Oh No, my phone is dead!

I just came home about 45 mins ago and was going to call someone and found out I had no dial tone on all of my house phones. I have a speaker phone that is line powered and the LED wouldn't even light up when I tried it.

Right now, I'm wardriving a neighbor's wireless network but I hope the phone comes back later. I did order Verizon DSL last week (again after my order was canceled twice the last two attempts) I wonder if they are just testing the line right now.

What sort of box do you have on the outside of your house? Typically one can access the "customer side" of the box...open it up and you should see a standard modular jack. Take an analog phone out there, plug into that jack and see if you have a dialtone.

Dialtone should indicate good wiring to the street - no dialtone - phone company has problems!

Telephones aren't rocket science, but logical troubleshooting techniques apply.

Just had a shorted wire on the outside of my house last week...it's fixed now! I'm on cable modem though - so with cell phones, were weren't really "out of touch".

I tried that already, forgot what that grey box was called but if you open it up, there is a phone jack in there and a short cord from a block with screw terminals on it plugs in there. No dial tone or even voltage there as well. I can't even dial 911 because there's no voltage powering the phone.

yuandrew said:

...there is a phone jack in there and a short cord from a block with screw terminals on it plugs in there. No dial tone or even voltage there as well.

Click to expand...

Typically when you take the short wire out of that jack, it would isoloate the wiring from your house - then by plugging in an analog phone there "should" hook you up to the wiring that goes towards the street/phone company wires. No dialtone there should indicate "their problem".

"They say" if there's no voltage on the terminals you or "they" have a short somewhere.

When you call your phone from another line (cell phone, neighbor?) do you get a ringing or a busy signal on the phone you are calling from? A busy signal would indicate a short somewhere whereas ringing should indicate an open in the wiring.

Did you say you've reported it to the phone company?

There's some good sites you can find by searching for telephone problems or troubleshooting on the WWW. Here's a good one...

Wish I could be there to troubleshoot it for you...if you're not comfortable "looking around" - better save it for the phone techs, eh? Be careful "poking around" - there could be 40 - 60 volts floating around on those lines. You of course don't want to get shocked, but you don't want to short out any of your lines/phones.

It's still down as of this morning. I did the cellphone trick and I tried calling myself from a neighbor's house. It rings until I hang up so guess there's probably an opened circuit somewhere.

It's hard for me to trace as we have underground telephone poles in my neighborhood but that's Verizon's business anyway.

Heh, forget 60volts, what about if the phone rings and you're holding it. Not fun. been there. Old retail job had be re-doing the phone lines in the building because they knew I could do it. I had no punch down tools so I did get a few zaps. Wasn't that bad really.

96 volts AC at 20 "hurts" frequency? (Checked with my multimeter) :naughty: I found that out a few days ago from putting in a dedicated jack for DSL (I don't think it has anything to do with the dead line as it everything was working after I installed it)

I just finished calling Verizon but they won't be here till Friday afternoon.

Some interesting reading for your perusal.

(Useful in finding out your telephone number if you do not know what it is...I think there are ringback numbers in there also...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANAC

JM-99

The Verizon truck was here just about 15 mins ago. It's working now.

Turns out that some cable in the street about a 1/4 mile away was defective (probably why I hear static on the line for days after it rains) and when they put the DSL signal on there, it probably messed it up. They rewired my phone service using another pair.

So the phone is back and the lineman called Verizon to move the signal to that line. The DSL should work by tomorrow (That's when I get the modem and filters as well)

:thumbsup:

I usually just know enough to get myself in trouble!

yuandrew said:

96 volts AC at 20 "hurts" frequency? (Checked with my multimeter) :naughty: I found that out a few days ago from putting in a dedicated jack for DSL (I don't think it has anything to do with the dead line as it everything was working after I installed it)

Click to expand...

Yes, ring voltage is nominally around 100 volts at 20hertz. And if you happen to be touching the pair when there's ring voltage present, it hertz! I've been zapped many times also. Not enough to be dangerous but enough to really wake you up!

20hz I believe is the optimal frequency for screwing up a persons muscles thats what I believe stun guns run at. It tingles!!! woo! oo:

Interesting that it's close to the "disorientation" strobe frequency of ~ 14hz.