Phones

When you can’t make a phone call, there are normally a few easy steps to take to restore your phone service. See if any of these apply to you:

  • Did you lose your Internet connection?
    • Browse to a website to determine if your Internet is still down or if it was a temporary outage
    • If your Internet is still down, contact your Internet Service Provider to report the outage
    • If your Internet is working again, but you still cannot make and /or receive phone calls, then power cycle your modem and router
      • Unplug the power cord from the modem and router.  Be sure all lights are completely off both devices.
      • Plug in the Internet modem and allow it to boot up – about one minute (you will see the lights come on one at a time).
      • Plug in the Router (you will see lights come on for the power, Internet and each port that has an Ethernet cable. If at least 3 lights do not come on, check to be sure all the cables are securely connected).
    • Place an inbound and outbound test call.
  • Did you lose power?

If you determined that you have lost your internet connection or power, Contact Clarity Technical Support at 800-676-3995 if you need assistance in forwarding your phones to an alternate number.

If you see a red “X” on your phone display and the top right corner displays “Network is Down”, then the phone is not connected to the internet.  Check to be sure the Ethernet cable coming from the router is plugged into the Network port on the back of the phone.  If the phone is connected to the internet, but you still see a red “X” on your display, there is something preventing it from fully connecting to the Clarity server. Simply reboot the phone (unplug and plug back in) and the phone will re-establish the connection to the server.

  • If you still cannot resolve the issue, try plugging the cable that connects the phone to the router into a computer.  If you can reach the Internet, you may have a faulty phone.  If you cannot reach the Internet you may want to purchase a new Cat 5/Ethernet cable (network cable).  Something may have happened to your cabling that is preventing the phone from talking to the router.
  • Are you using a Clarity supported router?
  • Did you recently make a change to your router, modem or internet?
  • If your phone still has a red “X”, Contact Clarity Technical Support.

If you see this on your phone, it means your phone is able to reach the Internet, but it had difficulty reaching the NTP time server.  Try rebooting your phone again.  If this doesn’t resolve the issue, try power cycling the network:

  • Unplug the power cord from the modem and router.  Be sure all lights are completely off both devices.
  • Plug in the Internet modem and allow it to boot up – about one minute (you will see the lights come on one at a time).
  • Plug in the Router (you will see lights come on for the power, Internet and each port that has an Ethernet cable. If at least 3 lights do not come on, check to be sure all the cables are securely connected).

Often enough, a customer may accidentally bump or otherwise make loose the power cable on the back of their IP phone. If your phone should be on, but is not showing anything on the display and/or you can’t hear a dial tone when you pick up try checking to see if the power cable came out of your phone.

Call Quality\Dropped Calls

“When I’m talking my voice is garbled/distorted or I hear garbling/distortion from the caller”.  Call quality problems are caused by one of four things, in order of most common to least common:

  1. Local networks that are not optimized for VoIP phones (most common)
  2. Internet (ISP) packet loss and/or high latency
  3. Inbound or Outbound carrier issues
  4. Hardware failure (this is rare)

The first step of troubleshooting is to ensure your network is optimized for your VoIP phone service.  If your network is optimized for VoIP, contact our Technical Support group at 800.676.3995 for additional troubleshooting steps.

“When I talk to someone, the audio drops out for more than a few seconds (I cannot hear the person I called, they cannot hear me, or a combination of both)..”  In almost all cases, when the audio drops out in a call it is because of a configuration setting within your gateway, router or managed switch.  Follow our Network Best Practices Guide for VoIP Phones to learn how to disable SIP Helpers and open specific ports.

Additionally, some routers do not have enough memory in them to remember all of the connections coming in from and out to the internet. If you are on the phone and surfing the web at the same time, the many simultaneous connections could overload your router’s memory causing it to “forget” connections.  To fix this, ask yourself these questions.

    1. Did I purchase a custom router from Clarity?  If so, am I using it?
    2. How is my network laid out?  There is only one network layout recommended by Clarity.  The Clarity provided router or Watchdog firewall must be directly connected to standalone modem.  If it is not directly connected (i.e. it is behind another router or firewall) there is no way for Clarity to ensure your voice quality.

A dropped call problem can start where the call was placed with faulty wiring or the Internet Service Provider, all the way to the Internet backbone carrier or the call recipient’s carrier. Here are some initial steps in determining the cause of the dropped call:

