Hello Again

 

Image by Bing Image Creator

1st August was not only "Hello August" (cf. previous post), but also an "Hello? Hello? Helloooo?" kind of day for me...

I got a phone call from my brother, who rang me on my "landline" number (nowadays on fiber cable broadband) to inform me that he was unable to get through to me on my mobile. At his end everything just went black and silent (no way to leave a message) - and at my end there was no indication whatsoever that anyone had been trying to reach me, or that anything was wrong...

While still on the cable phone to my brother, I tested making a call from my old spare mobile to the new one, and the same thing happened. No call came through. I then tested the other way round - and that worked just fine! So I could make calls, just not receive any... That made it even harder to guess how long it may have been like that. (Could be a few weeks without me having wondered about it, as I wasn't expecting anyone in particular to call, and I was still able to make calls myself.)

What did come to mind was that at the beginning of July I had changed from "cash card" to a monthly subscription. I know I made some outgoing test calls after that change, to check that everything was working. But I'm not sure it occurred to me to also test the other way round - as I've never heard of a phone only working in one direction...

After having finished talking to my brother, I googled "no incoming calls" and found that obviously, the situation must be more common than I thought - as I easily found various tips on things to check if this situation arises.

I followed a number of them - starting with restarting the phone, and then following a list  of different settings to check. The last thing I did was to reset my "phone network" settings, and after that, it was working again. (At least I can now call myself from my other two phones, so I assume others can as well.)

If it was about the phone network settings, it still mystifies me how I was able to make calls, just not receive any... And I still don't know if it was caused by some automatic update gone wrong, or something I happened to do myself... Ah well. I suspect I'll be calling myself a bit more often in the near future, just to make sure. ;) (And I think I'll be keeping my two extra phones as well, although I'd been thinking of giving up at least one of them.)

As you can see above, I asked Bing for an illustration. Below are some more, just for your entertainment. Obviously Bing is still having serious problems with arms, hands, legs, people holding things - and even defining what a "phone" is... (My basic simple instruction was "woman waiting for phone to ring"...)