM Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 01, 2021 at 01:39:55AM -0800, wes wrote:
> > I wouldn't call it a "DTMF test service" exactly but you could get pretty
> > close by calling a number that you know is answered by an auto-attendant,
> > with lots of options you can press. The response you hear will indicate
> > which number it thinks you pressed, even if that response isn't an
> explicit
> > "you pressed number foo".
>
> Been there.
>
> Indeed, organizations with phone menus that do (or don't)
> respond to touchtone presses are the reason why I'm looking
> for a more diagnostic DTMF key-response dialin number.
>
> The testcall.com site I mentioned claimed to respond with
> a spoken numeral for the buttons pressed on the phone
> keypad.  It did not respond to many different analog phones
> plugged into two different outgoing POTS-to-digital lines.
> It also did not respond to our cell phones, so I presume
> that site is busted.  Other websites suggested by google
> search are no longer active.  Hence my plug-talk question.
>
> Anyway, I prefer to KNOW, in DETAIL, the quality of the
> delivered DTMF signal, not just "maybe" or "maybe not".
>
> Digitizing phone channels, in the Covid/Zoom/telework era
> of oversubscribed streaming video bandwidth, probably leads
> to dropouts and quality loss.  Delivering an uninterrupted
> two-frequency beep - with steady amplitude and timing -
> may be more difficult lately.  I doubt that typical
> "it worked when we deployed it five years ago" phone
> software quality assurance "techniques" are robust enough
> for current network conditions.
>
> My ideal test would be a dial-in number producing a voice
> response, but also creating a web page or email providing
> detailed quality measures for the tones entered.
>
> Not just whether the tones pass or fail some detection
> threshold, but also numeric measures of the quality of the
> tones ( duration, amplitude for both tones in the DTMF
> number matrix, noise level, frequency stability, etc. ),
> leading to suggestions for problem causes and cures.
>
> The goal is measurements robust and diagnostic enough to
> get the attention of service providers with unacknowledged
> problems - and the regulatory agencies overseeing them.
>
> If I had abundant spare time, I would modify an Asterisk
> system to do this detailed testing, and offer it as a paid
> web service, (a dime a test?).  The payment process would
> be more complicated than the measurements and diagnostics;
> perhaps ads for telephones and services could pay for it.
>
> (Your X phone is doing XXX.  Buy a problem-free Y phone!)
>
> Keith
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com
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