Digital Phone Lines and Credit Card Terminals - Why They Do Not Walk Together

Does this sound familiar?

Your mobile service has recently been upgraded from the old analog line to the newest digital technology. Now all the calls are clear. You can connect to the internet 100 times faster and your email loads instantly.

Phone companies are switching their systems to the latest technologies to better serve their customers. Old and new.

But what happened to your credit card terminal? It suddenly doesn't work or sometimes it doesn't work at all. Your business suddenly stagnated.

Is it ringing?

It certainly suits me. I hear it almost every day. This has become a common phenomenon in the past few years. In fact, if I had a quarter of the time, I could buy a tropical island, build a five-star resort, and have an 18-hole mini golf course.

This is the problem. The credit card terminal is equipped with a "analog" telephone modem. These modems are suitable for analog lines that have just been replaced by new digital services. This may not make much sense to you. You may be wondering why this should make a difference. The telephone line is the telephone line, right? Well, not exactly.... Let me explain.

Analog modems operate in the frequency band between 300 and 3400 Hz. In order to make it work, it needs a telephone line, and the telephone line can also work in this frequency range. Your digital product line speaks a completely different language. Its operating frequency is between 25khz (kilohertz) and 1.1mhz (megahertz), which is significantly faster than analog lines.

These collision frequencies generate "echo" or "line noise" when the terminal tries to dial out. Because the terminal's modem did not properly adapt and filter out this noise, the communication was interrupted and failed. In rare cases, digital signals may actually overpower the terminal's modem, causing it to burn out.

So the question is coming. What can be done to solve this problem?

There is a device that can be purchased from a local electronics store for between $15 and $20. It is called a DSL filter. This handy gadget will filter out digital information coming in from your phone line and send it to your terminal at a lower frequency, effectively eliminating line noise. 98% of the time filters solve the problem and our businesses are able to resume business. In unfortunate circumstances, it does not work. For those 2% of merchants, we offer the following solutions:

• Contact your telephone company and ask to install an analog phone line. This line will only be used for your credit card terminal
• If your fax machine is in your location, connect the telephone line splitter to the wall jack, connect the terminal to one side, and connect the fax machine to another side. In most cases, we found that the fax machine was connected to a dedicated analog phone line and was not replaced when the digital service was installed.
• Upgrade to a terminal that supports IP/Ethernet connections
• Switch to a web or PC based handler.

Until next time... Thank you for reading.

---

Orignal From: Digital Phone Lines and Credit Card Terminals - Why They Do Not Walk Together