thanks, I fear you may be right but I really need a sanity check because I lack experience. Under those circumstances, good troubleshooting goes out the window. However I think the control set has tremendous potential.

Into more detail of the problem, I think I get the modem line OPEN because the OPEN challenge returns true but an LED named TR does not lite on the modem.

When I use the ExceTel test program (supplied as an .exe) the TR lites and after that, the code I have written does lots of the expected things of the activeX control like detects ringing etc etc

I have corresponded with ExceTel,the vendor, but while they think the control should be OK with VFP, dont appear to give my detailed questions priority. Maybe thats a common commercial approach.

I feel a bit dogged about persisting with these controls because there are such wonderful opportunities around for CT technology and VFP specially if multithreding does eventuate. I also think that the control developer has spent so much good effort in taming the TAPI world.

Is there any way to get the attention of the vendor to expose a control to VFP ?
Is it a large body of work to implement a change to a control?
Would I be better off looking for other controls ?