I can't hear a caller that uses a cell phone but landline call is OK

[Milos]

I searched this forum but I could not find the exact problem that I have. I have Obi110 in Europe connected to the local phone line and Internet. I set up Obi110 to forward all calls to my cell phone. I started this in early August of 2105 and so far it has been generally working well except in one particular case. My father lives in a nursing home that does not have an Internet connection. In addition, he has bad eyesight so he cannot use a smart phone or any cell phone, so I installed a Panasonic phone with the Bluetooth link to cell feature and I connected it to a smart phone. That way, my father can use the cordless Panasonic phone to dial phone numbers and get connected through the cell phone. So he uses the Panasonic phone to call his apartment though the cell phone, and Obi 110 in the apartment forwards his call to my cell phone in the US. On average, every couple of calls he makes, I can’t hear him but he hears me well. He calls again and sometimes I can hear him and sometimes he has to call several more times before I can hear him. So eventually, he calls and I can hear him, and after that the call continues fine; we usually talk for at least half an hour and there are no issues.
Now, other people call me from their landline phones and we don’t have this problem. I am not sure if this is just a coincidence since I have received probably 15 calls from landlines since August but I talk to my father at least twice a day.
Just to check, I called several times that European number from my US landline and over Skype, and my cell phone would  ring and after picking up the phone, I could hear myself every time.

Thanks

[SteveInWA]

Did you mean that you tested part of the overall call path by calling the European apartment's telephone number assigned to the OBi 110 from some unrelated telephone number, not his nursing home cell phone, and it successfully called the pre-defined forwarding number (your US cell phone number), and that part of the call path works reliably with two-way audio?  If that's what you meant, then the problem is somewhere between his Panasonic phone and the smartphone in the nursing home.

IF that was what you meant, you could make things simpler, more reliable and more direct by replacing the Panasonic phone and smart phone in the nursing home with a simple, big-button cell phone.  It's best to keep things as simple and user-friendly as possible for seniors, to reduce stress and anxiety and frustration.

For example:  https://www.snapfon.com/

Note:  that website describes a bundled telephone plus a mobile phone plan, and an optional emergency response service, but you can also just buy the phone by itself with no service.  It's a quad-band world phone, so all your father would need to do is swap out the SIM in your smart phone, assuming they are both standard-sized SIMs.  The other advantage of this would be to eliminate the audio degradation added by the Panasonic cordless-->Bluetooth-->smartphone kludge, and replace it with a phone designed for loud and clear, senior-friendly audio.

If that is not what you meant, please try to explain further.

[Milos]

Thanks for your help Steve. I appreciate it very much.

Yes, that's exactly what happens. I apologize though for not mentioning a very important thing - my father calls other local numbers from the same phone (Panasonic + cell phone) and he has never had this issue doing that, so this only happens when calling through obi. That's why I assumed that this has something to do with obi.

Regarding the cell phone, we did try one of those cell phones with big buttons bit it did not work well. Even though the buttons are big my father still had problems with them. It is hard to explain but he is used to the cordless phone configuration and somehow he feels those buttons better. Also cell phone buttons usually have additional functions attached to them and my father always managed to invoke those, so this caused a lot of frustration for him. With the cordless phone he has never had any issues and he really likes it.

Milos