First ring is silent during an incoming call.

Phone make and model?

AT&T phone model DL72310

Turn your call blocker off to see if it's a setting in the blocking options. Manual found here

Thanks, spoom2, for your response. That was the first thing I tried, did not work. That first ring was turned off by an AT&T customer service rep, named Den, on 1/27/23, using the settings menu on the phone. I can't remember the settings he used. This is really crazy. Unfortunately, I have to live with this anomaly because AT&T customer service keep directing me to the ACB menu setting then hanging up on me because I continually insist that an AT&T customer service rep turned off the first ring.

Appreciate your efforts, spoom2. Thanks again.

I don't know if the phone company has an option for ring delay or not, I doubt it. Couple of questions, are these all calls or just calls from cell phones? If all calls have you tried to plug a standard phone into the modem to see if it still does it? Have you tried resetting your modem?

Tried everything. Giving up. By the way, it was an AT&T customer service rep who directed me on turning off the first ring thru settings. AT&T customer service should have some sort of record of my 1/27/23 call. I would think that the results of my call on 1/2723 would have been posted somewhere. Not at all pleased with AT&T customer service. In any case, I'm closing this forum case. 

THANKS, spoom2 for all your effort trying to resolve my problem.  

Hey @dcatarin. Thanks for reaching to us about the first ring being silent on your home phone service. We'd be happy to help you. 

We appreciate @spoom2 for providing that helpful information. 

Furthermore, we would suggest that you reset your phone's handset back to factory settings, so that the settings the last rep changed will be back to normal. You will however lose any personal settings that you had set up on your phone. You should be able to find the steps to do this in the manual that was provided by @spoom2.

Let us know if this helps. 

Robert, AT&T Community Specialist

Thanks, Robert, for not giving up on me. I looked thru the manual provided by spoom2. Looked thru the manual's index found nothing addressing factory resetting. Could you be more specific where the factory reset instructions are? A factory reset would be great. What I have done so far is unplugged the base and handset holders, removed the batteries from the 3 handsets waited approximately 5 minutes. I then set everything again with no resolution. This did not change any personal settings. I know some phones have a hole in the bottom of the base where a paper clip can be used to reset the phone. Could find no such hole on my DL72310. Again Robert, thanks to you and spoom2.

There is no factory reset on a cordless system. You haven't answered my questions and haven't said you tried the suggestions. Since you have CID on the TV I assume you have u-verse service or another carrier. FYI, I know you said you turned smart call blocker off and it still did have a delayed ring, there's several features in the smart call blocker that would cause a delay. 

I'm calling it. I think I'll just call AT&T customer service every couple of weeks and hope on one of the calls it will be Den responding. I really appreciate all the suggestions. I'll consider this unsolved. THANKS everyone.