After connecting to the NBN with Telstra we had static noise issues with old old home phone which we think was being caused by it now being plugged into the Telstra Smart Modem. So we purchased a new Uniden DECT 1730 series phone. We chose this phone because it has a base that plugs into the modem and handsets (2) than could be placed conveniently in the house. We didn’t want a phone at the base because the modem it is plugged into is in an inconvenient place. The new phones work fine.
Shortly after installing and playing around with the phone we noticed that the red charging light on the phone was flashing. The manual says that this means you have a message on the system. We had set up the answering machine, however, there were no messages. So back to the manual to find that we could reset the VMWI (visual message waiting indicator) - page 11. This did stop the light blinking for a while (it is normally steady red indicating charging). however, some time later it starts blinking again. W did this several times - same result. This was an issue as we could not tell if we really had a message as it was always blinking. Very disappointed
After a bit more digging I found the problem. It was this:
On connecting to the NBN we were also connect to Telstra MessageBank automatically.[br]
Our old phone could not use this facility - so didn’t realise it was live.[br]
When we were having an initial play with the new phone we must have reached MessageBank on two occasions.[br]
So, despite resetting the VMWI several times, MessageBank was refreshing the message indicator.
The Fix:[br]
Enter messageBank - dial 101. As this was our first visit we had to go through the setup.[br]
Delete all messages - in our case we had two created when fiddling with the phone initially.[br]
On our phone dial #99# to turn off Messagebank. (N.B. *99# turns it back on if needed later).[br]
We reset VMWI - problem solved.
We have left messageBank off as we decided to use the answering machine on the phone. The light now only blinks when we have a message on our answering machine. There was nothing wrong with the phone - only the operators!