Wierd phone happenings...

[Sandy89xx]

Hiya im wondering if some one can help put our mind at rest.... ive tried phoning 02 who are at a loss and I can't get through to EE.... so here goes 3 times with in the last month ive phoned my grandad whos in the uk and not very mobile lives around 15 mins away from me and I phone him everyday some times more than once however on 3 separate occasions its rung with an international dial tone then the other times its the usual uk tone... he's really worried about it and I can't get to the bottom of it also he doesn't have WiFi calling and mine isn't enabled he's on EE and I'm on 02 .... I know it's not an AIBU but I just didn't know where to post and know this gets alot of traffic. Thanks in advance.x

Try this forum it might help

Thankyou for getting back to me ... ive found this already and its looking like WI FI calling but he doesn't have it .... its an old phone and mines disabled.... I'm at a loss and he's freaking out buy thankyou

Freaking out for what reason?

When it is the international dial tone, does he then pick up?

Sounds like some sort of quirk related to the call not connecting or routing properly

Can't see any reason to be concerned, are you worried the imei has been closed or something?

Just read it again - just find a different way to get hold of EE? I'm not surprised o2 can't help - it is the other end of the call

No 02 have said they can't rule out the call been intercepted and its too late to get hold of ee but I'll doing so first thing in the morning... was really hoping someone had a straight forward explanation

The I've had this with my mum recently. Didn't really think anything of it tbh.

It’s weird and I would be quite interested in hearing the reason for this ( sorry but haven’t experienced it myself) But I can’t understand why it would need to be resolved urgently or why it would freak anyone out?

It's my grandad who's really freaked out by it ... he's worried people are listening in and 02 have said they can't rule it out .... he's a very private man and it's on his mind all the time it's sad listening to him worry.... I'm really hoping there's a simple explanation to tell him but I can't just say don't be daft it's nothing I've tried and he won't stop going on about it.... there'll be a simple explanation eventually I'm really hoping some one knows it.

Yes that is very worrying imagine what they could be listening in to when you catch up on what he’s been doing the last couple days…

Tell him it’s stopped doing it and stressing him out about it.

In most eu countries when you phone someone from a mobile the ringing tone is generated by your own phone. This saves battery and reduces the network usage slightly as it's not having to transmit the sound of the ringing tone across the network. In the UK we have a different ringing tone that the phone can't generate itself so we normally hear the ringing tone generated from the phone network. It may be possible that some sort of misconfiguration somewhere is sending the signal to your phone to generate the built in ringing tone, so that's that you're hearing. It's nothing to do with calls being intercepted or whatever. The network can never guarantee that your phone call is not being intercepted really.

Actually on further research my understanding is slightly wrong, the ringing tone is not generally generated by the handset, but by the network of the phone you are calling. Still likely to be a misconfiguration of something somewhere rather than anything sinister.