  1. Did the call actually disconnect or did you briefly lose audio?
    • Did your phone still appear as if it were on the call? If the green light is still on next to the Line 1 or Line 2 buttons, then you experienced an audio drop.
    • Did your phone look like you just hung up? If the date, and time are displayed and the light next to the Line 1 or Line 2 button is off, then your call did actually drop.
  2. Did your Clarity phone drop the call or did the other caller’s phone drop the call?  Clarity IP phone service is very reliable and maintains an extremely high level of customer satisfaction. It is very important that you contact Clarity Support immediately when you have a call drop because Clarity Technicians have a 24-hour window from when a call drops to view detailed call information and diagnose the problem.  Please make note of the date and time the call dropped, as well as the originating and terminating phone numbers on the call.  If you have determined that your call did drop, ask yourself these questions:
    • Was I on the phone with someone on a cellphone? Cellphones, even modern ones, are sometimes not very reliable. A study conducted by ChangeWave Alliance Research Network in April of 2010 determined that on average between 2.2 and 4 of every 100 cell phone calls made are dropped. There are over 270 million cellphone subscriptions in this country. If every cellphone made just one call per week, that would mean conservatively 771,428 cellphone calls drop every single day. If you were on the phone with someone using a cellphone, it is very likely it dropped on their end.
    • Did my internet connection just go out? It is possible that your Internet Service Provider had a temporary outage whereby your phone service went out as well. If your call drops and you know you were not speaking with a cellphone user, verify that you have an active internet connection.
  3. Contact Clarity Technical Support at 800-676-3995 for further troubleshooting and to review your call logs.

Another word for “choppy calls” is “clipping”.  Clipping sounds like you’re only hearing every other word or partial words on the phone call.  If this is the case, this is most often resolved through a reboot of your local network.  Just like how a computer needs to be rebooted to refresh its connections, a network needs to be rebooted occasionally as well.  Please follow these steps to reboot your network:

  • Unplug the power cord from the modem and router.  Be sure all lights are completely off both devices.
  • Plug in the Internet modem and allow it to boot up – about one minute (you will see the lights come on one at a time).
  • Plug in the Router (you will see lights come on for the power, Internet and each port that has an Ethernet cable. If at least 3 lights do not come on, check to be sure all the cables are securely connected).

“When I talk to someone, I hear a lot of echo”.  To be very clear, echo is NOT produced by your Clarity phone system.  Echo is the result of analog (non-digital) technology somewhere between you and the person you called.  The conventional phone system is all directly connected and phone calls travel the shortest distance possible to their destination.  The conventional phone system causes a very short delay in the time it takes for a conversation to get from one phone to another. Because of the short amount of time it takes, when you place a call on a conventional phone there may already be an echo that your brain does not perceive. Your brain is used to hearing your own voice when you talk, so an echo with a short delay is not noticeable.  With your Clarity system, the phone call must travel across the Internet from your phone to the Clarity servers and then be placed onto the conventional phone system. This process takes slightly longer than a conventional phone call.  If the person on the other end of the phone call is using a poor quality phone, an old phone, a cordless phone or the phone wiring in their vicinity is old or not properly wired you may hear echo.

Echo is also sometimes heard through a headset.  If you’re using a Jabra headset, try changing the channel to either A or G.  If you continue to hear echo, please contact Clarity Tech Support at 800-676-3995.

Network\Router

There are times when call quality problems are a direct result of the network configuration itself.  Here are a few items to review if you continue to experience call quality problems:

  1. Ensure all Ethernet cables are tight and properly connected.  If connections are not plugged in or are loose, IP devices cannot communicate or will communicate poorly.
  2. Misconfigured VoIP devices can cause problems. For example, if you are using static IPs, all devices must be configured with the correct IP addresses, subnet masks, and gateway information.
  3. Any network changes such as introducing a new firewall, router, server or upgrading networking software may cause unforeseen problems with your VoIP network.  Any changes to firewall rules could impact the VoIP network by blocking necessary VoIP ports or requiring that all packet traffic be inspected. If this situation occurs, the firewall may not be able to keep up with increased voice traffic and start dropping VoIP packets.
  4. Run a speed test to be sure you’re not experiencing low bandwidth issues. NOTE: you should have a “baseline” upload and download speed given to you by your ISP.  To run a speed test, go to speedof.me (link to https://speedof.me) . Once you arrive at the website, click “Start Test” in the bottom left corner.  Make note of the download and upload speeds and compare to your baseline.
  5. There is only one network layout proven to provide the best call quality, recommended by Clarity. The Clarity provided router must be connected to your standalone modem. If a switch is needed for extra ports, be sure to purchase a non-managed switch. If you have a modem other than a standalone, a firewall or router not provided by Clarity or a managed switch, there is no way for Clarity to ensure your voice quality.

If you suspect your phone problems are a result of your router, check to be sure all cables are inserted securely and all corresponding LEDs on the router are lit.  On a rare occasion, the router’s firmware can become corrupt and be the cause of call quality issues.  In order to determine if your router is the cause of your call quality problems, unplug your IP phone from the router and plug the Ethernet cable directly into the modem.  If you can successfully make and receive calls without call quality issues, then your router needs to be replaced.  Contact Clarity Technical Support at 800-676-3995 for information on replacing your router.

Faxing

Verify you are sending the fax using the correct address format: 1 + 10 digitfaxnumber@clarityfax.com. For example: 12483274389@clarityfax.com.

It is important to remember that the original email address you gave to Clarity when you signed up is the only one faxes are sent to and the only one where faxes may be received. If you cannot send or receive a fax, are you using your original email address? If you need to change your email address, contact Clarity Technical Support at 800-676-3995.

Periodically email servers will update their Spam/Junk mail settings and as a result, faxes may begin appearing in the spam/Junk mail folder. If you didn’t receive your fax, please check your Spam/Junk mail folder of your email.