.................................
Here, on the Brigg exchange, if one rings a Talk-talk number from a BT line there is quite a pause before getting the ringing tone (which is like the ancient BT one in sound). Of late the pause has gone on for ever! i.e. one never gets a ringing tone. Only after several attempts does one get through.

Now is this a Talk-talk fault or a BT one? One intended recipient said that their phone had rung but when he picked it up there was no-one there - no doubt I had rung off to try again.

If the Talk Talk numbers you are calling are 'unbundled' rather than wholesale access lines then your call originates on BT equipment and terminates on TT equipment and the problem could be at either end, but if you were so inclined who would you report the problem to ?, if you are a BT customer they would say you 'got dialtone, so no BT problem', if you got the person you were trying to call to report their line to TT they no doubt would say 'you have got dialtone so no TT problem'..when we had an intergrated phone network a fault like this could be traced and resolved, now it will be a case of 'its not our fault but the other telco'