Nearing wits end (audio dropout)

[TheHardy]

Okay ... I've been around and using the FPL PC softphone app over a year. I am quite used to it's "eccentricities" but I am honestly nearing the end of my rope with it.

I know it is buggy ... I accept that. It is free. It has been broken for over a year.

However ...

Tonight I tried to place a call. I did the usual, and closed out all my other apps, rebooted my machine, ensured that there were no spare processes, and then opened the softphone app.

Attempted to place the call. Far side audio was fine for about 10 seconds into call, and then dropped out.

Redialed. No farside audio. Redialed. No farside audio. Restarted app. Dialed. No farside audio.

Closed app entirely. Restarted app. Dialed. No Farside audio.

Closed app. Rebooted again (note: so far, only app had been run, no other programs or processes at all!).

Launched PC softphone. Dialed. No farside audio.

Total time: 12 mins. Call retries - main+8 (5 documented above).

I am at a loss. I have changed NO settings. Ports are defined as required for PC Win7 softphone app. It has worked prior, no changes to firewall, no java update, no windows update (I have set all these to MANUAL, btw).

The initial call started out with audio fine, but then dropped out after 10 secs.

I am completely frustrated at this point, so much so that as I was waiting for my PC to reboot, I had to march out to the corner store and buy a prepaid phone card so I could use my company cell to place the LD call that I needed --- I could have just opened my account, and set a FM number temporarily, but at this point I am so very angry and dismayed, that I am a mere 20 seconds away from deleting my 15+ month high use FPL account.

Really guys ... what the hell is going on???

[FONGO_steve]

Absence of far side audio would usually indicate some sort of downstream problem, potentially with the call routing or carrier connecting the calls to said location. Do you mind PMing Mike or myself the details of some of these calls, along with your account number? We should be able to check out the logs and see what's happening.

[TheHardy]

Steve: it is entirely the PC softphone. When I finally did complete my call via my company mobile, I came back and tinkered around some further and was able to get sketchy audio only, back to the original ... where once calling a number, there would be a delay of 5+/- seconds with no audio, choppy audio and then complete drop out; I used ONLY recorded numbers for this (ie: weather announcement/road report/after hour answering machine) where I knew I would get termination and where there was for sure voice present, where I knew the keystrokes to prompt the system to move along.

I can run some more tests now and see how things are, but as you can probably tell by my tone of the original post, I was QUITE frustrated... the intermittent behavior of this so-called piece of software has me more than a little disgruntled!

[TheHardy]

I dragged out some ATAD numbers to call to perform some testing for Steve, which I did and have submitted (until the softphone PC app crashed, which now requires me to reboot my machine!), but I had some interesting results which I wish to share ...

The numbers I actually called are not important for this .... so I will just call them A, B, C ...
A is a weather recording in a free calling city
B is a different weather recording in a free calling city
C is a recording in a NON-FREE calling city, which when dialed, generates the "your balance is insufficient to place your call to that destination"

1) Call A - connects, no audio, hang up
2) Call B - connects, no audio, hang up
3) Call A - connects, no audio, hang up
4) Call C - no connect, miss first 3-4 secs of fail recording, but hear rest, hang up
5) Call A - connects, miss start audio, then normal, hang up
6) Call B - connects, no audio, hang up
7) Call C - no connect, miss first 3-4 secs of fail recording, but hear rest, hang up
8) Call C - connects, miss start audio, then normal, hang up

Note that all calls were placed almost IMMEDIATELY following one another, with only the time for the softphone to terminate and hang up.

Interesting in this is that I had no audio on initial calls to a #, but when I dialed a NON-FREE # which errored out, then redialed the SAME # again, I had audio. So unless the call-routing path changed, there is something in the call-setup being done by the softphone. I do not know HOW or WHY, but this is ODD behavior, to be sure.

I remember, back in the OLD days (darn near square wheel days!) when ClearNet first came to Canada, and my cell phone would lose the network, and all incoming calls would hit voicemail (which I would never get notification of, as the phone had lost the tower signal!). Battery pulls etc did not work, so what I resorted to doing, after troubleshooting this for HOURS, was to randomly place calls to 611 just to connect and establish a signal/connection. Pointless, but it worked.

So, from now on, I will keep a "dummy" number stored in contacts to dial whenever I have audio problems, so I can get a fail/no credit message, so I can then hopefully place my next call successfully.

Of course, now that I have identified this behaviour, it will be fixed and stop working! LOL